Top 10 Biostat PhD Profile

[Etern]

Hello everybody, was wondering whether you could give me some feedback on my profile. I come from a biological background, but I am applying for biostatistics PhDs now:

 

Undergrad Institution: Top 30 in the UK
Major(s): Biology and English
Minor(s):
GPA in Major: 4.0
Overall GPA: 4.0
Position in Class: 1
Type of Student: International Male

 

Grad Institution: Imperial College London
Major(s): Quantitative Biology
Minor(s):
GPA in Major: 4.0
Overall GPA: 4.0
Position in Class: 1
 

Grad Institution: King's College London
Major(s): English Literature
Minor(s):
GPA in Major: 3.5
Overall GPA: 3.5
Position in Class: Middle

Did both of my masters simultaneously. Wrote my English dissertation on a scientific topic relevant to my biological interests
 

 

GRE Scores (revised):
Q: 160 (78%)

V: 165 (95%)
W: 5.5 (97%)



Research Experience: 
 

3-month internship in a DNA lab

6-month bioinformatics project for my master

3-month research assistant position in bioinformatics

 

1-first author publication in preparation

2 conference talks  
 

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:

 

Won awards for being the top student at undergrad and at graduate institution.

Won an award for most diligent first year student

Won a business award for an innovative business plan

Received travel grant to attend a workshop

Received an award for outstanding services to the student union
 

Pertinent Activities or Jobs:

 

Teaching:
Tutored throughout my undergrad for 3 years (undergraduate biology and academic english)

Worked as a teaching assistant at Imperial for a programming class

Currently started working as a high school teacher in biology for the remainder of the year
 

Service:

Student representative for Quantitative Biology (1 year)

Student representative for Biology (1 year)

 

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help:

 

I am fluent in four languages (Luxembourgish, German, French, English) and conversational in Mandarin Chinese
 

Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter:

 

Member of a couple of biology societies

Took a lot of professional development classes

Took all biochemistry courses during undergrad in addition to my compulsory courses

 

 

LOR writers:

 

My personal tutor from undergrad. The course director from my MSc, and my MSc thesis supervisor.

 

 

Applying to Where:

Oxford- Genomic Medicine and Statistics

Sanger Institute- 4-year PhD

Cambridge- Mathematical Genomics and Statistics

Harvard- Biostatistics

Harvard- Public Health: Genetic Epidemiology and Statistical Genetics

Yale- Biostatistics

 

 

I am mostly worried about the my low Q score in the GRE and the distraction that the English component composes. I am also applying to a couple of other schools which are more biological. Any chance in hell that I will get accepted to any of them?

[bedmas]

I think we need some information about what math courses you've taken.

[cyberwulf]

You are applying to exactly 2 biostat PhD programs in the U.S.; if you really want to do biostat, that isn't nearly enough, particularly as the departments you've chosen are extremely competitive (Harvard) and extremely small (Yale).

 

The main issue you are facing isn't your GRE score (it's not great, but won't sink you) or English studies (not relevant), but your relative lack of mathematical background. I would guess you don't have a lot of math beyond the pre-requisites, plus you are international, so you are going to face an uphill battle to be admitted to most top 10 departments.

[Funkoverload]

your background and preparation are still so good. I believe you will get at least one admission from schools you will apply for. However, your previous majors are not perfectly suitable for biostat phd i guess. biostat is quite a statistics program not biology. how do you think of adding some biology phd programs?

[Funkoverload]

i guess it will be very hard to get admitted to harvard biostat phd. they will prefer peking math or stat majors to you. 

Edited November 26, 2013 by Funkoverload

[Funkoverload]

your gre scores are just fine and you will never fail due to your gre scores. how about your math spec? have you ever taken any upper level math courses such as real analysis, measure theory, measure based prob theory? or some computational stat/biology courses? 

[Funkoverload]

Luxembourgish, German, French would be redundant.

[Etern]

Thank you everybody for your comments. My MSc included quite a few math-y subjects. I took:

 

3- weeks Mathematics for Biology (Basically covers all of 1st year undergrad math without proofs)

3- weeks Statistics (from t-tests over to GLMs and GAMs)

1-week Bayesian Statistics

1-week Maximum Likelihood

2-weeks Mechanistic Modelling and R

1-week Advanced computing for Biology (Parallel programming and shell scripting)

1-week Modelling Complex Communities (Lotka-voltera model and other mathematical models in biology)

1-week Population Genetics (Basically statistics for genetics)

1-week Quantitative Fisheries Management (Modelling population sizes of fish)

1-week Other Topics (Bayesian Networks, Molecular Stochasticity, Wave Spectra in Biology)

 

And yes, as I said in my opening post, I also applied to 7 other programs that are not biostatistics (Entomology, Genetics, etc...)

[Funkoverload]

not impressive coursework yet all. sorry. your preparation is not very good for biostat. you have very good so many redundant backgrounds.

[Funkoverload]

i believe you spent about 1 semester for stat/math in your life. very weak preparation. how were you interested in biostat in a very short time period?

[Funkoverload]

english literature has nothing to do with biostat. biostat requires math + stat/biostat + a couple of related biology backgrounds + research experience and paper + programming skills. these are the major factors for potential students to survive in the program! even if you will get admitted into the phd program, you would need to spend a couple of years on coursework. however, your background will be very very suitable for epidemiology phd.

Edited November 26, 2013 by Funkoverload