in need of some advice. feeling rather hopeless.

[hamster09]

howdy everyone...

once in awhile life gives u a little slippage to make things a bit challenging...so it decided to throw me some curve ball on my GRE when i took last Sat. hence i scored a 670Q 530V and still waiting on AW. the rest of me well...is this... i am senior at a UC. majoring in bio. hoping to get into a cancerbio/pharmacology program. my gpa is 3.9 cumulative. i have 4 years of research experience starting from my freshman year. got a publication to undergrad journal my freshman year. Amgen scholar my second year with co authorships on 2 abstract and 1 manuscript. for the last 2 years i've been working on my own project (no grad students by my side) and have won 2 grants for that project, one from my university and another from an honors society. i'm applying to yale, unc, ucsf, ucla, u mass med, mount sinai, columbia, weill cornell. my concern is that my GRE is just simply bad and wont let me get into these schools. =( i feel rather hopeless since i've worked so hard for the last 4 years and it seems like i've been shooting at the moon all along. thank you for opinions and thank you for reading.

[tepidtenacity]

howdy everyone...

once in awhile life gives u a little slippage to make things a bit challenging...so it decided to throw me some curve ball on my GRE when i took last Sat. hence i scored a 670Q 530V and still waiting on AW. the rest of me well...is this... i am senior at a UC. majoring in bio. hoping to get into a cancerbio/pharmacology program. my gpa is 3.9 cumulative. i have 4 years of research experience starting from my freshman year. got a publication to undergrad journal my freshman year. Amgen scholar my second year with co authorships on 2 abstract and 1 manuscript. for the last 2 years i've been working on my own project (no grad students by my side) and have won 2 grants for that project, one from my university and another from an honors society. i'm applying to yale, unc, ucsf, ucla, u mass med, mount sinai, columbia, weill cornell. my concern is that my GRE is just simply bad and wont let me get into these schools. =( i feel rather hopeless since i've worked so hard for the last 4 years and it seems like i've been shooting at the moon all along. thank you for opinions and thank you for reading.

I don't think you have anything to worry about. You sound like a killer candidate; GREs mean nothing compared to research, and you certainly demonstrated you can do that.

[fuzzylogician]

I think a 1200 combined score should be enough to get you past the initial cutoffs (though I know nothing particular about your field...do your programs post averages or minimum gre requiremens?). Your research experience is very strong and puts you at a great advantage compared to other candidates; that, along with the sop and recs, are the important parts of your app, much more than your gre and gpa. So, as the poster above says, I don't think you need to be worried, let alone hopeless.

[hamster09]

for most of the programs they do not post the average GRE scores...i heard from an advisor from UCLA that the weight of the recs and previous research experience are what counts the most. she also said that applying to graduate school is a matter of connection...if recommenders have connections in a particular campus they can pretty much influence your acceptance to the program and such. not sure if that's true but she's a pretty reliable source since she used to be in the admissions committee at UCSD before coming to UCLA.

i'll cross my fingers. and just concentrate on my SOPs and graduating. =)