Should I bother trying to apply to biomedical engineering/computational neuroscience programs this year?

[kangaroomr]

I graduated with a BSEE 2015. Initially I was interested in entering industry and decided to switch over to research in my last year. I have mostly industry experience from undergrad but am now an RA in a clinical research position. Some stats:

GPA: 3.4 (a couple C's but mostly A's, not sure how to get around this) GRE: Taking these in a month, aiming for 170 Q, 160~ V LOR: Will have one for sure from my current position, still deciding which prof. to ask for the other two

Research Experience: Senior engineering project was essentially an independent group-based research project with a BCI using MATLAB and EEGs

Have a coauthorship from this job for a submitted paper and am working on other projects that will hopefully turn into more publications later this year or next year. Doing lots of EEG/MEG/MRI data collection and analysis. Imaging isn't quite the direction I want to head towards but I enjoy it.

I'm strongly interested in electrophysiology, BCIs, neuroprosthetics, sensorimotor neuroscience, signal processing type of research.

Schools: Harvard/MIT HST

MIT EECS

Duke Biomed (Nicolelis lab in particular)

WashU

Stanford

Johns Hopkins

Rice

Pittsburgh

UCSD

Brown

Northwestern

I can definitely strengthen my application with more pubs but not sure if it will matter if I wait until next year to apply or what. any advice appreciated.

Anyone have experience in how competitive it is in this field?

[Edotdl]

While the senior project is good, I think the overall amount of research is still on the lower end. The top schools on your list will be difficult, so I'd add some lower ranked schools if you want to improve your chances of acceptance somewhere.