Penn State PhD or 1 year M.S. Acceptance

[lil piggy]

Hi everyone! I'm very interested in Penn State's (not UPenn) Bioengineering PhD program, but I have not been able to find much information regarding admission stats or applicant profiles. If you have been accepted to this program or know any info about the selection process, replies would be great! I'm looking to apply for the Fall of 2018.

I also have heard that some applicants to this program that were rejected were offered admission to Penn State's 1-year non-thesis masters program in Biomedical Engineering, which I wouldn't mind at for a back up situation. Have any of you participated in this program? I ultimately want to get my PhD, so I'm curious if this program would be a good segue into Penn State's PhD program.

Also any opinions on how I stack up among the applicant pool at Penn State or other PhD bioengineering/biomedical engineering programs would be great.  Here's an overview of my application:

Overall GPA: 3.6

Major GPA: 3.8

GRE: Taking in August

Research Experience:

• 1 semester of nanotech research for drug delivery applications
• summer undergrad research assistant for unrelated field (don't even know if I should include on my application)
• summer research assistant for bio-membrane science lab (professors both very established in the field of membrane science)
• will be starting and completing my honors thesis this fall (use of polyelectrolytes for virus inactivation, applications in downstream biopharmaceutical processing)

Publications/Conferences: None. Honors thesis will be submitted for publication at time of application.

Letters of Rec: 2 Strong LOR from well-known professors in separations science, 1 strong LOR from post-doc (probably not as strong since not from professor?)

Grants/Awards: Several university scholarships and prestigious state government scholarship in my state, no grants. Don't feel competitive enough to apply for grants, thoughts?

Research Interests: Biopharmaceuticals, drug delivery, regenerative medicine

Extracurriculars are mostly related to leadership experience: tutor within sorority, peer mentor within College of Engineering

Other schools interested in: 

• Rutgers
• CSU - Fort Collins
• University of Arkansas
• Duke?
• Still looking around, if you have others that you think would be a good fit let me know

Any input is appreciated!

Edited June 26, 2017 by lil piggy

[fastnfurious]

What is your undergraduate program quality? Top 10? Top 30? I'm no bioengineer but your qualifications look really good... maybe you can add some better schools to your list?

[lil piggy]

5 hours ago, fastnfurious said:

What is your undergraduate program quality? Top 10? Top 30? I'm no bioengineer but your qualifications look really good... maybe you can add some better schools to your list?

My undergrad biomed engineering program is relatively new.  They were apart of biological engineering and recently split within the last 5 years.  Our college of engineering is 100 among all universities in the US, and 64 among public.. However, the two professors I am working with are prestigious in their fields, one of them more so than the other.  One of them is a top 5 professor among membrane science research, vice president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and Membrane Science, Engineering & Technology (MAST) Center Director, if that helps at all.

[DiscoTech]

2 hours ago, lil piggy said:

My undergrad biomed engineering program is relatively new.  They were apart of biological engineering and recently split within the last 5 years.  Our college of engineering is 100 among all universities in the US, and 64 among public.. However, the two professors I am working with are prestigious in their fields, one of them more so than the other.  One of them is a top 5 professor among membrane science research, vice president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and Membrane Science, Engineering & Technology (MAST) Center Director, if that helps at all.

US News is really ranking everything these days, eh?

You should probably ask Ranil if he has any thoughts on what schools you should consider. Chances are he has a good read on the quality of schools he thinks would be a good fit for you.

[lil piggy]

8 minutes ago, DiscoTech said:

US News is really ranking everything these days, eh?

You should probably ask Ranil if he has any thoughts on what schools you should consider. Chances are he has a good read on the quality of schools he thinks would be a good fit for you.

US News was really the only thing I could find, unfortunately. I didn't think that the ranking mattered all that much unless the school was just super tiny, but maybe that's not true.

I see you're familiar haha. Yeah I think that's a good idea! I was planning on doing that, I just wasn't sure if he would have a good idea since he's more on the ChemE side of things, and I'm looking for biomed programs. I'm planning on speaking with his wife, which is the other professor that I'm working with; she's in the biomed department, but still is mostly doing research with ChemE.