General Hi, can anyone give me an advice on choosing a PHD school

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi,
Thanks for your time. I am now in my third year of the university, and my major is chemistry. I am now doing projects in Harvard Medical School which will take a year. After immersed in the Harvard atmosphere, I really began to fall in love with this mystery school. However, I am not sure if the admissions office can even look at my profile.

Here is my information, my university is in China and not popular. I have a bad gpa, which is 3.4/4.0. I just didn’t realize how gpa is so important and I always skip classes to do my own research. I have been published some articles in WOS indexed database, such as IEEE, Nanoscale research letter( all second author), and mitochondrial DNA ( first author), chemistry oggi(first author) and an EI as well. Due to the bad condition in my school, I mainly focus on computational stuff. And now at HMS, I am doing microscopy extension.

I have won lots of competitions, like international collegiate programming contest, International math modeling contest, and also prices of chemistry knowledge and researches( but the competition is in China, and I don’t think they will pay attention to it).

I know it is not very close to a Medical School’s qualification, but I do hope someone can give me some advice on my application. I don’t want to be a doctor, I just hope to get PHD programs and do research in bioengineering or bioinformatics.

I have got a tofel score of 96, but I can get more in a month( 96 is my first test and I didn’t prepare) But I haven’t got an GRE right now. ( I am revising for IELTS in case some school don’t accept tofel score).

Could anyone give me some suggestions on which school to choose? I love Harvard but if it is higher than me, I can choose another. But only PHD, since I really need scholarships to cover myself.
Thanks!

When it comes to PhD programs, you should pick based on departments, research productivity and promotion of graduate students and postdocs, career and personal support, and where graduates go and whether they help others once they leave. If anything, talk to other Chinese students at the school frankly about their support.

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[lord999]

When it comes to PhD programs, you should pick based on departments, research productivity and promotion of graduate students and postdocs, career and personal support, and where graduates go and whether they help others once they leave. If anything, talk to other Chinese students at the school frankly about their support.

To editor: Would you please not post the final paragraph of this answer as this is specific personal advice. The rest is general for everyone.

I'm a little different where that is true, you really ought to consider whether or not the university has proper PhD advisors. Consider reading a book titled "Getting What You Came For." There are some top-level research universities that I would never recommend anyone to their graduate school, and there are those schools that have quieter reputations that are well-known for training outstanding graduate students.

For example, in strict small-molecular entity pharmacology, Case Western and UT Southwestern are not household names and do not have the preeminence that some universities have on the Coasts, but they are well-known in both academia and the industry for training exceptional PhD's in the subject.

But since you seem to gravitate toward names rather than the actual programs, well, there's probably not much I can say otherwise. I can say definitely that a couple of people I was peers with in graduate school in the NIH Fellowship who are there run the gamut between extremely great trainer and Provost suspended due to malevolent behavior toward their students.

For bioinformatics, you need GRE's, but your conversational and written English need to be at a level to read and present in cogent technical English the following textbooks:
1. Jun Shao Mathematical Statistics (absolutely need to be able to understand statistics at this level)
2. William Loging Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in Drug Discovery
3. Jonathan Pensver Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics

 

[lord999]

Thank you so much for the advice! I am not really ‘chase a name ‘ person, but I do regard the reputation of a school since my mom paid me and she is pretty picky. I decided to go abroad just 3 months ago and it’s pretty hurried for me, It will be great to get to know professors, and I will try my best to get in contact with Pro. Cai.
Nice weekend!! Thank you again!

Again, review her work BEFORE you contact her laboratory. There's etiquette involved in doing so, and reviewing work ahead of time and evaluating whether you potentially could fit is part of it. If you do not understand the customs, ask people in the laboratory you are working in right now for advice. It's a bit much to get into it here.