<p>please give me opinions on whether I got a shot at Harvard BBS…</p>
<p>My stats:
undergrad institution: University of Toronto; honor BSc. with a specialist in human genetics
undergrad GPA: 3.64; science GPA ~3.7-3.8
GRE: verbal 630, quantitative 800, writing 4.5
research: 3 summer research internships, senior year project
LORs: 1 from senior year project supervisor who has got great connection with Harvard DMS (my junior year summer internship was also in his lab), 1 from sophomore year summer project supervisor, 1 from a post-doc I’m working with (senior year project). These letters are all pretty strong (according to them).
<p>For an international, I wouldn’t say your chances are good. I have slightly better stats from UofT as well (3.91 GPA with around 3.95 for major, 800/670/5.5, 3 summer and 2.5 school years research, 3 letters from PIs, 2 mid-author papers, one submitted one in prep and mid- author poster at SfN) and I am rejected from (unofficially, except MIT, from MIT Bio, Rockefeller, Harvard BBS, Stanford Neuro, Yale MCGD, Columbia Neuro).</p>
<p>My suggestion is to apply broadly, to 12 or so top schools, you will get some interviews for sure, I’m assuming. It is a bit of a lottery for internationals in my opinion.</p>
<p>^^^ It is a bit of a lottery for all students. </p>
<p>Generally, universities with huge endowments known for funding students (HYPS) don’t make much of a distinction between international and domestic applicants. You can tell by looking at the graduate groups: they tend to be international in composition.</p>
<p>But once you have the qualifying stats and excellent LORs, fit is everything. Unfortunately, you can’t always predict what a programs wants. For example, let’s say that Harvard is really strong in subfield X; it has a group of world famous researchers working in X, and because you’re also interested in X, you apply. But what you don’t know is that <em>everyone</em> who is interested in X has applied, and one of the profs is retiring. One has been denied tenure. Not only is the applicant pool more competitive, but the space for students is more limited in that area this year. Then you hear that another student, interested in subfield Y but with less impressive stats, has gotten in. It turns out that Harvard has decided to increase its profile in Y with new faculty hires. Plus, they’ve just been awarded an enormous grant to support work in Y.</p>
<p>Obviously, the above is highly hypothetical and overly simplified, but it gives you an idea of why no one can predict chances at the graduate level, even given excellent stats, LORs, research experience, and SOP.</p>
<p>^ I totally agree with MWFN. The people I would like to work with at Rockefeller, MIT, Columbia, Yale, etc… are pretty well established and some very famous. I’m sure everyone wants to work with them. I still applied - you never know and I did list others that weren’t so famous. </p>
<p>But places I’m interviewing with, Princeton and Chicago, for example, I want to work with people just starting their labs. It is the same area of research as the other places, but fresh faces. I think that definitely helped in terms of ‘fit’.</p>
Harvard BBS is actually only about 15% international over the past four years, which I assume is a significantly lower percentage of internationals than the applicant pool.</p>
<p>The really top programs tend to be fairly domestic student-heavy, because they get their pick of the top domestic students, and can put them on NIH training grants. It’s the schools a step down that accept many more international students, because the domestic student applicant pool is less strong.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, in my lab, all the grad students my PI has ever had have been domestic, and virtually all of the postdocs have been international.</p>
<p>Yes, we’ve had this discussion before – and I forgot you said that Harvard doesn’t have many internationals. I happen to know that Princeton does in a lot of its programs. Maybe because Princeton has a Canadian president? Still, I consider 15% to be a significant portion given all the top domestic students that also apply.</p>
<p>One additional note: many internationals who apply to top programs are not qualified/competitive. Those internationals that do have outstanding experience and stats tend to stand out. International applicants would do well to research the individual programs to see whether they have a decidedly domestic bent or whether they seem open to other nationalities. I’d also bet that international students had better be applying from one of the top universities in their home country, mostly because the quality of the education from those universities is known.</p>
<p>^^ “many internationals who apply to top programs are not qualified/competitive.” I dont agree with this. Someone with stats like, say safetypin for example, is almost guaranteed to get into the most of the programs (like Yale, Columbia etc), if she were a US citizen.</p>
<p>You can’t really disagree with a fact. Compared to the applicant pool for undergraduate admissions, there is a much higher percentage of graduate school applicants, both domestic and international, who are obviously too inadequately prepared to be admitted.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m not sure what Momwaitingfornew is trying to infer by evoking this statement. That the difficulty of being admitted as an international has nothing to do with the size of the international applicant pool, since only a fraction is qualified enough to be considered in the first place? That certainly seems true enough.</p>
<p>Of the highly qualified applicants to a program, 15% might be international, hence the percentage. I doubt that subpar Americans are being accepted over highly qualified internationals. Programs want the best scholars, period.</p>
<p>According to some of my inside sources, many more unqualified international students are likely to apply, as opposed to unqualified US applicants, perhaps primarily because U.S. students have advisors more familiar with their students’ chances at various programs. International students are also less likely to be aware of the universities outside the top ten.</p>
<p>The international students on this thread are not typical of the pool as a whole. All you have to do is see their success in getting interviews to know that they have stood out. As I said above:</p>
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<p>I am not in any way maligning international students like safetypin. Her interview results have exceeded many U.S. students, which just supports my statement: if you have impressive experience, whether you are international or not, you will get noticed and interviewed by top programs.</p>
<p>I think internationals applying to US schools, at least a lot of people I know from UToronto, are qualified and would get in if they were US citizens. Most people here apply to Canadian schools, so those that choose to apply elsewhere tend to be quite qualified, especially in terms of usually the quality and quantity of research experience. Just a broad generalization of course. I think they tend to be more qualified than many people applying from unknown or non-research intensive LACs/Universities, since a lot of universities in Canada have very good research as well. </p>
<p>The difficulty of getting in as an international, imo, is that you have to be REALLY worth it, money wise. They don’t want to train students and invest tons of money in them to have them go back to their home countries (which is, ironically, what I would love to do, live in Canada that is).</p>
<p>edit: just read MWFN’s post above. I think it is true that many people applying who don’t do research into the whole process, admit stats, etc… do far worse (instead of being a forum-whore such as myself). I do know people here who have no idea that it is virtually impossible to get into UC schools as an international, or what places are international friendly and which aren’t. I tried to be as strategic as possible and tried to apply to more or less international friendly places that also fit my research interests, but it is true, a lot of people I know want to go to UCSF, UCSD, UCLA, etc… and I tell them, it is better not to waste your money. You can always post-doc.</p>
I apologize – I didn’t recall that I’d trotted out that particular fact in previous discussions. (I’m one of those people who says “my husband Adam” in about 50 conversations before someone finally says, “Yes, I know who Adam is!”)</p>
<p>I don’t think that subpar domestic students are being admitted over internationals, but I do think it’s more difficult in the international pool, even for outstanding students. During interviews, I went around with two MIT friends of mine who were international. They were both outstanding candidates (as would be evident by the fact that they got into MIT as undergrads in the first place, where there’s a stringent international quota in place), but at least one of them didn’t get into UCSF, and both were warned at Stanford that there were limited spots for internationals. And these were for highly qualified people with excellent English who’d been educated at a top school in the US.</p>
<p>As safetypin points out, the UC system is especially tough on internationals, as are many other public universities. </p>
<p>But this year is particularly tough for graduate admissions, for whatever reason. Even programs way down the prestige totem pole are reporting record numbers of applications.</p>
<p>Anyone know if BBS is sending out any more acceptances? It seems like there was only 1 ‘wave’…Do you think we should just assume we got rejected at this point (if we have not received a phone call)?</p>
Still, I consider 15% to be a significant portion given all the top domestic students that also apply.</p>
(I’m one of those people who says “my husband Adam” in about 50 conversations before someone finally says, “Yes, I know who Adam is!”)</p>