PhD microbiology/infectious disease program...NEED ADVICE PLEASE

collegemom3717
Thu, 20 Aug 2015 09:58:55 +0000

Agreeing with juillet overall, but as it is probably too late for this autumn, suggest finding a job in a microbiology job for the year. You will get the lab experience, and you can apply this autumn from it to both MS & PhD programs.

This:

I didn’t study

drives me wild. It is daft enough when high school students say that about their SATs, but by the time you are applying for grad school you should be mature enough to not waste time and money taking an exam that means so little to you that you can’t bother studying for it.

I’m also not a big fan of this:

I will apply to some reaches as well…Harvard…

. Self-awareness is important. Again, when a HS student with your stats says that, the collective adult community on CC rolls its eyes and usually lets it be- b/c it is a 17 year old speaking, and reality will introduce itself all on its own. The people who get into Harvard aren’t just smart- there are plenty of people just as smart at UMichigan, and there’s no reason to think that you aren’t one of them- they are also some strong combination of self-disciplined / motivated / ambitious / hard working / determined etc. Is that you?

I don’t know specific microbiology programs well enough to offer useful advice. Going back to your UMi advisor- and even better, your research PI and asking them for names grad students and/or profs that would be good to talk to could shortcut some of the learning curve. You will get a lot of information, which will give you some good material to research further. You will need to do some thinking about what you might want to do with your PhD- academic research? teaching? corporate research? and what area of microbiology you are interested in. Looking at the research interests of the universities you are thinking of applying to is also really useful- does what the researchers are doing look interesting to you?