<p>A graduate admission committee would question how this individual knows that he wants a career in molecular/cellular biology without having any experience in this field.</p>
<p>It would be recommended that your friend take some biology course work cell and molecular biology at his local community college. In addition, can he volunteer in a research lab in the area? This is a difficult transition and I strongly suggest that he finds a local mentor to advise him at a college or research institute that is relatively close to him</p>
<p>He might want to just jump in head first into an MCB program. If he has a masters in chemistry and has presumably been working in Chemistry for the last decade and a half, he can probably pick up what he needs to know in a few courses and during his rotations. I would wonder why someone would switch from chemistry to molecular biology so late in his career, but I am sure he has his reasons.</p>
<p>competitive MCB programs are skeptical of providing graduate fellowship support for late stage individuals that cannot articulate why they wish to enter a program nor demonstrate thay they’ve explored through research or other mechanisms what this career path would be.</p>
<p>Thank you guys for your responses. He is looking for specific things - stem cell genetic engineering, human cell cloning, and study of aging in the model systems. He says only a handful of labs do that type of work.</p>
<p>In part that is true, but it is also true that these type of research programs are active at most of the top universities. These graduate programs are going to want to see evidence that if they accepted him into the program he would continue (and not just treat this as a temporary interest). </p>
<p>It is important that he contact programs directly and discuss admission requirements for non-traditional students such as himself.</p>
<p>Is his B.S. in Chemistry recent? If not, why does he not have work experience in that field? He may have to explain that.</p>
<p>To add to what ParAlum wrote above: PhD programs are not passive institutions of learning. They expect return from their students, not just during their time in the program but also later, as colleagues. Students are intellectual offspring who carry their professors’ work into the world and then take it in new directions. A younger student has a whole career to do this. A 40-year old has limited time and has already changed fields midstream. For this reason, a nontraditional student needs to convince them that the time spent training him (and funding him) will not be wasted, that research is a passion. The more specific his interests, the more convinced they will be that he knows what he faces.</p>
<p>The kiss of death for science programs is an admission that the applicant wants to teach. PhD programs want to train researchers, not teachers, even though a good percentage will go on to do both. “Going into academia” is not going to cut it as a reason for the PhD.</p>
<p>Because of his unique position, urge him to follow ParAlum’s advice and contact individual departments well in advance of deadlines to discuss the requirements. He should know relatively quickly which ones would be open to someone of his situation. Unfortunately, the top programs will probably not be in the cards for him (although I could be wrong), primarily because they already have the best students in the world applying. It will be tough to overcome a twenty-year gap, with no work experience in the field.</p>