What's the impact of former university's transcript on PhD application?

juillet
Thu, 12 May 2016 08:34:09 +0000

In addition, I’m a transfer student, which makes the things more complicated. Before coming to US, I spent 2 years at a Chinese university with an overall GPA 3.43/4.00 and rank maybe top 10%, which seems to be fine but not that satisfactory.

It’s more than satisfactory. Top 10% in college is excellent.

One C is not going to tank your chances.

The simple fact that your school is ranked higher doesn’t mean that a 3.6 holds more rate. Lots of highly ranked schools inflate their grades or it’s easy to get As and Bs there, even if their courses are more stringent/rigorous. If your university is well-known for giving out lower grades than other schools (so-called “grade deflation”), then your 3.6 will be viewed in a different light. However, I wouldn’t worry about it because a 3.6 is a great GPA and nothing to worry about.

I want to do research in the biochemistry field. And it’s a dilemma. The pChem seems to have no significant relation to my field of interest(ye, orgo 2 does…) but which are definitely important courses for a Chem major. And I’m wondering if sacrificing time to retake these courses is a better choice since I really want to take some grad level course during my senior year. If the good performance in upper-level courses can cover the bad grades in past?

Cover isn’t the right word, but excellent performance in upper-level classes in your area may outweigh the impact of poor performance in lower-level classes outside of your area.

And I know the research is extremely important for Ph.D. application. I did one in my former Univ. in my sophomore which is related to organic synthesis but was very basic. I didn’t have some papers for this one I just started my second research last semester here at my current university. It’s awesome the lab is closely related to my field of interest and the PI and Ph.D. mentor are really nice and helpful. But here comes the question, I think the lab is awesome and if I continue to involve there is possibility I can get some result maybe some publication? But the lab is very new and the PI just started her AP position here, definitely, she is willing to write a strong RL for me if I continue to work at her lab, but is the RL strong enough for a top program? (I know I’m greedy but… Everyone wants the best right.

It makes me sad when undergraduates come here so stressed out about publications, because it means that the competition of academia has made its way all the way down the food chain and is stressing out a whole new generation of scientists before they even BEGIN their careers. Unnecessarily!

You don’t need publications to get into a PhD program. They are nice to have if you have them, but they are totally not necessary and few people expect a fresh out of college grad to have any.

Now, as for the question of whether you can get some? It depends. Publications take a long time to get published; they even take a long time to get to the point at which you can put them on your CV (when they are under review, at your level). First of all, you have to make a big enough contribution to warrant authorship on a paper. Usually you have to be in a lab for at least several months to a year or so before you are able to do that. The writing of a scientific paper with several co-authors can easily take 6 months to a year. And that’s just to get to “under review.” They’re usually rejected at least once for revisions before they are published. Frankly, the average undergrad isn’t in a lab long enough, and doesn’t know enough, to get any publications. That’s why nobody expects you to have any.

Also, a common misconception is that you need a letter from a famous person to get into a top program. Nope. If you happen to work with a famous person who knows your work well, that can help out quite a bit, but most undergraduates don’t work with famous people. So a recommendation letter from a professor who knows your work well and can comment on you glowingly is what you really want.