Like I told you, this takes a hell lot of time! But trust me, it’s a looooot of fun if u love science! You would be reading soooo much, soo much about AMAZING research people are doing in the U.S. and you would be tryin to decide if it interests u or not. So it is a looot of fun if u do it right!
How do you select univs?
1. Go to US News Rankings, Top Biological Sciences Schools – Go through the whole list three times today! Familiarize yourself with all the colleges and where they stand
2. If the course you are applyin to is more in a Medical School, Go to US New Top Medical School rankings. Familiarize urself with that. (Like I have gotten admit in the Miller School of Medicine, so that is ranked No 54 whereas Univ of Miami Bio sciences is ranked 105! You get what I am saying right?*)
For a more relevant ranking in terms of research and funding, by department, go to blue ridge NIH rankings:- http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/NIH_Awards.htm
Here departments in different universities are ranked by funding given by the National Institutes of Health (USA), and if NIH gives them funding it means they are doing good research.
Go through previous years rankings also.
A good tip:- For a safe school, select a school thats in top 20 of blue ridge ranking but not very highly ranked in the USNews rankings. This means that the school name isnt famous, but they are still doing very good research, and hence good for a PhD.
*The different schools in a University
Medical school, Biological Sciences, Engineering school, School of Public Health – these are the three schools which u will be coming across. In the U.S. each university will have many schools – med school, law school, engg school, pure sciences school etc.. Now, you have to figure out where your course is. For eg, for me, I applied for immunology in all schools in different universities, in UMiami immunology PhD was in the med school, in U.Pitt immunology PhD was in the school of Public health etc.. in John Hopkins (JHU), there was immunology in med school and school of public health, since I heard school of pub health is easier to get into and I liked research there better, I apped there. Get my point?
3. Now when I mean familiarize, doesn’t mean mug up. But go thru the rankings a few times, so u are atleast aware of universities in the US and where they stand.
4. You have the excel sheet I sent all of u, with all univs we seniors applied to, our admits and rejects. It does not mean that u DON’T apply to places where we got rejects from. But it means that, u look at the whole thing, read it twice thrice, so you build a general idea about what kind of students get in where.
So now, you have finished with the ‘starters’ work. Next:-
5. Please go through each schools requirements clearly. If some school says the take in students with CGPA of only 3.5+ on 4.0, and you have lesser than 3.5+, it may not be worth applying. Many schools have profiles of their incoming students CGPA and GRE scores. So do read through that and make a mental note of that.
6. Subject GRE
There are some schools which clearly say that subject gre is required. Do NOT apply to those schools if you haven’t written ur subject gre. (I was a fool and I applied to University of Chicago where they clearly said subject gre was required! They didn’t even consider my application!).
Now, don’t freak out if u haven’t written ur subject gre. Only tooop schools require that, so you always have other schools to apply to.
7. Rolling application
Rolling admission means that, the university starts filling up the seats from the time the applications arrive. So here it means that, you HAVE TO APPLY ASAP. They review applications as and when they come in, so it isn’t as comparative. For eg, if 1 has much better profile than 2, but 2 also has a good profile. If 2 applied in Nov, he might just be immediately taken in. If 1 applied just b4 the deadline, he might lose out, though he has a good profile, just because the seats are filled up!
So figure out if the admissions are rolling. Go through the website carefully to find out.
8. International student intake.
Different schools have different international student intake. Lets take 2 colleges, Tufts immuno dept and Wis-Mad immuno dept. Wis Mad is higher rated than Tufts. But you might have a higher chance of getting into Wis-Mad. Why? Coz Tufts takes in 1 international student every 2 years! While Wis Mad takes in some 3 every year. So, dont just go by rankings also go by intl student intake.
How do you figure our about international student intake?
Look at where your seniors have gone, u ll have a good idea.
Go to the department’s homepage in the university website, and see the student profiles. 95% of departments have a profile or atleast names of incoming students or currently studying students. You can look at the number of Indian names and find out.
Directly mail the graduate co-ordinator and find out if they are taking in students.
(I mailed too late. I applied to Tufts, and then the graduate admissions co-ord tells me they take in only one student every two years! So I wasn’t the lucky half student to get in this year ;) had I known earlier I wouldn have applied at all.)
So the more Indian student names you see the better!
9. Look at the profiles of students in the department.
For eg:- I looked up the Univ of Alabama webpage for department of immunology. I found that there were some 40 students of which 15 were Indians! I got real happy and applied! But guess what I figured out later? On a more thorough study of the students’ profiles, I figured that allll of them were atleaaast MTech graduates or students who had considerable research experience before joining.
So what does that tell you? – It tells you that the Immuno dept in Univ of Alabama, looks for higher qualification and more work experience in its students. So for us BTech grads, it might not be a good idea to apply there.
Each university has different criteria for selection. The criteria are
1) GRE
2) CGPA
3) Your degree and coursework in BTech./MTech/ BSc/MSc etc etc
4) Your research experience
5) Your recommendation letters
6) Your SOP
7) Subject GRE
And different universities have different weightage for each. For example, the universities my classmates got admits into, clearly didn’t give too much importance to only the degree. One of my friends with 1520 GRE didn’t get thru anywhere in the US, it means the colleges he applied to in the US, didn’t give as much weightage to GRE.
So each university has a different selection process. You and me simply cant find out what it is exactly. But we can get an idea from studying the profiles of students who are studying there.
10. Go through the research in the department.
This is the MOST important criteria which is also the mooost obvious. Now everyone does this, the points above this might be new to you, but this is the most imp and also the most obvious point.
You simply don’t want to do a PhD in a department where you don’t like the research that’s going on! So read allll the research, and see if you like the department. You don’t have to narrow down to what exaaaaact topic you want to work on. But u will atleast have an intuition of whether you like or don’t like the kind of research in the university dept.
So apply ONLY to places where you like the department a lot. You seriously don’t want to be stuck in a department which you don’t even like before applying itself.
11. Select university where your choice of department has a loot of professors and a lot of research
Again, more the number of professors in the department has, it means it has more variety of research going on. More variety, means you have more options to choose from, so the department also gets much more interesting. Also more number of professors means, there will be more student intake also! Common sense, actually, isn’t it?
For eg, UMiami, has around 40 professors in the immunology department. So there is all kinds of immuno research going there – Vaccine research, Immunuotherapy research, Developmental immuno research, T cell memory research, Transplant immuno research etc etc! So that means, I have sooo many options to choose from after I join.
Right now, you may have narrowed down to the field of interest, like immuno cell b micro b biochem etc etc.. But trust me, the aspect of research ur interested in, might just change after u join. Like, right now, I am in love with immunotherapy research. But after I join, I might figure that I like T cell/B cell memory research more. In this case, a department like me, has a clear advantage. If my interest shifts, I can always pursue that too! Get my point?
DON’T apply to univs with just 4 or 5 profs in the dept of interest. Like I remember, Virginia tech had 5 professors in Immuno dept! Use logic again here, with 5 professors, they are surely not going to take in more than one or 2 students every year! Being an intl student, whats the probability of getting an admit there? Also, with only 5 profs pursuing immuno research, what if I don’t like what they are doing after I join? I wont even have an option!
So please don’t apply to schools, where the dept of interest has very little research/ very few professors.
And importantly, apply only to schools where the research interests you!
12. Have atleast one university where you seniors have gotten admit from in your field.
13. Each department in the university has a separate admission committee!
Okay, now this is a point you need to understand. So not all departments select students the same way. Just like different universities select students with weightage to different criteria, it varies within departments in the same university as well (though it doesn’t vary as much as it does between universities) So just because I got through immunology in U.Miami, it doesn’t mean you will get through maybe Biochem if you had the same profile as I! So just jeep this in mind.
Summary
1. Go through US news rankings for biological sciences and medical schools.
2. Go one by one in the list and read up research going on in the department of interest. (u don’t have to read in detail, read enough to see if it interests you or not) In this step, look at
a. Does the research interest you? (point 10)
b. Are there enough faculty pursuing research in the department? (point 11)
3. Short list those universities and keep going.
4. Now you have a list of univs where research interests you. Now, next round of filtering:- points 5, 6, 8, 9.
5. Now you would have another list of universities. Let this list have atleast 20universities.
6. Further fine tune and bring down to 8 – 14 univs where you will apply.
The split of rankings, if you apply to 14universities:-
One school in top 10.
Two in 10 – 20.
Three in 20 – 40
Three in 40 – 60
Three in 60 – 80
Two in 80 – 100
Now that isn’t a rule, but you should have universities in all tiers, and its obvious that you have the most number of universities where you feel you will get through. Maybe one or two real dream universities, maybe 3 safe schools where you feel you will get through. Hope you get my point
Deadlines:-
You should have a rough list of universities by start of September, and the final list by October start.
Only after your final list is made, will you be able to get recommendation letters, and many profs, esp those outside college take a looong time to give recos (so u need to give them atleast one month time).
Only after your initial list, can u start writing your SOP. You can otherwise too, but its best to start writing after the initial list is made. So SOP writing shuld start in September.
By Novemeber start you need to have your SOP and Reco letters ready.
Deadlines for application begin from Novemeber 15 on. NUS has its deadline in November 2nd week if I am right. So you need to be ready by Novemeber.
And if you can apply a month before the deadline, very very good! That increases your chances of admission atleast by 25%!
Extra notes:-
I came back to this blog a year later. Now I am well into my PhD, I have spoken to faculty in my PhD program and have a better idea how students are selected. So I ll add two more points here.
a) Your previous experience matters A LOT. So make sure that you get atleast 2 recommendation letters from your project profs (under whom you did your summer projects, internships, etc..)
b) This website is a much more clear indicator about where univs stand in terms of particular depts. For eg, in my univ, Immunology is ranked No. 10 in the US. Whereas, Biochem is ranked No. 80! So in every univ, there are good depts and not-so-good departments. So these rankings are more clear than US rankings and every other ranking and they are free too!:-
http://www.brimr.org/NIH_Awards/2009/NIH_Awards_2009.htm
