What should I pay attention to when applying for American graduate students?

It is a tragic fact that undergraduate schools are very important for applicants with mainland background. There are two reasons for this. First, the school will generally let Professor China, who has a better understanding of China's national conditions, review the materials. These professors come from famous universities in Chinese mainland, and they prefer their alumni. Another reason is that many students from Peking University and Tsinghua go abroad every year, so the sample size is large enough. Therefore, when the school looks at the materials, the applicant's orientation is relatively certain. Therefore, for your own positioning, the most important thing is to look at the situation of seniors going abroad in the previous two years, and then look at your own positioning in this session, probably what school to apply for.

Two letters of recommendation

In fact, the recommendation letter is the most important in the application, provided that the recommendation letter is not written by yourself, so this rule does not apply to most applicants in Chinese mainland. But there are some exceptions. A useful recommendation letter must be 1, recommended by a cow, well written. 2, the applicant's acquaintances recommended. The definition of a cow is that people can know who he is by signing his name, regardless of whether he is an academician/president/department head/party secretary.

3 GPA

This is generally considered to be the most important part of applying for graduate students in the United States, and it is also the case. There is a great correlation between the GPA of undergraduate course and the success of postgraduate career, so it is highly valued. Generally speaking, graduate schools have a bottom line for applicants' GPA, either overall or the last 60 credits. See the school website for details. Besides, the bottom line is different, from 2.0 to 3.0. However, if the bottom line of any school is greater than 3.0, then this school is abnormal, at least I seem to have never seen such a school. However, this does not mean that any school application higher than 3.0 can be assured. Because after graduate school, the department will still look at the materials, and then the standards are varied. Some people continue to watch as a whole, some people are very sympathetic to China's national conditions and remove political courses, and some people only watch the courses they are interested in. A more extreme example is that an analytical chemistry top5 school only looks at the results of general chemistry, four major chemistry and chemical experiment courses on the report card, while ignoring other results. As for which school uses which standard, no one can say clearly, and it may change with the composition and mood of the admissions Committee.

Low GPA is hard to make up for. Some people will play tricks. For example, the rule in Lin Nan is that all elective courses can be deleted. If GPA can be improved in this way, you can consider doing so, but you should also consider the impact of credit reduction. Some people retake the exam, but if it is not a key course, it is better to do something meaningful and improve the GPA of 0.0 1. Note that "key courses" in American schools may be different from professional courses or important courses in China students' minds. If all the students' grades are not high, it is a good choice to have a ranking. Personally, I think that grades like 10/ 100 can be opened, and we will forget it later. If your grades improve every year, you can also send a column chart.

Not to mention not cheating. Although honesty has never been a traditional virtue of the Chinese nation, even if you are willing to joke about your future, please think about your siblings. The United States is much more tolerant of failure than China, but far less tolerant of cheating than China.

4 papers

This thing has always been controversial. I have seen some American professors say that only top English magazines are useful, and I have also seen other American professors say that for undergraduates, as long as they have papers, they can stand out. However, it is generally believed that if other conditions are not outstanding and schools such as top20 are impacted by papers, then the requirements for papers are higher, such as JBC or better. The paper itself is also very important. I have seen two people arguing about whether the influence factor of articles and magazines on themselves is 1.556 or 1.557, which is actually unnecessary. It is all professors in this field who read the application materials, not the party secretary of the school. They don't care about some quantitative standards that can only fool laymen, such as impact factors and SCI, or whether they are domestic core journals. The originality of an article cannot be measured by these messy things.

Summary: It is often decisive to publish the first author's paper in top magazines. In addition, there is often not much benefit, and talking is better than nothing.

5 research experience

There are really not many undergraduates majoring in biology who have never been in the laboratory in these years, but what kind of research experience is praised and worth pondering. I wrote to some professors and asked them what a good research experience is for undergraduates. The general answer is to spend a few years doing something. Another advantage of entering the laboratory is that you may get a good recommendation letter, even better if you have a paper.

Research experience will definitely be asked in the interview, and often very detailed questions will be asked. If it is blown out, the ending will be very tragic. My research experience was not blown out, but I forgot something during the interview, which still caused a terrible situation of silence. Don't brag about your laboratory experience!

6 groups of magnets

Magnetization generally has little effect because it is now decided by an academic Committee. Moreover, good schools have to do rotation, and students are beginning to be uncertain. However, some schools have strong teaching power, so it may be more useful to cover the magnetic field. In addition, the admission of some schools is the same decision, but the RA is decided by the professor. At this time, you need to get magnetism, such as the EE of UIC.

Generally speaking, if you don't have a good research/a good paper/an acquaintance's recommendation/you know all about the research of magnetized objects, you don't need magnetization.

7g & amp； T

G & ampt scores should exceed the psychological bottom line of graduate school, otherwise graduate school will fail. If the department strongly wants to recruit a student with a low GT, it will take a lot of time to wrangle with the graduate school. Success is one thing, at least it is troublesome, and many professors are unwilling to do so. However, it's no use if the GT is too high. Gverbal is more than 600, and T/Kloc is more than 0/00. Too high is useless. T, in particular, is in graduate school, and few professors care about how many points students get. T's oral English may be related to doing TA, but many schools decide that TA should be taken again after students have been here for one semester. Moreover, doctoral students majoring in biology can always get funding. So don't worry too much.

The other two common sense knowledge: GT full marks can't make up for the defects of GPA. I don't know why many people think so. These are two different things. Americans are not idiots, and they will not take English exams as the admission criteria for all majors. In addition, to apply for science and engineering, it is best to get a perfect score of Q.

9 school choice

Finally, talk about choosing a school.

I'm surprised that someone is still looking at the undergraduate ranking of USnews (often called comprehensive ranking). For a student doing biological research, it is meaningless to care about the quality of college football. Some people look at professional rankings, which are a little more reliable, but it is also difficult to form a rational understanding. There are several good biology departments, either big or all. For example, Harvard Medical College has more than 65,438+000 professors. There is also the biology department of MIT, which has its own various research institutes in cooperation with Harvard. Or it is strong in a certain direction, such as plants in UCRiverside. Either a great person holds up a sky, or a small and exquisite person like California Institute of Technology.