marctam86 said:
didnt win, but i plan on applying again next year. what were your stats/proposal like? any advice?
I'm a sophomore. I have a 3.95cum, but 8 A+'s that do not receive extra weight and may have helped somewhat. My proposal was about the research project that I have been working on for the past year, which I will continue through graduation.
My advice (mostly stuff that my faculty representative stressed) is, of course, to have a super-high GPA. I don't agree with the other poster that you need a 4.0. I didn't, and I don't think that anybody else who won from my institution this year had one either. It may depend on the institution, though. I think as long as you have a 3.9+ then you are good to go in that category. I really think that most everybody who even applies already has the GPA of 3.9 or above, so this can't help or hurt your application too much. I think that things like this are more about how your application is presented through essays and the overall picture (see below).
Course overloads and honors science courses are stressed a lot. One of my recommenders emphasized the rigor of my courseload, and I managed to slip in somewhere how I will have taken about 10 grad-level science courses before I graduate.
The research is key, obviously. You need to make a cohesive application that, for the most part, centers around your undergraduate research and is consistent with your long-term career goal. In my case, I had a letter of rec from the research supervisor, I talked about my research in the research experience section, I talked about the project in another essay, and then my entire proposal was about my project. This created a cohesive application that read easily.
There are two components of most successful applications: cohesion and clarity. I was just talking about this with my dad, who is on adcoms for a variety of things at a medical school (general med admissions, residency, fellowship, special NIH scholarships, you name it). The faculty readers are very busy people, and any vague or unclear statements detract significantly from your application because the readers have to stop and determine what you mean, or worse, they simply gloss over the unclear statement and thus your application is not improved by that portion. And the readers don't give these applications as much time as you think, so you want your application to be very cohesive. With a cohesive application, the reader gains the sense that the applicant has a clear understanding of their present situation and their future, and also can more easily recall the strong points of the application (e.g. "the kid who studies C. elegans development and wants to become a developmental biologist" rather than "the kid who studies ribosomes but wants to become an ornithologist"). It doesn't really matter whether you actually plan to become a developmental biologist--you're only 19 (20 now!) and everybody changes their minds. But you need your application to be cohesive.
So I guess my biggest piece of advice is to be sure that your entire application is very clearly understandable and cohesive. Perfecting my application to this level took a number of hours. Have your faculty representative and a faculty member unrelated to the process read it and circle anything that is not immediately understandable to them; then see how you can fix it. I perfected the essays for many hours, then had both of my parents and my faculty advisor read my application before I submitted it to my faculty representative. Then a committee read through it and identified anything that needed to be changed.
PM me if you want to see a copy of my successful application. Good luck next year!
