Am I being unrealistic?
I am applying in the 2026-2027 cycle to programs in the biomedical sciences umbrella, specifically genetics programs if they are a separate application. My plan was to apply to a lot of top schools (15-20) and hope that with a broad enough scope I will get in at one of them.
I believe I’m a pretty strong applicant. I have 3 years of research experience (2 years full time as NIH postbac) and should have at least 2 coauthored publications by the time I submit. I have a project I am working on that would lead to a first author paper, but it doesn’t seem like that will be complete until early 2027. My mentor is well known in the field, and has historically gotten his students into great schools. I graduated from a pretty good R1 school (not highly ranked but well known) with a 3.5 GPA, but I did my degree in 3 years for financial reasons.
I have a unique mix of computational technical skills and an educational background in the underlying biology, which I hope to use to stand out. I work in both wet and dry lab projects, with my dry lab projects being large sequencing analyses.
Basically, I am wondering if this strategy of aiming high at a lot of targets is unrealistic given the state of funding right now. I’m looking at the UCs, some Ivies, NYU, Mount Sinai, UChicago, and some other top state schools (UW, UNC, UMich, OSU). Should I replace some of these reaches with more realistic options? I really don’t want to do another cycle of applications.