Post-Baccalaureate College Admissions in Biology

October 5, 2006 12:11 PM

Does anyone have advice for a thirty-something with an art history degree who wants to go back to school for a B.S. in biology?

Having reached the rather advanced age of 33, I have come to the realization that I have missed my calling, and that life simply cannot go on without my going back to school to pursue a career in biology. My research tells me that, in order to take the classes that will allow me to make the best possible choice w/re speciaization, and in order to get the kind of research experience I'll need for grad school appliactions, I need to matriculate as a Bachelor's degree student. The trouble is, I've already got an undergraduate degree in art history. I've also got a Juris Doctorate, which I'm only sort of using at the moment.

I want to go to the U of Washington as a post-baccalaureate student, but I know that post-bac admissions are highly competitive. Does anyone have any advice for me? I'm particularly interested in hearing about experiences that the people in this older thread may have had, subsequent to posting. (The old thread's about -whether- to go back for a science post-bac. I'm past the "whether" point, and need to know more about "how.")

Here are some other things it might be useful for you to know:

(1) I'm currently taking classes at the community college. I've completed the last two quarters of the majors' biology series, and I'm in the middle of taking the first. I've also had the prep class for the majors' chemistry series. My GPA in this stuff is a 4.0.

(2) I plan to take majors' chem, microbio, math through calculus, and physics with calculus through the community college system before I start classes as a B.S. student at U-W (or wherever).

(3) My law school GPA was rather sucky, but in the classes I took between getting my J.D. and starting the majors' biology series, I also have a 4.0. (If it matters, the other classes were: An upper-level literature class that I took for fun, an education theory class, a quarter of nonmajors' biology, and 4 post-bac classes in teaching English as a second language that I took with my husband so that we could work abroad for a year.)

(4) I am in the process of joining the Puget Sound Mycological Society, which I hope will allow me to pick up some useful research and volunteer experience.

(5) I'm also a fiction writer, and some of the fiction I've sold has to do with natural history and related disciplines.

Thanks, all!

posted by palmcorder_yajna to education (8 comments total)

I don't really know what to tell you, since the question you ask is so broad, but if it's any help, I have a friend who had a BA in journalism degree from UW who went back, almost a decade later, and got a BS from UW in Computer Science.

CS is a very competitive program, and probably only takes one or two non-traditional students a year. It probably helped my friend's application a great deal that he'd been in a band with a brief but obvious engagement with the billboard top 40 in the interim period. With your JD and your fiction writing you should be able to find a way to make yourself standout among non-trad bio students.

Academic chauvanism being what it is, you'd make a better impression if there is some way you can take some of your science prerequisites at the UW, particularly microbio and OChem.

It also wouldn't hurt to get practice explaining why you think it's so important for you to get a BS in Bio and go on to grad school. I don't really get a sense of that from this post.
posted by Good Brain at 12:35 PM on October 5, 2006

I agree with Good Brain; we want to hear why you feel biology is your calling!

I can tell you that if you're going through all this effort just to find out if you like biology research, you might be disappointed. I'm a 30-year-old about to receive his PhD in molecular & cell biology and I feel like I've spent a very frustrating 6.5 years finding out that I don't actually like research--at least not in what I've been trained to do. A lot of this is because I entered grad school without having any idea of what I wanted to learn or get out of it, and "getting skills to have a well-paying biotech job" just doesn't cut it for me. You need to know ahead of time why you want to devote what will be a large chunk of your life and time to research, and pursue those goals as efficiently as possible.

Volunteering your time to get research experience sounds like a really good idea. That's even more important than classes. If you do have an innate interest in the subject and methodology of your research, you'll be learning about your system of interest and how the research is done from people who already do it. The classes will then fill up the gaps in your knowledge, as well as satisfying prerequisites. Also, if you really take to the research you're doing, the P.I. (principal investigator) in charge of the lab will recognize your curiosity and talent, and his/her letter of recommendation is probably one of the most valuable things you can have, especially with a non-traditional background. If you decide you really want to contribute to the world of mycology, your P.I. will tell you who's important in the field, which will give you an idea of where to eventually apply for grad school. More direction = better. He/she might even know those people personally, and that counts for a lot in science, believe it or not.

In fact, I don't think you even need a B.S. in Biology to go to grad school. Yes, you need prereqs and need to be able to do well on your subject GREs. But someone in my grad school class majored in English as an undergrad. (Granted, he dropped out of grad school because he got bored, but he did get in.) He'd also worked for a year in the lab of the advisor who ultimately got him in.

Best of luck to you with your course correction. (I'm going to try the science journalism route, myself.)
posted by ObeyScient at 1:05 PM on October 5, 2006

Getting into the UW for a second bachelor's degree will be really hard, if not impossible. I toyed with the idea of getting a CS degree (I have a Biology degree), but the computer science advising people basically told me to forget it. Granted, I may not have the same experience and qualifications as you, but it will be hard in any case.

But, like ObeyScient says I don't think you need a biology degree to get into biology graduate school. With all the biology prereqs taken where you can (you should be able to get into at least some summer classes at the UW as a non-matriculated student), good GRE scores (be sure you only take the subject test if a school requires or recommends it), and lab work experience you shouldn't have any problems getting into a program somewhere. You'll have a personal statement to write where you can explain what you've done and why you think think you're qualified.

What I think is important is depth of experience working in a lab. Graduate schools want you to demonstrate to them that you can do the things a graduate student does. Working in a lab and on a project for as long as possible toward some goal (journal article, poster presentation, etc.) goes a long way.

I guess we're all doing something like this. I'm going for project management.
posted by sevenless at 1:45 PM on October 5, 2006

I am somewhat familiar with the original poster of that older post and can tell you that he has gone on to do an MPA, not the BSc. I dunno if that's really helpful to you at all. As for advice on how to get a BSc: Have you contacted any admissions people at the school of your choice? They may be able to provide you with a solid roadmap.
posted by LunaticFringe at 1:49 PM on October 5, 2006

Your first step is to prepare for and take the GRE, including the subject test. Next, start applying to graduate programs. I know people who've gotten into PhD programs with liberal arts degrees, but they had kickass GRE scores.

Make sure you know what to say when they ask why you want to get into the graduate program in Biology when your undergrad degree was Art History.

The last thing would be to visit a local university, talk to some of the researchers, and see if you can get on as summer help. If the PI likes you, it'll be much easier to get into the program.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 1:59 PM on October 5, 2006

I'm one of those people who went straight to grad school in science after getting a non-science undergrad degree. I got my bachelors in philosophy and then entered a PhD program in biochem a few years later. The department didn't require an undergrad degree in science, but just that applicants had taken all the basic college-level science classes and the GRE. I also took the GRE subject test (molecular and cell biol.?) and had about a year of volunteer experience in a lab in the same department.

I'd say skip the 2nd undergrad degree and just take the classes you need and get as many A's as you can. I also highly recommend volunteering in a lab at UW if that's where you want to go. That kind of personal connection can go a long way.
posted by shoos at 4:37 PM on October 5, 2006

Thanks, all!

I had no idea that it was possible to work on a university research project if you weren't a student. I will definitely explore that!

Good Brain and ObeyScient:

Since it had been on my mind (and since you're not the only ones who have asked) I went ahead and wrote up the story of my decision to return, Rodney Dangerfield-like, to undergrad. It's too long to post as a comment, but if you're still curious, it's here.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 4:15 PM on October 6, 2006

A PhD in a Bio related discipline is no small task, especially from your starting point, and a masters doesn't open all that many doors. Even my overacheiving Phi Beta Kappa Bio-major classmate took 6 years to get his PhD, and then there are likely to be another 2+ years of postdocs before you have a chance of settling in some place. So, finding a way to learn more about what it would be like to do research is probably something you best do as soon as possible, lest you find yourself with another degree you aren't particularly interested in following up on.

There aren't many researchers who would turn down free manpower, provided you don't come across as being more trouble than you'd be worth. They won't necessarily give you a true taste of what it's like being a researcher, but you'll get a lot closer than you are now. You'll probably get your best exposure if you start by approaching people who have a demonstrated commitment to undergraduate teaching & mentoring.
posted by Good Brain at 11:51 PM on October 6, 2006