Admissions

Admission is based on a variety of factors including academic achievement and relevant experience. Prospective students are strongly encouraged to make early contact with individual faculty members in the group regarding research opportunities. Applicants are expected to have a faculty sponsor before admission can be completed; only under exceptional circumstances are students admitted without faculty sponsorship.

Our faculty page contains a listing of faculty members within the group with email addresses, links to detailed research interests information, and links to their lab websites (if available).

Applications should be completed by January 5 for admission in the following Fall semester. All supporting documentation to your application should arrive by that date. At this time, we are only accepting applications for the Ph.D. We do not accept applications for the Master's Degree nor for Spring semester admission.

To apply to our graduate program:

When applying to Comparative Biochemistry, you must deal with two sorts of requirements: program requirements and University requirements. University requirements are decided upon by the Graduate Division which is the central organizational body that administers graduate studies on the Berkeley campus. Program requirements are those requirements that are decided upon by the Executive Committee for Comparative Biochemistry. You must fulfill both University and program requirements if you wish to have your application processed.

The Graduate Division requires that all applicants submit a completed application, and:

• undergraduate transcripts, and if applicable, graduate transcripts (you must have had at least a 3.0 undergraduate cumulative GPA to apply for graduate studies at Cal);
• three letters of recommendation with a Form G (no faxes or email will be accepted);
• and proof of proficiency in English for international applicants.

Graduate Division's application requirements for both domestic and international applicants can be found on the Graduate Division's admission's requirements webpage http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/admis_require.shtml. This includes information about transcripts, letters of recommendation (with a link to the Form G in pdf), and the English language proficiency requirement for international students. Please read through the whole of the requirements.

The University Online Graduate Application is available online each application cycle beginning on September 1st at UC Berkeley's Graduate Division website at http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/grad_app.shtml.

The Comparative Biochemistry program requires all applicants to complete the general test of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and the Advanced Subject Area Test in Biochemistry/Cell and Molecular Biology, Biology, or Chemistry. For information about the GRE, please go to the GRE website at http://www.gre.org/. We have no minimum score requirement for either examination. All scores are viewed competitively on a year-to-year basis, i.e., a score that is competitively high one year, may not be the next, and vice versa.

On the application itself, Comparative Biochemistry requirements are:

• you will need to give the names of this program's faculty whose research is of particular interest to you;
• you will also need to list the other graduate schools to which are are applying;
• and your Statement of Purpose must be on your online application (do not send it separately).

NOTE: Again, as mentioned at the top of this page, applicants are expected to have a faculty sponsor before admission can be completed; only under exceptional circumstances are students admitted without faculty sponsorship. Our faculty page contains a listing of faculty members within the group with email addresses, links to detailed research interests information, and links to their lab websites (if available). Prospective students are strongly encouraged to make early contact with individual faculty members in the group regarding research opportunities.

The deadline for the Fall of 2006 is January 5, 2006.

If you questions that cannot be answered from the information on the website, please feel free to contact us at:

Graduate Affairs Office
Graduate Group in Comparative Biochemistry
117 Morgan Hall #3104
Berkeley, CA 94720-3104

phone: (510) 643-2863
fax: (510) 642-0535
compbio@nature.berkeley.edu