Am I focusing on the right skills for a career in bioinformatics, or am I missing something important?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently in my 3rd year of B.Sc. (Biotechnology, Biochemistry & Microbiology) in India. My current CGPA is 9.04 (after completing two years), and I'm trying to figure out whether I'm on the right path before it's too late.

Most of my degree has been focused on wet lab work, including molecular biology, microbiology, genetics, PCR, ELISA, and other lab techniques. Over time, I've realized something about myself: I just don't enjoy wet lab.

It's not that I hate biology. I actually love solving biological problems. I just don't enjoy spending hours doing bench work. I wouldn't mind if wet lab made up a small part of my work (maybe 10%), but I enjoy sitting in front of a computer, analyzing data, writing code, and trying to understand biological questions much more.

Because of that, I've decided that I want to move towards bioinformatics/computational biology.

About two months ago, I started learning R, and I've become fairly comfortable using it for data analysis and machine learning. I recently started learning Python as well because of my current research project.

For my project, I'm working with a publicly available colorectal cancer microbiome dataset from curatedMetagenomicData. I've built a basic machine learning pipeline using six different models and have already pushed the project to GitHub as part of building my portfolio.

One thing I've been investigating is why three-class classification (Healthy, Adenoma, CRC) performs much worse than simple binary classification. Since adenoma is an intermediate stage, I'm trying to understand whether that's one of the reasons behind the lower performance. I know researchers have already worked on this dataset, but I'm doing this analysis mainly because I wanted to verify and understand the results myself instead of just reading papers and accepting their conclusions.

I'm also working on another computational biology project that explores a novel direction involving microbiome data and quantum-inspired methods. I don't want to reveal too many details since it's still an ongoing student project, but it has made me even more interested in computational research.

My long-term goal is to pursue an MS from a public university in Germany after graduation.

Since my entire 4th year consists of internships, I want to use that year wisely. I'm currently hoping to apply to places like IBAB (Bangalore), CCMB Hyderabad, CSIR labs, or any other institute where I can get good exposure to bioinformatics.

At this point, I'm trying to build the right skills. Apart from R and Python, I know I should learn Linux, Unix, Bash scripting, Git, SQL, and probably Docker later. Right now I use GitHub to host my projects, but I still haven't properly learned Git and version-control workflows.

The thing that worries me is the competition. Everyone says bioinformatics is becoming crowded, especially in India, and sometimes it feels like I'm already behind.

I'd really appreciate honest advice from people already working in academia or industry.

Some questions I have:

1. Is bioinformatics a good long-term career in India, or are opportunities still very limited?

2. For someone planning to do an MS in Germany, what should I focus on during my remaining two years?

3. How important are internships compared to research projects, publications, coding skills, and CGPA?

4. When should I start emailing professors or scientists for internships? Is now too early?

5. How do undergraduates actually network? Everyone says networking is important, but what does that practically look like?

6. Which skills should I prioritize first? R, Python, Linux, Git, Bash, SQL, Docker, something else?

7. Looking at my current profile, what do you think are my biggest weaknesses?

8. Would you recommend staying in India for a few years after graduation or directly pursuing an MS abroad if I get the opportunity?

9. For those who studied or work in Germany, what made your application stand out?

10. If you were in my position today, how would you spend the next two years?

11. Is there anything about my current plan that you think is unrealistic or that I should rethink?

I'm genuinely looking for constructive criticism. I'd rather hear difficult truths now than realize years later that I focused on the wrong things.

Thanks in advance!