I entered college completely unprepared, and bombed my first few semesters (D’s and F’s). I turned things around and was able to graduate, but my GPA never quite recovered and I ended up with a 2.42.
Add to that the fact that I majored in Political Science, and common sense would say that I don’t have a shot at getting accepted into a Computer Science masters program.
However, there are a few possible mitigating circumstances:
-The last two years of college I got mostly A’s and B’s.
-I’m good at standardized tests. I killed the GRE, getting a 169 verbal, 170 quantitative, and 5.0 writing.
-In the last 6 months I took five prereq math/CS courses at a reputable state university and got A’s in all of them.
-I have an official diagnosis of ADD.
Will that be enough to make up for my terrible GPA and the fact that I majored in something irrelevant to computer science? Realistically, what kind of schools (ranking/reputation-wise) can I expect to get into?
I think you can probably get into a professional Masters degree program. You need to find a department that is willing to look past the college GPA that you have and recompute based on your final 2 years and your grades in the CS preparatory courses that you have taken.
no one will be able to suggest schools to you without knowing more about what your constraints might be. You need to look into the various programs and suggest some. The poster on this forum may be able to give you are rough idea of what you canexpect but your best bet is to contact the departments and find out straight from the source.
An upwards trend always helps, but you have to remember that a lot of applications are weeded out based on GRE and cumulative GPA before any trends can even be observed.
That will help a little but not as much as you might think - most programs seem to rank GRE as one of their least important factors.
This also helps, but you need to place that in the context of “how ready am I to do research and take grad courses in this particular specialty of CS?” If you are ready to go, that’s great. If you are a semester behind, that’s a small problem. If you are a year behind, that’s a big problem.
So? If untreated ADD is the reason for your poor early performance, then that is relevant and should go in your application. Otherwise this has no bearing.
Probably not, and hard to say. Remember that grad admissions is holistic and competitive. You can make up for weaknesses in one area by being strong in another, but your biggest weakness (GPA) is something that tends to be valued highly while your biggest strength (GRE) is generally valued low. And you have not mentioned any research experience, which means that competitively you are starting at a pretty big disadvantage. I think you may find a home in a relatively-low ranked program, and will likely self-fund even there.
I think UIUC is a real longshot for you - that’s a top-5 program and they are turning away candidates with much better resumes, you would need to show something truly remarkable to even get noticed. Rutgers is still going to be a stretch, but if you catch the right professor at the right time it might happen. Syracuse might still be difficult but should be the most forgiving of the three.
May I ask why you are trying this transition? And also, why you think you will be successful? Any program will want to know the answers to those two questions.
I agree that UIUC might be a long shot. You should do better at a private like Syracuse. You might also try a smaller private school where they look at each application carefully. My university, Illinois Institute of Technology, is one such example (there are plenty of others). Alternatively, you can look into less research oriented but well regarded state universities like some of the California State Universities. Where did you take your CS courses?
Does the reputable state university where you took the last 6 math and cs courses have a graduate school in cs? Your best bet might be to apply there.
Many universities have minimum gpa requirements. In addition, top programs may want to see LORs from top faculty. So, excluding these schools, my guess is you have a chance.