Admission to PhD EECS/EE at Berkeley/Stan/MIT for Fall 2011

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi All,</p>

<p>After sweating for almost three years as a grad/PhD student at a top ten school I have realized that no matter how hard one works s/he needs a PhD from the top 4 (Stan,Cal,MIT,Caltech) to secure a faculty job in a decent school. So I have decided to apply (once again) to the elitist quartet. Would seriously appreciate comments, particularly from students enrolled in the 4, on my chances with or without financial aid.</p>

<p>My Profile:
BS from accredited school outside US
BS US-equivalent GPA 3.6/4.0
MS from a US top ten school in EE
MS GPA 4.0/4.0 (I was taking courses towards PhD so have more than required for masters)
6-7 conference papers in good/accredited conferences in bio-optics
GRE: Q800 V560 AW4/6
More than six months internship experience in a good biotech company in bay area</p>

<p>Oh and two questions,</p>

<p>1) Is it usually the case that profs from Stanford and Cal refuse to talk to you about the possibility of hiring you if you are not already enrolled/admitted in the school? I have tried talking to some profs at Stan/Cal and all I have heard has been rude comments basically saying "don't waste my time if you are not enrolled here". I am only asking because this is totally not the case in my current school.</p>

<p>2) Do recom letters and SOPs matter at all? My experience with grad school admission back when I was an undergrad has been that recoms/SOPs just have to be there but they are not what breaks it or makes it. I don't really wanna bust my ass and chase profs/VPs for good recoms if they don't count that much.</p>

<p>thanks,</p>

<p>paxboyo</p>

2

<ol>
<li><p>The way pre-acceptance contact is viewed varies from program to program and even professor to professor. If they don’t want to talk to you, then you probably have your answer.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, LOR letters matter. A lot – especially at more competitive, more prestigious programs.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>But I have some questions for you. And you really prepared to start over, at ground zero, for your PhD? What makes you think that getting a PhD from a top four will be any better than getting one from a top ten? What matters is your advisor and, even more, your own research. How will you get good LORs from your graduate school professors if you leave a program that has supported you for three years? </p>

<p>My guess is that this is a futile effort on your part that is only going to damage your relationship with the faculty in your program. You have to have an excellent reason to leave one PhD program for another (e.g. your advisor left or the program cut your subfield), and a perceived notion of better employment options isn’t one of them.</p>

<p>Do groundbreaking research, and you will succeed in the academic marketplace. Remember that it’s rare these days to go directly from the PhD to a tenure-track position in the sciences. Most do a post-doc first – and that applies to PhDs from the top four as well.</p>

3

<p>I agree.
How can you expect good letters of recommendation if you’re ditching your PhD program?</p>

<p>And how do you think the admissions people at these 4 colleges will react to the fact that you were already in a graduate program and flaked out?</p>

<p>Either way, good luck. But I urge you to stick with your current school.
Not many people get a chance to do a Phd from a top school like that and you should be proud of yourself.</p>

4

<p>its rude to contact them before you’re admitted.</p>

5

<p>It’s going to be really hard to make a case for your admission. Your argument is basically “my current school is not prestigious enough to make the elitist <em>s</em>ho*es of academia to hire me for a faculty job”. Your stats are of course fine, but making a real case for admission is perhaps not possible.</p>

<p>You’re also overstating the benefit of these schools. My undergrad thesis advisor, who graduated from one of those 4 schools, told me that most of his classmates were unsuccessful and ended up switching fields entirely after graduating (e.g., med school, finance, etc). He was fortunate in that his advisor gave him a pretty good thesis topic. He said he saw his advisor once every 6 months though and didn’t get much help when he did. By contrast, I’m my advisor’s only graduate student and get tons of advice when I need it. We publish in well-known journals and get cited a lot. My first paper has already been cited about 30 times.</p>

<p>Really though, I don’t know where you get the idea that you need to graduate from those schools to get a faculty job. In my department (EE), I had classes taught by exactly 1 Berkeley graduate and 1 Caltech graduate - and that’s it out of the ~15 classes I’ve taken.</p>

6

<p>You have almost no chance. Plenty of people have the same thought process as you. If this was a reasonable path to those four schools, then their programs wouldn’t be prestigious. Let me make an analogy to undergraduate admissions: this is like transferring, NOT like first-time admissions. Know why transferring success rates are something like 2% at elite universities? The applicants almost all fail to understand that they need a compelling reason to justify a transfer. Most of them are just prestige-obsessed and think this is a second chance. It’s not. On your first shot you don’t need a reason. You’re looking for a good schools and the schools are looking for good students. Transferring is fundamentally different.</p>

<p>Some students do switch graduate programs but this is for unusual situations. E.g. their advisor leaves or they did a fast BS-MS at the same school so it’s like they’re applying for the first time. MIT/Stanford/Berkeley don’t care one bit that you think you need one of their degrees. That’s not an example of a valid reason, which is typically something directly related to research.</p>

<p>Do letters matter? They matter more than everything else put together. No, really. To be blunt, you don’t seem to know the bare basics of admissions to top schools. You really need to reconsider doing this.</p>

7

<p>OK thanks everyone for your comments. Let me clarify a few points.</p>

<p>I agree that I can’t get good LORs from my advisor or co-advisors and that is why I am planning on getting them from the faculty in whose courses I have aced and also from PhD level scientists/colleagues where I interned. That covers my academic and some of my research achievements. Still, I agree, not as good as having your advisor back you up. </p>

<p>About how the faculty at the top four will view this, I think my case is like applying to a PhD program with an MS and work experience and that is exactly how I will be showcasing it. I have an MS from a good school and work experience in a reputable company and now I want to do a PhD in a good school. I know and I am sure you know many people, even from this website, who go to a prestigious school with an MS. from another school. I am not sure why some of you guys think the faculty where I am applying will view this as ditching my PhD. If that was the case no MS. holder could possibly get into PhD programs at the top 4.</p>

<p>I agree that if one does groundbreaking research that echoes on the walls of academia s/he will have a good chance in securing a faculty job. But really, take a look at the EE faculty in good schools, the top 4 graduates occupy >60-70% and that gets to >95% when it comes to the top 4 themselves. And these are people who have joined in 90s and early 2000s when the competition was even less fierce than today. I have been working in bay area for more than six months and hung out with Cal and Stanford PhDs and I know how thirsty they are, especially now with the economy and lay offs in industry, about getting faculty jobs and that is why I am not surprised to see them take over new faculty openings at almost any good school in CA.</p>

<p>gthopeful, thanks for your comments. I assume you go to Georgiatech from your location, how many of your school’s graduates have become faculty in say top 30 even after postdocing (even counting georgiatech itself)?</p>

<p>I am not trying to downsize work/research done by graduates of top but none-elitist schools. Actually I think an unbiased referee would find their work nothing less than that of elitists. However, that is unfortunately not how the academia works when it comes to faculty jobs and unless you are OK with becoming a tenure track in the boonies, elitist affiliation is necessary for getting a good faculty job these days.</p>

<p>Thanks again for your comments. I would still like to hear about my chances with admission.</p>

8

<p>

Cute, but it’s in your head.</p>

9

<p>

This alone would kill your chances. Industry letters and “did well in class” letters are meant to be fillers - i.e. you need 3 and most people typically only have one or two research advisors. They can’t credibly be the mainstay. Don’t believe me? Scroll down to the recommendations section (3.5). This professor has worked on the committees of MIT EECS, Berkeley EECS, and CMU CS (which is elite in CS as I’m sure you know).
<a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

10

<p>

</p>

<p>I don’t keep track of that sort of stuff. To be sure, it’s probably not very good considering Georgia Tech’s good reputation outside the South is quite new. I will say this though: professors I know of here that even were postdocs ever are in the minority. Most spent several years in industry and have come since come back to academia. Why is that? Well, industry jobs pay a heck of a lot more than academic ones. Why go through a formal postdoc making about the same as an elementary school teacher when you could “postdoc” while making 6 figures as a research scientist in industry? Postdocs are what you need to land jobs in the sciences – not engineering.</p>

<p>Even if you don’t believe the above, here are the schools all of ECE’s current assistant professors attended for graduate school ( [ECE</a> Faculty Profiles](<a href=“http://www.ece.gatech.edu/faculty-staff/fac_profiles/ece_faculty.php]ECE”>http://www.ece.gatech.edu/faculty-staff/fac_profiles/ece_faculty.php) ). I single out assistant professors because they are the least likely to have had significant industry experience before applying for a faculty job:</p>

<p>Berkeley
Caltech
Georgia Tech x2
Illinois
Maryland
Michigan
Penn State
Purdue
Rice x2
USC x3</p>

<p>Doesn’t seem like your position that school prestige is even more important today in landing a tenure-track position is well-supported, at least at Tech. Maybe all the prestigious university graduates don’t like ending up in backwater Atlanta though :)</p>

11

<p>:)</p>

<p>I wish your stats were correct but seems that 2 of the USCs and the Penn State are at GT-Savannah which as far as I know is by far not the same as the main campus in terms of students, resources, core facilities, and what have you. </p>

<p>Among the rest you have some who have jumped to tech from faculty jobs in lower ranked schools after doing ground breaking research there and some (rice) who were lucky to be part of big discoveries/research while in grad school/postdoc. These are actually very good examples of people with outstanding research portfolios (much better than their peers in elitist schools) who could not land positions in prestigious schools as faculty and have ended up in Tech. If they had similar research portfolios with degrees from prestigious schools they were working for the elitists now. </p>

<p>And you’re right Tech’s new reputation along with atlanta’s bible belt location makes it far less coveted for faculty jobs than CA/Bos-Wash based schools.</p>

<p>Anyway thanks for your comments everyone. From your comments seems that the recom letters are the only weak spot of my profile. Nevertheless, I don’t see any reason not to give this a try as I have seen many MS holders with lower research achievements get into stanford. So will still appreciate inputs/comments on chances. </p>

<p>one question btw: does anyone know for a fact if admission committees at stan/cal/mit ask/contact applicant’s non-recommender advisors/co-advisors for evaluation? Has it happened to anyone you know?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

12

<p>

Yes, Stanford is your best shot. The others don’t like those trying to “move up” and are more or less a waste of an application fee in my opinion.</p>

<p>

Absolutely. It’s considered extremely bizarre and suspicious to not have your current advisor as a letter writer. I wasn’t kidding about letters outweighing everything else.</p>

<p>[The</a> official EE Graduate Admission Results 2009 Thread - The GradCafe Forums](<a href=“The official EE Graduate Admission Results 2009 Thread - Engineering - The GradCafe Forums”>The official EE Graduate Admission Results 2009 Thread - Engineering - The GradCafe Forums)</p>

<p>

</p>

13

<p>I don’t understand what is wrong with a faculty position at Georgia Tech?
Isn’t it the #4 best school?
If #4 out of hundreds is not good enough for you, don’t you need to reevaluate your priorities?</p>

<p>You’re just chasing prestige, and even if you get into Caltech you’ll be bitter you aren’t in MIT.</p>

14

<p>paxboyo,</p>

<p>First of all, your assumptions are off. While graduation from a “better” school does improve your chances of getting a tenure track position, it is not by as much as you think. Randomly sample any department’s faculty and you will see a wealth of faculty from outside of the top-5. </p>

<p>For additional reference, UIUC’s (top-5) assistant professors (not including UIC) in ECE come from:</p>

<p>Arizona State
Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
MITx4
Stanfordx3
UCF
UCLAx2
UCSD
UCSF
UMiss
UT Austin</p>

<p>So 8 out of 17 come from higher schools, the rest from good but still “lesser” schools. Penn State EE at University Park (top-25, small faculty)?</p>

<p>Illinois
Michigan
UT Austin</p>

<p>If your goal is to jump directly into a tenure-track position at a top-5, then I would say a PhD from a top-5 would be a big advantage, but if you just want a good faculty position then I would say the best route is to concentrate on doing well wherever you are! Plus, many people start as junior faculty at “lesser” schools and then take better positions at “better” schools later on.</p>

<p>

Here’s a few reasons:</p>

<p>(1) Without a good reason for your departure (as others have suggested) you will be a bad bet, as you will still have the same shortcomings from your last admissions round but will now add the stigma of disloyalty. Remember, there is a big difference between completing an MS program and leaving a PhD program early with an MS degree.</p>

<p>(2) The adcoms will look for a reason for your impending departure, and they will either find the bad one you provide or will contact your current faculty looking for a reason. There is nothing preventing them from doing so, and before gambling their time, money, and reputation on you they will want to know.</p>

<p>(3) If and when they contact your faculty, you will become persona non grata. Again, why waste resources on someone who does not even want to be there?</p>

<p>(4) Any school would consider you a risk - do you consider their school to the “top”, or are you going to leave there after a year or two trying to inch higher up the food chain? A top-10 PhD program is a big deal, and throwing it away for something slightly better is worrisome.</p>

<p>(5) When you are applying for professorships, you will STILL have a stigma of disloyalty. The academic community is very small (especially in a given specialty) and you will be surprised how much people remember about you.</p>

<p>No one here has any stake in your decision. Regardless, if you do this, please let us know how it turns out - if we hear nothing we are apt to assume things went bad for you.</p>

15

<p>

Make that 9.</p>

16

<p>Alright thanks to everyone for their comments. Inasmuch as I don’t want to turn this forum into a topic on my personal preferences/goals I think clarifying further in detail why I am doing this may help me get some feedback/aid from you on how to best showcase my reasons for re-applying. I think enough has been said on prestigious vs. other top schools so unless someone wants to start a whole new forum on faculty jobs I have no further comments.</p>

<p>Better faculty opportunities for elitist graduates was the last of a series of reasons that made me want to do this (I never expected it to create so many question marks otherwise I would have included the following as well). However, if it was not for it, I would have definitely stayed in my current school, finished the PhD quickly and then looked into good postdoc positions (altho these days top-notch postdoc positions are getting ever more competitive). Following are the other reasons that may help some of you also understand why I am less worried than you expect about the LORs and disloyal reputation in academic community. </p>

<p>1) I believe my chances of getting a top-notch PhD is quite low.
My research is totally off the main-stream of my group, and by off mainstream I mean nobody even understands what I am talking about when I am presenting, least of all my advisor. Why? It was a shot in the dark by my advisor to secure funding in bio/health care directions. Why would he do that if he doesn’t know ***** about it? Because all he cares about is to get more and more funding and expanding the group to a center by any means possible. Though his attempt might be justified given the $-oriented academic community, it obviously hurt my PhD. I was able to develop the work on my won and publish without his help/guidance, still, it is clear to me that working alone without good advice/guidance tho 24/7 has almost no chance of becoming “wow” research. So yes, my advisor is not at most of the conf.'s I go to, when I got the internship they didn’t know my advisor, didn’t even ask for his recommendation. Basically nobody knows him in my field, actually now I can say more people know ME than HIM in the very board field that I publish in. Why can’t I quit the group, switch advisors, go work for a while then apply? F1 visa and an advisor who knows how to exploit it.</p>

<p>2) My chances at getting a top postdoc position will be low.
PhDs from our group with 10 first author journal papers during 7 years of PhD work (yeah the advisor rides them like …) end up doing two more years of post-doc at the same group and then on average join less famous/accredited groups in their field. Why? Advisor never helps and makes them switch research (as his fundings dry up) during PhD once or twice so they don’t have a strong focus. As you can see I am not the kind of guy who thinks he will be different when his turn comes. I look at what’s happening on average to my peers and plan accordingly.</p>

<p>3) This could be the last chance to save my PhD.
I am working in the R&D of a good company and I have done more in six months than the whole 2 years back in my school. Why? I work in a team directed by someone who knows the research we do. Who? the CTO of the company, who gives talks at Cal and Stan every year, who knows ***** load of profs in the field, and has top academia track record. Is he happy with me? He had a open job offer for me 2 months into the internship. Will he recommend me? u bet. Does it carry weight? More than my advisor? Let’s just say he employs Stan/Cal PhDs in the company by talking to the Profs. Which profs? same that will be reviewing my application. Will they contact him or my advisor? I would say most likely him. After all he is my real CURRENT ADVISOR.</p>

<p>4) I don’t mind starting over, actually I like it. I think the ability to let go of old/saturated fields and starting new ones is a key to success as a faculty. So yes I am ready to waste four more years on a PhD. I look at it as saving on my postdoc years. Is it worth it? For me yes I will have a way better shot at becoming faculty in the top 4 itself. </p>

<p>5) I have seen many students from my undergrad school who have done this. And yes most of them ended up in Stan (but i can direct you to the ones in Cal as well). What do they think? They think they would do it again if they had to as I am sure you can guess. Is it just the prestige for them? No, the people the work with, more exposure, better collaborations, and more options when they graduate.</p>

<p>Having said all of that, none of it will be on my SoP. Actually, I bet if I hadn’t mentioned I am ditching my PhD for good schools in the initial post nobody would have pointed it out as a weak point. That is why my reason for applying would be doing a PhD at a school with a very strong program on my field after an MS and some work experience. But I agree that the missing link would be a recom from my advisor, and given what I described about my recommenders and my advisors reputation, I believe it is worth risking it. I have already emailed some of these profs and even got one reply from a Stan prof. As of today, none have contacted my advisor. </p>

<p>Haha, now what’s the worst worst worst that could happen?</p>

<p>They contact my advisor, he puts in bad word, I am rejected, and my advisor is so ****ed he decides to let me go. Will they announce it on the billboard of US academia? I don’t think so. What am I gonna do? Stay enrolled at my school and switch advisors or just get an MS join this company publish and network my way to a UC. Honestly I don’t think I can have a better future with a PhD from my school. No offense but I would rather be a researcher in Lawrence Berkeley than a faculty in purdue. Can’t stand the boonies.</p>

<p>Cosmicfish, from people I have come to know in academia, I don’t share your standpoint towards permanent disloyal stigma in academia. And again, I will not put prestige as the reason I wish to join their school. Meanwhile, I can direct you to a friend’s resume at the time of application to Stan, where he clearly uses MS/PhD in his education that was in a way lower ranked school. He’s in stan now, full fund. So though I won’t do the same, I don’t think leaving PhD early to join a better school is that much frowned upon. And yes you are right, I want to have a good shot at faculty positions in top schools and their asst. profs are more or less from the elitists.</p>

<p>Having said all of that, opinions in this forum do have stake in my decision. The only case mentioned was one where a prof in the admcom knew the advisor which I think in my case is pretty much not likely (actually I am avoiding harvard/caltech because that’s where my advisor has his circle). Does anyone know of a similar thing? Non-recommenders being contacted? To my knowledge it’s not very common in stan/cal. Lower ranked schools where admission is same as RAships yes. Keep in mind this is how my resume/biosketch will be,</p>

<p>2010-present xx company research intern
2008-2010 MS with 4/4 on yy
….</p>

17

<p>Btw thanks for your stats. CMU one is CS and UCSF is top in bio (it’s a joint program with UCB). so that would make it 10/17 which is same as the 60% I mentioned. Now cross off the females (I hope you all know about the gender preferences in EE faculty positions) and the non-EE PhDs then you get a good idea of non-elites chances for joining UIUC’s EE dept.</p>

18

<p>Hello every body,</p>

<p>I am now studying at a university ranked below 40 at ECE in USA. My advisor left here suddenly. I am now at the 3rd semester of my PhD, but </p>

<p>1-I will get a master degree also until the end of the next semester.<br>
2- I have published 6 conference and 2 journal papers
3- I got the first rank in both my master and bachelor and my GPA has been 4 until now in PhD
4- I also will have LOR from my previous PhD advisor .</p>

<p>Could any body let me know whther I have any chance to be admitted in Stanford/MIT/Berkeley/UIUC?princeton or Cornell?</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

19

<p>This thread is a million years old. And also, no one knows for sure if you’ll be admitted or not. We’re not on the grad ad comm.</p>