Hi All,
I graduated Fall 2014 and got rejected for Fall 2015 PhD from Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA. It was my fault because I submitted all my applications last minute (some recommendations submitted after deadline). Same went for my GRE and I took it at 9 pm on a day I had three final exams (Obviously I didn’t do well).
I am planning to apply again for Fall 2016 and I wanted to know your opinion about my chances of getting into any of these top 4 schools.
Undergraduate :
University of Maryland, College Park
Major: Electrical Engineering
GPA : 3.9 (a B in DSP and a B+ in technical writing)
Research : Research assistant (nothing published)
letters of Recommendations from good professors (Haven’t seen the letters)
GRE : 167/147/4 (Q/V/A)
Status : domestic
Ever since graduation, I have been working at Visa in San Francisco as a Systems Analyst (Software Engineer).
This time, I have enough time to apply thoroughly and I’m also planning to retake the GRE very soon.
What do you think my chances are and what should I do? Should I email professors before I submit the application? (Last year I didn’t contact any professors)
Thanks in advance,
Kia
For a Ph.D. program, it is certainly worth contacting professors whose research you are interested in. Looking briefly at your stats, i would say you need to raise your verbal GRE score substantially to be competitive for the schools you mention. However, even if you do, remember that these three schools are highly selective and you will be competing with students of the same caliber as yourself (or even more accomplished). It is certainly possible you will be admitted but ifyour goal is to get a Ph.D., you need to hedge your bets and apply to at least one less-selective school where you will be sure to be admitted and where you would be happy to do your Ph.D.
In my opinion the verbal score is not critically important to engineering. So, if you can move V to 156+ it would be nice. although, even a 150 should be ok. I don’t think you should reapply to your schools, except perhaps UCLA unless there has been a substantial change in your research achievements. I don’t think improving your verbal GRE score will count. Your work experience at visa also seems more relevant to an MBA than a PhD program. So, I would make a fresh start and apply to different schools such as UC San Diego, UCSB and USC etc, if you want to stay on the west coast and earn a PhD.
This morning I retook the GRE and got a great score :
165/170/? for V/Q/A
How should I approach these schools now? Should I email professors? Should I just apply and then contact professors?
That’s good, however, I would tend to agree with @perazziman about reapplying. These programs are so selective that it is a long shot at best and if you have not been doing research in the past year, your application will not be much stronger. However, if you still have contact with your LOR writers at Maryland, you could ask them if they suggest reapplying and whether they would be willing to make a call or send an email to someone they know in one of those departments.
I think you should definitely reapply to UCLA and you might consider other UC schools if you want to stay in California. The bottom line is this. If you are determined to get a Ph.D. then you need to apply to some schools where there is more than a 10% chance of you being admitted. If you really only want a Ph.D. from one of these four, then the situation is different.
Thanks @xraymancs and @perazziman, but bare with me for a second 
Last week, right before I made this post, I had an appointment with a professor at Berkeley that I had chosen on my previous year application which apparently hadn’t even seen my application. He said “it’s a shame that system malfunctions like this”. He showed me my application and the three comments that the admission committee had made. One of them was very good and the other too were saying that my research purposes are sporadic. The professor also showed me GPAs of all the domestic admitted students into the program since he wanted to find out why I haven’t gotten the admission and I was right in the middle of GPAs ranging from 3.79 to 4.0 and a few URM’s with 3.4 and 3.5.
Anyways, he encouraged me to reapply and showed me around the lab and showed a general interest in me working there. He told me to send him my SOP before submitting for him to double check.
After all these good things, he told me that he’ll recommend me for admission but in the end it’s the committee that makes the final decision.
When I made this post, I shouldn’t have mentioned the fact that I had applied last year. I just wanted to know if you guys think my application would fall under the “strong application” title for these schools and has a chance to compete.
You see, the thing is that after all these rejections that I received, I have lost faith in myself and I’m starting to think that maybe I don’t have it in me. I posted here merely to find an answer to the latter question.
Thanks,
Kia
Well, if you already have been encouraged to apply, why ask here? If you don’t give us all the information, all that we can do is to figure the odds and the odds are never very good at the highly selective schools. In the absence of the information my advice is the same. Since you already have a contact who will recommend you then by all means apply again.