<p>If I have 2.65 GPA at a prestigious university do I have a chance to be accepted into PhD program of no name university?</p>
<p>Maybe, but why would you bother with a PhD from a no-name university? You probably wouldn’t get much funding, and the degree itself wouldn’t be worth much.</p>
<p>The odds are against you; do you have research and an area of specific study? Do you see yourself stressing and working on this one area for 5-6 years?</p>
<p>Could there be a good chance that there is no stipend?</p>
<p>Is there any way you can transfer to a good PhD program from a bad one?</p>
<p>transfer? lol. That probably never happens in grad schools.</p>
<p>You’d get paid for TAing, if you were lucky enough to get a position, but that would probably be about it. And as Orbit196 said, transferring is very rare, so I’d recommend forgetting about it altogether. Can you do a master’s first, then do a PhD?</p>
<p>Back in May, it was a low gpa at a no-name school-?
Every few months, you ask a version of the same question. </p>
<p>What’s the real story here? The first people you should be asking are your current profs. Either they endorse your grad school dreams or you should head in another direction. </p>
<p>Even if some low program admitted you, the chances they’d have any money at all for you are slim. They wouldn’t be a low level program if they had the funds to attract great scholars or researchers, in the first place. Even if Brand X university gave you a TA job, it would be meaningless to the people outside. An MA from a low school won’t get you into a better program for the PhD.</p>
<p>What IS your field?</p>
<p>Honestly, if you couldn’t do undergraduate work there’s no way you will make it through the classes, quals, committee politics, dissertation writing. and defense.</p>
<p>“Can you do a master’s first, then do a PhD?”</p>
<p>Could I get into a Master at a good university with a bad GPA in another good university?</p>
<p>Almost certainly not; you’ll need to start low there, too. At least you can aim for a decent (but likely not great) university for a PhD after, if you excel during your master’s.</p>
<p>How do you excel at your Masters? Besides getting good GPA this time of course.</p>
<p>Get as close to perfect as you can for GPA, get as much (innovative) research experience in as you can, and get great professor recommendations. Show you have a passion for the subject by making it your number one priority.</p>
<p>If you have a strong gpa in your UG major, you can sometimes get into some grad program. But, for the sorts of questions you have been asking, all along, it seems like you do not, nor that you have a great relationship with the profs who need to recommend you.</p>
<p>Grad school is not the UG buffet, where you sample classes, maybe move into a upper level class in some topics. It’s not about going to class, seeing what you take from it. Grad school in humanities is about a specialty focus. If you don’t have a focus in which you have purposefully and unquestionably excelled so far, you lose your attraction to the speciality profs in the grad program who seek to pick excellent new admits to mentor. Their own reps can be greatly affected by their quality of their grad students.</p>
<p>Unlike some experiences, this one is not about indulging yourself. </p>
<p>What smart people with low records do is get field experience- a job that requires relevant research and analytical skills, take on focused independent research, etc, then apply in a few years.</p>
<p>First of all, probably not. Even lower-tier universities will probably want a PhD candidate to have at least a 3.0, or even at least a 2.8+.</p>
<p>Second of all…you don’t want to go to a no-name university for your PhD. You will have very small chances of getting a job in the field.</p>
<p>Sorry for hijacking the threat OP.</p>
<p>I’m have the same problem as the OP. I’m trying to improve my GPA and get good test scores on the GRE.</p>
<p>How do you obtain relevant research experience if you have a low GPA and employers won’t take you? Could you obtain somewhat relevant work experience and apply to graduate school that way? Would that improve your chances?</p>
<p>Do you recommend getting a second bachelors or community college to get a better GPA for graduate school?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Getting a bunch of As in lower-division classes after you finish your bachelor’s degree won’t exactly do much to convince gradcoms that you’re ready for graduate work… so, no. It’s not like you just list your GPA on a sheet - you’re required to submit transcripts from every institution attended. Gradcoms will easily see that your GPA has been inflated.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Relevant work experience will help. So will distance from your modest academic performance - the longer the track record of quality work/research you have between graduation and application, the less weight applied to GPA.</p>
<p>"First of all, probably not. Even lower-tier universities will probably want a PhD candidate to have at least a 3.0, or even at least a 2.8+.</p>
<p>Second of all you don’t want to go to a no-name university for your PhD. You will have very small chances of getting a job in the field."</p>
<p>1.Would it be better to raise your GPA to 2.8 from 2.65 by attending school for one more semester? Or would it be better to go to a low Masters program then excel to have a chance at high PhD?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you go to low PhD but then get out with a Masters can you use that to go to a high PhD? (I heard some people don’t complete the PhD but get a Masters out of it, so essentially getting the Masters without paying for it like you normally have to)</p></li>
<li><p>I’ve seen some people working on their PhD (PhD candidate) but don’t live at campus and have a job somewhere else. How can you do this? I guess one disadvantage pointed out at PhD track is that you don’t earn much money, but if you can have a job and not live on campus then I guess it’s something I would like to do.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
I heard that even if your MA is low ranked, as long as your research is good enough at that MA you might have a chance at a good PhD program. Is that wrong?</p>
<p>PhD PIs want some one who will do solid research. Can you live & work near a solid mid-range master’s level university, volunteer with a professor in your area of interest, get his/her endorsement. This might allow you a probationary admission to a masters, even with your sub 3.0 GPA.</p>
<p>You would then need to prove yourself. Maybe you had a bad time in your freshman year so your GPA is bad? Maybe you had some sort of problem which distracted you and caused poor attendance and poor grades? The big question is WHY is your GPA low? And more importantly, have you fixed that?</p>
<p>If you can get into a solid mid-range Masters, then you have to ace the entire thing, all As, great teaching (if the campus allows/requires that), great research, great connections with your professors. Make them love you. THEN apply to PhD programs.</p>
<p>Simply put, you screwed up in undergrad, now prove you have fixed that problem, prove through a two year masters that you are stable and solid in this “new you,” prove that you are worth the risk to a PhD prof. He/she would be spending their funding money on you, they need to know you are not a waste of money and time.</p>
<p>somemom, thank you very much. “Can you live & work near a solid mid-range master’s level university, volunteer with a professor in your area of interest, get his/her endorsement. This might allow you a probationary admission to a masters, even with your sub 3.0 GPA.” This seems like a good idea.</p>