Chance me for MIT EECS PhD Program

Chance Me / Match Me!
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I am thinking about applying to graduate school in the next year or so and I wanted to get some perspective on how competitive I am as a candidate and also ask for advice on what I could work on to strengthen my application in the meantime. I am interested in image processing and computer vision, but might like to focus a bit more on the applied math and signal processing component of the field.

I graduated from Brown with an ScB in neuroscience with a GPA of approximately 3.7 (Brown does not calculate GPA so this is an estimate assuming an A is a 4. Brown also does not give pluses or minuses…)

Relevant Course Work: I was a neuro major so my required coursework was essentially the standard pre-med track (2 semsters bio, 2 semesters chem, 2 semesters physics, 2 semesters calc, plus a bunch of mid level and advanced neuroscience courses.) Outside of my major, I focused on math and computer science. Math: calc3, linear alg., stats, 2 semesters number theory, differential equations. CS: Intro track, intro computer vision, graduate seminar in computer vision, programming language theory, autonomous robotics.

Research: I worked in a biological computer vision lab for 3 years. In that time, I gave a conference talk at VSS and was the primary author of one paper in a peer reviewed computational neuroscience journal.

Teaching: I held 5 teaching assistant jobs (2 object oriented programming, 2 algorithms, 1 computational vision.) One of my TA jobs was a head TA job for Brown’s intro algorithms course, meaning I ran the course and a TA staff of 23 students.
Letters:

Letters: I definitely have 2 very strong letters and am still deciding on the third. I have a few more professors with whom I have worked closely, but none of them have worked with me in a research context. I am currently on a research team at Google and am hoping my team lead will be able to write me a letter after another year of working with him.

As mentioned above, I am currently working as a software engineer at Google. I am on a research oriented team that does video compression so all of my work is heavy on image processing and signal processing techniques and would be relevant to the field I’d like to pursue in grad school.

I’m posting this about MIT but honestly I’m waiting a year or two before applying because I am still researching different programs and professors, and my preference of school is subject to change. I am mainly interested in my chances at a program of this caliber, even if it is not as well known as MIT.

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@smparker , you’ll get better responses if you post this in the graduate school forum on CC. You’ve posted in college chances.

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A bit more additional information would be helpful. How long ago did you graduate? Have you taken the GRE yet?

I take it you are primarily interested in CS because of your elective courses and your current work. You might be missing some foundational courses in CS so that will be a small negative. On the other hand you have been working as a Software Engineer so you have plenty of practical experience.

I would say that your GPA is good enough to merit consideration and your work experience is strong. The question is your GRE scores because I think your research experience will be fine.

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@RenaissanceMom Thank you, I didn’t even realize. I’ll do that!

@xraymancs Thank you for your response. I graduated this past year (May 2015.) I have not yet taken the GRE because I don’t plan on applying for another year or 2. I am interested in CS and applied math. In terms of foundational classes, it is true that I have some gaps but not too many. The biggest one is a lack of any low level/systems programming; however, my current work is all in C and so I’m learning a lot of the low level stuff that I missed as an undergrad. Do you think it would help to take some CS classes at Stanford? Google pays 2/3 of the cost for academic courses.