<p>EE student from a top 20 nationally ranked undergraduate engineering program.</p>
<p>GPA: 3.0
Major GPA: 3.21</p>
<p>I did bad during my first 2 years, but during my 3rd year, I averaged a 3.58 GPA.</p>
<p>I have 1 year of research experience at two different labs. In one lab, I have made contributions (no publication) and in the other I just started so I'm doing relatively "unimportant" stuff (meaning, I am not a valuable asset to the research group yet i.e. I am generally doign busywork).</p>
<p>I have 3 decent LORs.</p>
<p>I am applying for M.S. EE Communications at:</p>
<p>UC Davis
UC SD
UC Riverside
USC</p>
<p>What are my chances? Are there other schools I can apply to?</p>
<p>I reside in CA but I am willing to relocate.</p>
<p>We really need a sticky that “chances” threads for graduate school usually get ignored. Nobody here sits on a gradcom, and therefore nobody is going to pretend to know what “chance” you have of being accepted at any given school.</p>
<p>I sit on grad admissions for my department most years, but I tend not to reply to these posts even when they are in my field because candidates don’t have access to one of the two key pieces of info - the content and tone of recommendation letters - and can’t give me enough information to evaluate the other - the research statement - adequately in a post here.</p>
<p>I understand that there isn’t enough information to fully evaluate my chances because it would be difficult to post my complete bio and recommendation letters here.</p>
<p>That’s why I was asking about general chances (I will take them with a grain of salt). By decent LORs I mean generic ones (like "student was a good researcher, performed good in class, etc.) and the research experience (in fields unrelated to my intended field of interest) is a little lacking. Obviously my GPA is another bottleneck factor and my GRE scores were Q: 750-800 and V: 540-640 (or something like that, can’t remember exactly).</p>
<p>So, given these things, I thought I would have chances at the schools I listed above. So based on what little you know, if you had to give some chances for what it’s worth, (I don’t expect you guys to be 100% correct) can you tell me where I stand? Or, even other schools I can consider applying to along with these ones?</p>
<p>Also, since my junior year GPA is better than my overall, will that help my case in admissions? Or will they be overlook my application because of my low overall GPA?</p>
<p>You have a 43.8% chance of being accepted at UC Davis, plus or minus 6.34%.</p>
<p>You have a 12.3% chance of being accepted at USC, plus or minus 7.23%.</p>
<p>OK, snark aside… no, nobody here knows what your chances are. We can give you random numbers pulled out of our asses, but I’m not sure why you’d want them. Graduate admissions are highly selective <em>and</em> highly qualitative - how you “fit” into a given program’s needs this cycle is probably the single most important factor, and none of us have a clue about that.</p>
<p>Yes, your junior year GPA being higher will be looked at favorably.</p>
<p>The threads for undergraduate “chances” are steaming piles of ********, and graduate students/potential graduate students should know why. They’re full of uninformed high school students making blind guesses and telling each other what they want to hear.</p>
<p>What you need to do is make contact with professors in the programs you’re interested in. They can give you accurate information about what their program is looking for in graduate applicants.</p>
<p>Generic LoRs are not decent. They are bad. You don’t want a generic letter of recommendation; you want a strong, excellent, glowing one.</p>
<p>There are no such things as general chances. Graduate admissions are subjective; even if you were able to display your entire application here we couldn’t tell you, because they are sometimes based on factors outside your control. Maybe one of the graduate professors knows one of your recommenders and calls them up on the phone. Maybe all the other applicants are better than you this year, much better.</p>
<p>Other schools you can apply to are going to be based upon your interests, potential faculty members there, your funding needs, and your geographical constraints. If you are still in undergrad, talk to your professors and ask them for advice about programs they think you are competitive for.</p>
<p>I’m glad someone (polarscribe) agrees with me about undergraduate chance threads - those are pretty pointless too. But graduate level ones are REALLY pointless.</p>
<p>Ok so this chance thread is pretty pointless. I was just looking for validation for the schools I applied to and other similar ones (since I knew I wouldn’t have a high chance at top tier ones like Stanford, MIT, etc.), but it seems like even that is too subjective.</p>
<p>So, let me ask you guys another question. Since I am applying for a MS in EE, when I write my SOP,</p>
<p>1) Should I explain my low GPA and point out my higher junior year one/improvement?
2) Should I identify professors in my interested field of study even if I am only applying for a Masters (and what if its a Masters w/o thesis, i.e. classes)?</p>
<p>1) My GPA was similar to yours, where I got 2.5 on 1st 2 years and 3.8 last 2 years. Advice from adcom when I was making my SoP:
You should explain GPA, but don’t dawdle too much on the bad part, but highlight the good part.
Too much highlight on bad: "I’ve got this bad GPA before junior year. It’s because of x, y, and z. X was blah. Y was also blah blah. Z was even more blah. So X and Y combined caused my ****ty GPA but when I got Z there is even lower GPA. It’s not my fault though, because X Y and Z is not something I can control. X Y and Z are the fault of this professor that causes me to have crushed emotional state for the whole 2 years. -5 more sentence of more explanation of XYZ-. "
^This is bad, makes you look like you’re whining.</p>
<p>But like this, 2-3 sentences
“Oh, I struggled during freshman. But I’m totally over that and this is what I’ve learned:XYZ I’ve consistently doing what I’ve learned which reflected on my newer (awesome) GPA.”</p>
<p>Just in case, the sentences above is the >>idea<<, not the exact word by word what you should write (I think you know this, but just in case XD )</p>
<p>OK. I will definitely focus on the positives and not dwell on my past failings. So the only two other questions I have are:</p>
<p>1) Should I identify professors in my interested field of study even if I am only applying for a Masters (and what if its a Masters w/o thesis, i.e. classes)? And if I don’t identify professors, then how do I explain why I am applying to that specific school? It seems kind of cheesy or bad to say because “School X has a great Y program. I am sure I can learn a lot from one of the best schools in the nation.”</p>
<p>2) When writing my SOP for Masters I assume I’m going to have to explain at some point why I chose communications and what in communications exactly that I want to study. What type of responses are they generally looking for? I ask this because I am trying to get a Masters for better career opportunities (should I mention this?) and I am studying communications because I think its a great field to get into now and in the future since pretty much everything relies on it. I know that if I was a PhD student, they might expect more, like my passion for communications and not about my career, etc. So should I talk about it from the aspect that it will benefit my employment or try to find a reason why I am passionate about the subject from an academic point of view?</p>
<p>So I finished writing my 1st draft of SoP. It is about 700 words which comes out to 1 page with size 11 font, 1.5 spacing. I couldn’t really find specific guidelines for the SoP on grad admissions pages for the schools I am applying to so I wanted to know if the length of my SoP is adequate or if I need to write more/less.</p>