Chances of being admitted

Graduate School
1

<p>I posted this thread in a different part of the forum.</p>

<p>I need an honest appraisal of my chances of attending a Ph.D. programming in engineering at a "middle 50%" college. I currently have a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. I have applied to a several mid-range universities, and one or two upper-ranked universities, but I have so far been rejected from four (all in the mid-range category), and accepted from none.</p>

<p>I figure either I'm doing something wrong, or I'm having bad luck.</p>

<p>Right off the bat, my weak point is experience. It was very hard for me to get my foot into the door during undergraduate studies. Summer of my junior year, I applied to seven Undergraduate Research Programs, didn't get accepted at a single one, although people with worse qualifications did.</p>

<p>GRE: 800 Q/760 V/ 5.5 W</p>

<p>GPA: 3.51 (in major) - 3.22 (overall)
(Could have been higher, but I made some bad choices with choosing professors and was given grades in a few classes lower than what I deserved - but there's nothing I can do about it now)</p>

<p>Research: Senior Design (required), Foreign Exchange Program at National Taiwan University (#1 University in that country).</p>

<p>Relevant work: engineering tutor for two semesters, MATLAB teaching assistant, worked at a medical center at a large university for several months as a research assistant/programmer</p>

<p>Honors: Mechanical Engineering Honor Society, Dean's List, Evola Prize for Leadership from a campus organization (I don't know if the latter is important or not, but I wrote it anyways).</p>

<p>Ethnicity: I usually mark "other".</p>

2

<p>Dude,</p>

<p>You have a 1560 GRE score, which is 40 points shy of a perfect score. Your GPA is solid, and you have research; what are you worring about? And what are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to go into industry after your PhD or do you want to go into academia? If you want to go into industry after your PhD, literally any school will get you there. If you want to go into academia, stick to the large research universities. Just apply broadly and see what happens, and remember that the worst thing that can happen is that they say no. If you talk to anyone who has went through this process, they will tell you they heard “no” more than once during this time. My co-worker got her PhD from Penn, but she applied to 13 schools, and was rejected from by 11 which were not on the level of Penn. Just some food for thought.</p>

3

<p>When in doubt, apply to more schools.</p>

4

<p>I have a question. I should have mentioned above I have a few C’s on my transcript, but in my haste to write a post, I neglected to say so. Some of them were my fault. Sometimes I felt that the professor was being unreasonable.</p>

<p>For instance, there was a professor who gave 20% of the grade being “participation and effort”. This was a lecture class, not a lab. I had a 95% average without this grade (on the written coursework), and attended every class but one because I had to attend a funeral. The professor gave me a 3/20 on the so-called “participation and effort” on the account that since I did well, I obviously found the material easy, and if it was easy, I must have slacked off and taken the class for granted. He also tried to accuse me of cheating on the final because I did “too well” on it compared to others. The average in the class was a 64 (with the arbitrary grade added), I had an overall grade of 79. Still got a C because the professor claimed that the curve was only applied to those who didn’t do as well on the exams.</p>

<p>Should I go about explaining this? If so, how should I do it?</p>

5

<p>If you got C’s in Strengths, Fluids, Statics, Dynamics, any math classes or your tech electives then you should worry. If you got a C in pottery or creative writing then I wouldn’t think they would count that against you. I think they will look at your transcript as a whole, and judge it as such. They know what classes are critical to survival in graduate school, and they will be looking for those classes to see if you did well. About the experience thing, did you think of taking undergraduate research for credits? I took it for 5 credit hours, and got an A. It boosted my GPA, and gave me some needed experience.</p>

6

<p>The C I mentioned, in post #4 was in fluids. I knew the material, but as I said (in my opinion) the professor was being unreasonable. The others were in a core history class (shouldn’t matter), Engineering Economics, (required for graduation at my undergrad program), technical writing, and Heat and Mass transfer (which won’t be in my intended concentration). However, I later took compressible fluid mechanics, which was a graduate course, and got a B+. </p>

<p>I’ve already graduated, so I can’t take any more classes for credits. My current exchange program, however, an exchange program for post-baccalaureate students. I am effectively taking all the courses that any other full-time first year Master’s student would take here, while participating in research. I may have some published papers by the time I leave (May of 2012). My PI has also offered to recommend me for “official” admission (which would essentially involve him making phone calls and a lot of paperwork for me), but taking classes in a foreign language (and having to do the occasional recitation lecture) is killing me.</p>