<p>3.66 GPA overall
3.94 CS GPA</p>
<p>163 quant, 162 verbal, 5 writing (planning to retake for higher quant score)</p>
<p>Internships at Harvard, MIT, NASA</p>
<p>Nontraditional student with a previous degree, before recent CS and Math double major.</p>
<p>I'm at a 2nd (?) tier cs grad school now, but would prefer to attend: Harvard, Caltech, Berkeley, UCLA</p>
<p>Do I have a shot? At Master's? At Phd? Or am I wasting my time and money applying...</p>
<p>You’ve got a shot, and that’s just about all anybody can tell you here. Apply and see where it goes. You’ll kick yourself forever if you don’t.</p>
<p>Yeah 
already kicking myself because I should have just taken the year off and spent the time putting together a good application… or else, just have gone to UCLA, since I was admitted there last year.</p>
<p>Your scores are fine, but they don’t carry much weight for a PhD program. Scores can keep you out, but they can’t get you in. What counts is your research experience and your letters of recommendations. What about those?</p>
<p>I have 2 good letters, I need to find a third person. I have some ideas but I’m not sure how good the letters will be, maybe after I ask, I’ll know. I don’t have any CS research experience, just the REUs at Harvard and MIT and the internship at NASA. None of the three were CS research, but I did get on a physics paper with the Harvard internship. I also wrote about 80 ACT math questions for a book, and in my first undergrad (I have two, one in art and the other a double major in CS and Math), I published in undergrad jounals: philosophy and biology papers…</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about Harvard’s or UCLAs CS PhD program, but without explicit research experience (and preferably recommendations talk about it) you won’t have a shot at Berkeley or Caltech. An exception may be if your recommenders explicitly talk about your “potential for research” in the field you want to get into.</p>
<p>Well, the REUs that I did at Harvard and MIT were “Research Experience for Undergraduates” designed to expose undergrads to research so… imo I have research experience … but I guess you’re saying since it wasn’t specifically CS research it won’t matter…</p>
<p>
No, I didn’t say that. Even if it’s not CS research it will still help you. The main point schools looks for is “research potential”, which is very similar across disciplines. Just make sure you have recommendations that back up your research experience.</p>
<p>That makes sense. Thanks for the tip.</p>
<p>And so… you think it’s worth a try…?</p>
<p>There is no harm in trying!</p>