<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I have two main questions to ask and then after that any advice is appreciated as well.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Does having a double-major that is completed in the normal 4 years help in applying for grad school at big name colleges?</p></li>
<li><p>Does grad school care about anything prior to the undergrad career? For instance, if my high school career isn't that extravagant, will it matter at all in the application process?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Background: I'm planning to apply for grad school at the big name Computer Science schools (MIT, CMU, UBC, Stanford). I am double-majoring in Computer Science and Information Assurance. My current GPA is 3.611, but this is due to my poor performance in my first year of college. My past year or two have been around 3.9 and getting better. By the time I graduate, I should have a GPA of 3.8 My first three or four semesters I was only taking 12 credit hours, but my last four will be 18 or more per semester. Currently, I don't have anything as far as clubs or organizations that I'm a part of, but I have a lot of work experience, should have decent LORs, I have technical certifications in my fields (does this matter?) and I'm planning to get a research opportunity or two before I begin applying for grad school. In addition to that, I will also have somewhere around a Q730-770/V350-500 on the GRE (based on what others in my classes have gotten and their competence compared to mine).</p>
<p>(nonessential question) What are my chances at places like MIT, UCB, CMU, or Stanford?</p>
<p>Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>1.) a double major can help if its relevant to your field. for example if a person is going into mathematical psychology graduate school and they are a math/psych double major. just having another major for the hell of it probably won’t matter much</p>
<ol>
<li>luckily and rightfully so grad schools do not care AT ALL about pre college stuff. i almost failed 10th grade and had a C average, but grad schools i applied to will never know or care. </li>
</ol>
<p>a couple problems with your post: </p>
<p>you said your looking to get a research experience or two before applying. you are applying to super competitive programs where the successful applicant will have TONS of research experience and probably some publications. that’s a major disadvantage. </p>
<p>also, it is unwise to compare competency in schoolwork to the GRE. since your a CS major, you should probably do okay on the math part (but for the schools your applying to you’ll prob need a 780+) but you will also need a solid verbal since those schools are so competitive. don’t just assume you’ll do fine on the GRE because you got the same grade as someone who did well. </p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>Agreed on the GRE thing. I actually wound up doing considerably better than a number of my friends with similar or higher GPAs.</p>
<p>(We all wound up getting into top 10 grad schools, so it didn’t matter at all in the end.)</p>
<p>Don’t worry about “clubs and organizations.” Grad schools couldn’t care less.</p>
<p>Thanks for the great feedback everyone!</p>
<p>I know that I’m behind the game as far as research goes. I’ve been working in the field to put myself through undergrad and never thought about doing research until I started thinking about grad school. I’m planning to graduate in May 2012, so hopefully I’ll have enough time to get a bunch of research in.</p>
<p>@polarscribe, good to know because I really hate signing up for stuff like that just to put it on a resume.</p>
<p>@GRE, I know what you mean when you say to not compare apples and oranges, but I’m pretty confident. I’ve been around my classmates a while, we’ve compared ACT scores, grades, and I’m usually helping them with coursework. In addition to that, they barely studied for the GRE and I’m planning to study like my life depends on it. I’m confident that I can get those scores.</p>
<p>Going back to research opportunities, does anyone have suggestions about how to go about getting published? How long does it usually take? What all is involved in University research programs? (I’ve already talked with a bunch of professors, so I’m already trying for them.)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Not necessarily; it depends on whether the other major is relevant to your degree program. A psychology hopeful who double-majored in psych and mathematics, or psych and statistics, would have better chances of admission. But a second major in art history wouldn’t necessarily help.</p></li>
<li><p>No. Unless you are some kind of kid genius and published a paper in Science when you were 10.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As far as getting published, it requires a research program that is likely to yield significant results that contribute something to the scientific community.</p>
<p>Generally speaking as an undergrad it’s difficult to get published. This is because you have to work on a project long enough to make a significant contribution, and that’s hard for two reasons 1) you are only in undergrad so long and 2) often undergrads don’t yet have the skills to make a significant contribution to the execution of a project and the writing of a scholarly article.</p>
<p>Assuming that you have both of these, the time is variable. If you are talking for time to publication from the moment you start writing (assuming you have results already), it can take a year or more and it really depends on how quickly you write, how often your writing team meets together, how quickly the editors of the paper get back to you with their comments and how fast you can turn around the revisions. Even after you submit a paper, it may be 6 months before you get a ‘yes’ for it to be published. Actually getting to submission takes some time.</p>
<p>And that’s ALL barring the part where you have to collect the data. In my field that can take several months to a whole year, because I do longitudinal data analysis with people and we have to get people to take the surveys we design. (And that’s ignoring the survey design part…which can take a long time in itself…) The analysis itself can take several months especially if you are working collaboratively.</p>
<p>Assuming that you are currently a sophomore and you have not yet started a research opportunity, I would say that it is unlikely you will get a publication actually published before you begin your grad school applications in a year and a half.</p>