Getting into a decent grad school with less-than-stellar grades

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>I'm interested in getting a masters degree in the near future...But my grades aren't fantastic. I meet the "minimum" requirements (3.0 on a 4.0 scale) for my prospective schools, but we all know that means nothing ;) What do you all think I should do in this upcoming semester and summer so that I can be a mildly competitive applicant in the Fall? My current plans include an internship (at a prominent industry) and GRE studying.</p>

<p>Side question: how the hell do you ask Berkeley profs for recommendation letters? I think I can get two letters, but the third seems to be pretty hard to nail.</p>

<p>Specifics for those who care:
I think I'm approaching this very naively, but here's what's up: I will be done with my major (and then some) by Spring 2011, and if I can get into a masters program, I'd love to take that opportunity. The thing is, I'm a second year, and if I stay at Berkeley all 4 years, I'll have about 1.5-2 years worth of graduate study under my belt along with 2.5 years of research. However, at the end of the 4 years, I'll still be getting a bachelors degree! I'd like to change that to better reflect my accelerated academics. I'd really like to get into Berkeley's Five-year Masters Program for CS since it suites my academic and personal goals really well, but I honestly don't feel like I'm competitive enough to get into it. My goal by the time grad applications come around is to make UCI a safety. Also, I'm considering online programs like UIUC's, so if you have suggestions, I'd like to hear them.</p>

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<p>You mean you’ll have taken graduate coursework in the CS department as an undergrad?</p>

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<p>Meaning graduating early or enrolling in a BA/BS and MA/MS concurrently?</p>

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<p>When you refer to your “accelerated academics” do you mean simply that you’ve managed to cram the courses usually completed in 4 years into 2 or 3? Grades are the easiest and most direct way to gauge academic performance and ability. The speed at which programs are completed are rarely mentioned as anything other than a side-note, if at all. Even if you did manage to gain entry into a masters program and leave Berkeley with a Bachelors and Masters in 5 years, you are only ahead of the curve by one single year. More importantly, you will be entering an incredibly unreceptive job market with a low GPA and presumptively little sustained or meaningful research experience. </p>

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<p>Aiding them with research, forming a personal relationship outside of the classroom, attending office hours, distinguishing yourself from the other students as in possession of potential or genuine intellectual curiosity. </p>

<p>The key is to make the professor enthusiastic about *your *future–trust me, there’s a huge and meaningful difference between a “glowing” letter of recommendation and [insert student name here] prewritten stock LoR.</p>

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<p>My advice is to first slow down. Immediately start looking for undergraduate research positions with some professors you share an academic interest with. If there are no positions, go to your professors or GSI’s office hours and ask if there are any research projects they need help with. Tell them you’ll do anything, and accept anything no matter how small it may seem. After you’ve invested some time and presumptively proved yourself useful, ask for greater responsibility. Research experience and the perception that you will be an able and beneficial addition to the department is so incredibly vital to graduate admissions, I can hardly stress it enough. </p>

<p>Secondly, take as many graduate courses as you can while at Berkeley as an undergrad, graduate with a substantial amount of research experience, great letters of recommendations, an increased GPA, and a sizable amount graduate-level coursework under you belt. With this, you’ll be competitive for most graduate programs despite a less than stellar GPA. </p>

<p>quote]I think I’m approaching this very naively

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Not to be blunt, but yes you are. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, I only take the time to write this because (1) you’re a fellow CC veteran and (2) I think I can offer some important advice that, if heeded, could seriously improve your chances at graduate school and your professional prospects.</p>

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Yeap.</p>

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That’s the plan! From the handful of lectures I audited, I’m actually really looking forward to it, and it’s one of the things that discourages me from leaving Berkeley. I’m pretty sure I will enjoy my last two years at Berkeley phenomenally, but I feel like if you don’t have the degree to back up your knowledge, it means little as far as employers care. I mean, they’ll pay me an introductory salary and use me for all my knowledge, but I won’t see much mobility without a corresponding degree. </p>

<p>I’m pretty sure I’ll stick to my current research position for the next couple years if I stay at Berkeley, too. I’m just seeing where I can get the competitive edge against all other college graduates when I start looking for jobs, and I definitely think being in possession of a graduate degree will give me that edge. </p>

<p>Thanks for your response, Ektaylor. These are similar to my thoughts as well, but I’m struggling between picking whether to just give it a shot and potentially reap great benefits or to play it safe and focus on a strong undergraduate experience. It’s great hearing it from someone else though. However, I do have to disagree with you when you say “[grades] are the easiest and most direct way to gauge academic performance and ability.” I think grades are confounded by classroom politics, poor coordination, one-time screw ups that bite you in the ass, etc. I’m continuing to find out that personally, I demonstrate my knowledge and skills a lot better outside of the classroom than I do inside.</p>

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<p>Well, if you are aiming for CS grad school, while I think Ektaylor has given great advice, I should clarify one point – taking a bunch of advanced classes won’t help you that much. The advanced courses are often overspecialized, and you may be better off developing a close understanding of some things and doing research with a professor and getting to know him well. Research is really expected in CS admissions, and classes are not that important, aside from providing a base check. A 3.5+ GPA and very good research will probably get you into a good to great school.</p>

<p>Edit: I slightly take back the last statement. I don’t know what the baseline is. But I have heard a CS professor here say in as many words a 3.5 with great research beats a 4.0 without it immediately.</p>

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<p>You are correct, and CS tends to emphasize research more than class work. However, the top programs have applicants with all too perfect applications at times, and so you may have trouble without high grades, even if I agree they’re not the greatest measure, especially for a field like CS.</p>

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I don’t see a difference between the two things you mention, haha. Wouldn’t getting a close understanding of some things be the same as specializing? I did hear the same thing during a conversation at a career fair though…Industry apparently prefers well-rounded applicants out of college, but that’s only at the undergrad level. When I hear industry professionals talking to grad students, they’re very interested in the grad student’s particular field of study. </p>

<p>As for a 3.5…Unless we’re talking about upper div GPA, that would require some pretty hard work from me at this point. Damn, I suck. 3.5 is definitely far below the department average though. </p>

<p>A year of research and one summer internship is not that impressive when paired with a substandard GPA, huh? Is that the case even for a tier 3 graduate programs?</p>

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<p>Well it is a subtle point, but very important - if you take tons of advanced classes, you are likely not specializing. Advanced classes can suck a LOT of time to do well, and if you don’t narrow down, you won’t really give it the due. Keep in mind many advanced classes are geared to get you thinking about the right things assuming you’re already interested in the material they deal with, not to introduce you to the area. It simply doesn’t make sense to just dabble in a bunch – rather, it would make more sense to take a small number alongside perhaps a research project that deals with related material. Let the classes be taken with a purpose --therein is the specialization. </p>

<p>When I say the classes being overspecialized will not meet your needs, it means that doing the work for them is not useful in itself often because what’s presented in the courses may only make sense in context of huge concerted effort in a related field, where your inquiries may lead you to want to learn more and to a course some expert is teaching to point things out. Many of the more staple classes are more important to take, as they make you gain a skill that may be indispensable, and doing ALL the work for those may really be crucial, whereas doing all the work in overspecialized classes needn’t be useful, given they should be a supplement to your research interests anyway.</p>

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<p>Here are some of the hard facts I’ve heard:

  • an otherwise solid application (emphasis on LoRs) is usually good enough for the 5 yr bs/ms (avg gpa=~3.7), while students who get accepted to similar programs of the same level often have a 3.9+, at least for the in-major GPA. This is for PhD programs though - MS programs usually accept a bit lower GPA but there are also fewer spots. it is not GPA alone that gets people in to top schools.
  • some top schools pay very little attention to grades and test scores, but they do find positive correlation between who they consider to be top researchers and grades
  • grad classes are more important in that they enable your research as opposed to just being grad classes, so pick wisely. also grad classes, like undergrad classes, vary in difficulty despite all having the same unit count (cs162 wasn’t the same as 170 was it?)
  • you may not be able to get into the grad classes of your choice. undergrads are always waitlisted and depending on the class, the professor may let everyone in or (s)he may be selective
  • some grad schools don’t expect their applicants to have much research exp. so having any at all is a plus.
  • don’t worry about the GRE too much, I’ve heard >= 760 quant and even 550+ verbal is accepted at top schools</p>

<p>and my personal opinion: three years at Berkeley is not enough (I’m assuming you completed 61A/C as a freshman) to get a strong foundation. It’s enough to meet the graduation requirements and go work for google or whatever, sure. If you have a reason to get out of school asap and want the MS, by all means go ahead with your plan, but this is probably your one chance to take all these classes. </p>

<p>Regarding your comment on grades, I think that having consistently good grades is not only a measure of ability, but also a measure of being able to mitigate or overcome “one-time screwups” that we all have and being able to cope with unfortunate situations. for some students this can mean staying highly organized, for others it can mean aiming for an A+ and falling back on an A. Also, the fact that a GPA is an average helps smooth out one-time occurrences and shows achievement over the course of several years, so it’s yet another valuable piece of information that grad schools can use. On the flip side, an A in one class might be a lot harder to get than an A in the other class, and GPA alone doesn’t demonstrate that. My opinion is that you should take as much as you can while choosing classes that help with your research.</p>

<p>That last point is key, the GPA is only one piece of information they’ll use. So if you can get strong LoRs and have some novel research findings and get top internships/start a company, then GPA obviously doesn’t matter as much. But that’s not to say that grades don’t matter, because having all of those things plus a good GPA is of course better. What you can do is get some good research papers out there. Getting your name out is a good thing.</p>

<p>and I agree with Ektaylor

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<p>I kind of want to clarify some things in my post. I am more talking about “tier 1” programs since you mentioned UIUC and Berkeley (although I am not sure how people view 5yr BS/MS against Berkeley’s PhD program), and the expected numbers and research experience for those are relatively high.</p>

<p>My other point is that research focus is important, and if that is going to be the shining part of your application, you should make that clear. Take classes (both UD and grad) that are in your area of research, write papers, etc…</p>

<p>And I dunno how well this works but I imagine you could google for “<school> MS resume” and find the resumes of people at your target schools to get an idea of what they had done. creepy, but possibly effective!!</school></p>

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<p>The general theme seems to be “don’t leave Berkeley,” and I certainly understand that. There’s more opportunity here than very many other places. However, going to graduate school would mean that I’m still pursuing academics. Three years at Berkeley may not be a complete foundation, but three years at Berkeley and 1-2 years of graduate school will probably be a solid foundation. With that in mind, do you think there’s any benefit in having a masters from some place worse than Berkeley if I leave Berkeley early? I guess the two options I’m presenting, for all intensive purposes are the following:</p>

<p>Stay 4 years at Berkeley, take lots of grad courses, continue research (no true publication guarantee as of now, might change in a year), get to know professors well, get a bachelors</p>

<p>or</p>

<p>Graduate next Spring, go to UCI (or similar), do research, publish an actual thesis, get a masters</p>

<p>Which would be more appealing to big name employers?</p>

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<p>Inconnu, this is something both bsd and I have observed, and I’m pretty sure we’re correct. You make it sound a little like going to undergrad as opposed to a master’s program is incredibly different, when realistically you can get involved with projects at Berkeley itself, and good ones – it is Berkeley, after all. I don’t know what employers you’re specifically interested in, but I know of two individuals with positions at Google out of undergrad, and they both had lots of out of class work during undergrad, as in internships. For work straight out of undergrad, I would keep grades high enough, though. </p>

<p>For grad school, I think bsd again emphasized what I believe, which is that you should definitely have good grades (hopefully at least a 3.5), with more being better to an extent, but not at the detriment of research. At least, that’s what a professor at Berkeley said, one who appears to know our own CS admissions.</p>

<p>I honestly think you might as well stay at Berkeley, and perhaps get that 5 year master’s if you’re able to. And try for publication. Don’t overload classes, bsd said taking advanced classes is important to supplement research plans. Expect professors to be actively talking about research in those too – it just doesn’t make sense to take them for the sake of it. There may be the purely theoretical courses, but that’s probably not what you are aiming for.</p>

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<p>That part of bsd’s post you quoted stood out to me too, and I certainly agree. I had a four-year plan focusing on systems for quite some time, and this thought of pursuing a graduate degree is recent. Looks like I don’t need to give it much more thought. The general consensus seems to be that getting a strong undergrad experience is more beneficial than having a piece of paper that says I have a masters :slight_smile: That’s good to know…I don’t want to leave this place anyway. Thanks for the advice, all.</p>

<p>Edit: This thread actually has a ton of valuable advice regarding what to get out of your four years at Berkeley. Awesome.</p>

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<p>The only thing you’d lose by staying an extra year is a year of your time, but you’d be cutting out a significant fraction of your college education. The cost of university should not be a long-term problem for you because you’re in a good field where if you want to be average, you’ll pull in $65K after graduation, and it sounds like you don’t want to settle for average. Also, you may be able to petition to use your Berkeley background to skip out of classes at your grad school, saving you a semester or two.</p>

<p>It’s true that a company will probably not pay you more just because you know more, and of course that doesn’t feel fair. You’re going to have to look beyond that and decide why you’re doing that work in the first place. I am pretty sure that a large part of your choice to work in software is because you find it interesting, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. While money and fairness issues aren’t going to go away, your endeavors in CS will be a lot more enjoyable if your true motivation comes from an innate interest in the field. </p>

<p>I can’t find very good reasons for you to graduate a year early, while I can see many reasons for you to stay - especially because you like Berkeley. I think you’ll only increase your chances to get into the grad schools of your choice if you stay an extra year.</p>

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<p>Actually, losing time was my biggest concern as I was planning this. For what it’s worth, if anyone searches this topic in the future, I called UIUC and UCI. UICU basically said they consider 3.7 a threshold for admission, but if you have good research and good LoRs, you’re pretty much in. UCI was not as selective and asked me about my research and directed me towards professors who focus in similar fields. They encouraged me to apply whenever I’m comfortable with the prospect of grad school.</p>