Getting Into a Top Chemical Engineering PhD Program?

Graduate School
1

<p>Well I am only a junior, almost senior, right now at GaTech, and switched majors to ChemE a couple semester ago, so I'm just beginning my junior classes in those. However, I am very much wanting to go to graduate school in ChemE especially at a top program, such as CalTech, MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford. I'm pretty sure I can get into Tech's graduate program, so that would be a backup. </p>

<p>I have a 3.91 GPA, which I can hopefully keep up, and I've been doing research with a professor who is a CalTech Alumni for the past two semesters and will have my name on two papers pretty soon I believe (2nd author on one), and I hope to have at least one more paper done in the next 4 semesters, hopefully as 1st author. I haven't taken the GRE yet, but average 770Q 550V on practices. </p>

<p>My main problem is that I haven't really gotten to know any of my professors except for the one I am researching for. As a letter of recommendation can I use a post doc I researched with? He is moving to a National Lab in Japan soon to research. </p>

<p>I know the PhD programs at these schools are very competitive and hard to get into, and I still have a while to go before I need to apply even, but I was just wondering my chances as of now.</p>

2

<p>You should be competitive at top 10-ish level programs, but certainly no guarantees. It depends a lot though on what your rec writers say about you, so I would really focus on making sure you’re going to have strong recs. </p>

<p>I can say with my own experience though that getting into Caltech/Stanford is a total crapshoot. Stanford admitted 30 out of 300 applicants for ChemE last year, and most of those applicants were apparently “pretty good” (according to a prof I talked to who did admissions). Caltech should be a pretty similar situation. Good luck.</p>

3

<p>Nothing else to add to the above except: don’t use a postdoc as a reference.</p>

4

<p>Thanks a lot. Yeah that means I’m going to have to definitely start working on getting to know profs so I can get good recs.</p>