<p>Hi all. I will start to apply to graduate schools this upcoming fall and I am having many doubts because of my low GPA. Do I even have a chance? What schools should I target?</p>
<h2>My "stats"</h2>
<p>School: University of Illinois (UIUC) </p>
<p>Major: Mechanical Engineering</p>
<p>Minor: Mathematics</p>
<p>GPA: 2.85/4.00 cumulative</p>
<p>Past 4 semester GPA's in chronological order: 3.25, 3.40, 3.21, 2.33</p>
<p>GRE: 730Q, 470V, 4.5 analytical (taken with extreme test anxiety, planning on taking again)</p>
<p>No documentable extracurricular activities. Actually I did Engineers w/o Borders for a little bit but then dropped it when I realized that 40+ undergraduate "engineers" working on a single project (without a solid plan) is pretty futile.</p>
<p>Experience: (1) Currently doing plasmonics research for a prof (i'm banking on him to get me in), and (2) being a technical assistant in another prof's private consulting business (did this for 1 full year) and (3) other than that i've never had a "professional" internship since they don't give internships for sub-3.0 students</p>
<p>Motivation for Grad School: I see the value in an advanced degree and i enjoy learning. Also, both my parents have phd's and I would look like even more of a failure (on top of bad grades) if i only had a bachelors. </p>
<h2>Research Interests: heat transfer, nano-optics/light-matter interactions/plasmonics, and nano-/micro-scale phenomena and processes</h2>
<p>Do I even have a chance of getting into a decent engineering grad school? when i say decent i'm talking lower half of "tier 1" schools (i.e. ranked 12 to 25 in US News) I see that a lot of them have a 3.0 GPA requirement and I've emailed a few places that say they only calculate the last 2 years of GPA. Anyhow, I bombed this past semester (i developed a sleep disorder and super bad test anxiety) with a 2.33 and am really getting worried about getting in to a grad program. </p>
<p>Which schools should I target? when i applied for undergrad programs i did the "blanket technique" where i applied to like 10 schools and see which ones accepted me. with 3 recommendations being hard enough to get already, i feel i would be asking too much of my recommenders if i had them send these letters to too many places. Do you guys know which engi schools are more likely to weigh recs and gre scores (which i know i can get an 800Q on) over GPAs? or Which schools are known to be more lenient with the GPA factor? </p>
<p>Are any of you guys out there in an engi grad program now and had sub-3.0 undergrad GPAs? </p>
<p>i'm looking for more than the "grad schools look at the entire package" type responses and also a little moral support :) thanks for your time guys!</p>