Graduate School Admissions Chances and Outlook

Graduate School
1

Hello,

I am an undergraduate student at one of the larger public STEM schools of the Midwest. I wanted to share some stats with those who know about the graduate school application process or are graduate students themselves — really, anyone who can tell me my general odds at getting into a Tier 1 or 2 (Ivy League, approximately) grad program.

My stats are:

  • Triple major in Computer Science Honors, Mathematics Honors, Statistics Honors with a completed minor in Physics
  • A member of an Undergraduate research/internship group working on NLP for an eminent tech company.
  • Have not taken GRE, but will do so in the next year (I am a rising Junior). I had a 99th percentile ACT score and performed similarly on the SAT, so I am projecting — perhaps foolishly — a 95th+ percentile GRE score.
  • Will graduate at 20 years old
  • Working on a paper regarding a certain Data Structure’s operations’ runtime as a function of the input. I’m not sure if its publishable, but I expect to be working on other such things throughout my undergrad career and will ideally have something published upon graduation.
  • Don’t have any extra-curricular activities, really
  • Full ride student through State’s financial aid (low income household)

I would also like to add that I am seeking a grad program in Data Science or a closely related field (I may veer closer towards Analysis of Algorithms and some CS Theory at the point of graduation).

Thanks! I would appreciate any and all feedback.

2

Definitely should have mentioned this but I am not sure how to edit my posts:

  • I have a GPA of a 3.50.

Had a really bad semester my Freshman year due to mental health issues; been 3.7 or higher every other semester.

3

Looks good to me. With your triple majors (math+cs+stat), and projected 95th percentile in GRE and GRE subj- math, plus great recommendations, you should not have problem landing top data science/analytics MS programs (i.e., UCB, CMU, Stanford, UChicago, MIT, NCSU, Columbia, NYU, Georgia Tech, etc).

Good luck!

4

Note that 95th percentile in GRE Math Subj Test was somewhere between 900-920 out of possible 990 for the past 3 years or so. Subj test-math may not be required for some schools. If I recall correctly, 990 was only 92th percentile 18+ years ago.

5

As for GRE general test (quantitative part), 95th percentile means you have to get 169 out of 170.