PhD at Stanford

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi folks,</p>

<pre><code> Do you have any idea about admission cirteria for PhD at EE, Stanford? What is the most important thing to them: grades, publications or GRE?
My Bachelors GPA is 3.7/4.0 (from Pakistan), Masters 3.56/4.5 (from South Korea). I might not be good at GPA but I have 2 research paper publications in International Journal and 3 in international conferences.
Do I have chances to get selected for EE, Stanford?
</code></pre>

<p>Thanks.
Imran Ali</p>

2

<p>your master GPA is not very competitive. But the papers are a big plus—are you the first author of those publications? it’s a big factor.</p>

3

<p>Once again I wish to remind that 3.65/4.5 from South Korea is probably not equal to 81% = 3.24 from United States. It might be better quantile-wise and it also might be worse, but without knowing the mean and SD of the grade distribution of the South Korean institute in question it is impossible to say how competitive the GPA is. I apologize if Mr.Zoo knew this, in which case I hope this post can still serve as a reminder for the future posters.</p>

4

<p>I am first author of both journal papers and one conference paper.
Main part of my question is “what is important factor in admission”.
First approach: In Australia, some universities rank students with certain criteria (for example, 60% grades, 20 reference letters, 20% publications etc.)
Second approach: The University of British Columbia follows an other approach: all the complete applications received until deadline are circulated in faculty members. Now some faculty members think grades are important, other value publications, some other look for high GRE scores etc. So if a faculty member is impressed by your application material, you are selected.
Does Stanford (and other top schools in USA) follow first approach or second?</p>

5

<p>This topic has been talked over and over again. This is probably the most authoritative answer to your question:
<a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>mavirta is right, 81% in other country is different from 81% here, but we dont know **how **different it is. It just gives me the feeling 81% is not a very competitive number. ----it could be a good number, just keep in mind Stanford is for best of the best, so all the standards are different here. Your papers are a huge plus, so if you can get good LoRs, go ahead apply you should have decent chance. (in terms of importance, I would say publication > LoR > grades)</p>