<p>I was wondering how Electrical Engineering graduate schools particularly concentrating in Robotics and Automation would view an undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics? I just wanted to gauge how my chances would be. I have a 3.95 GPA with 1 REU, 1 published paper (REU) and 1 poster presentation. I am President of the E.Physics Club and will have very good letters. I expect to get around 170Q and 165V in the GRE (hopefully) based on practice tests if that has any value. My biggest weakness apart from my undergraduate degree would be that I come from a small LAC with nonexistent reputation outside of my state. Also I am on a F1 Visa and thus am ineligible for a host of federally funded grants and fellowships.<br>
Thanks</p>
<p>You should be able to get into a fine program with your GPA, if you get those GRE scores and with your experience. The university you are at right now won’t make any difference and the fact that your degree is in Engineering Physics will also be fine.</p>
<p>I’m surprised that you get an REU with an F1 visa though.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. It was a lot of work to obtain the REU. What helped at the end was they really wanted me and I volunteered to not get paid. I also had another concern that I don’t really know how to word. My LAC college has 4 credit system where each classes are 4 credits instead of 3. This means that i graduated with less number of distinct classes. I am not sure how this comes into play. </p>
<p>What else do you think Harvard EE PhD matriculants have that you don’t? It is true that they all have high grades, research experience, and many of them have a paper and/or a poster presentation if they come straight from undergrad. And high GRE scores to boot; you have all these ingredients and many matriculants at Purdue also have the very stuff Harvard Engineering looks for. OK, Harvard is a school that barely cracks the top-25 in electrical engineering (#24), but don’t let its Ivy League pedigree deter you. </p>
<p>There is one reason why Harvard came up in the first place: robotics. Don’t know whether automation is still under EE or at another Harvard Engineering department, but you said that you wanted to do robotics. Perhaps you really crossed Harvard off your list because they didn’t do what you wanted in a robotics graduate program, rather than thinking it is unreachable.</p>
<p>I apologize for the delayed response. I lost track of this thread. I just wanted to show my appreciation to Catria as I took your advice and just sent my application to Harvard. Their research actually aligns very well with mine. Barring UPenn, they are the best match. Also I realized that I would always regret not trying at least and trying in relation has little cost.
Additionally and perhaps more significantly my research when I was tailoring my letter to Harvard also raised the complexity of my understanding of the field and now I don’t even care if I don’t get accepted to any universities. I will just look for internships opportunities or whatever it takes to strengthen my experiences in the field and apply again at a future date. In short, my research for the past month has made my career choice resolute and I have nothing to fear. </p>
<p>I advise a lot of undergraduates in physics seeking to go to graduate school and I would urge you not to focus on one or two schools. Catria is correct that you can get in. I believe that she has done so and more power to her. However, a school might be the perfect fit for you and you certainly have the qualifications to be admitted but you have to realize that with highly selective programs, lots of highly qualified candidates don’t get in. This is just a numbers game. I can’t tell you how many times a student will come to me and say i didn’t get in anywhere and then I find out that they only applied to the “top 10” programs. I usually can help them by calling my friends in other universities who are more than happy to have such students but it is always a risk. </p>
<p>You need to have a strategic plan to avoid getting into this situation in case you don’t have a mentor who can help you out. What i recommend is the following.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Choose the programs which are your ideals and apply.</p></li>
<li><p>Since you probably have an idea of the specific research you are interested in at these programs, do a literature search for journal articles in that area and find researchers at other universities who are doing work that you could see yourself doing. (Google Scholar is your friend). This will help you identify the rest of the pool of potential schools you could apply to.</p></li>
<li><p>From this pool, select two or so which you think might not be as selective as your top choices and apply. You might want to make contact with faculty there and talk about their research.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>By doing this very simple thing you will ensure that you get into a program that you can thrive in. Maybe you will find that one of the other programs is an even better fit than Harvard. There are lots of outstanding researchers outside of the so-called “elite” programs and your advisor and the research you do is more important in finding a position after graduation than the name of the university on your diploma. </p>
<p>Thanks for the response. Harvard is just my top school; (actually Purdue is based on rankings). I expect getting admitted to be very hard in any of the top schools…Fortunately I have found 4 schools outside of top 30 in EE that have good research in the field of distributed multi-agent control systems and I am applying to them too. I would be happy to get into any of these schools just as much…
The only problem is most of the lower ranked schools seem to have a small research team in this specific area and I am just a bit skeptic if they have room for researchers with a slightly different background; i.e Eng Physics in my case. Big schools like Harvard and USC seem to have a big enough group and could use candidates with interdisciplinary background but smaller schools might just stick with strictly EE candidates especially for a direct Bachelor’s to PhD program. This is my major concern,</p>