Hello, College Confidential. I’m an international student currently finishing my MS in CS in my home country, and I was hoping to continue my education in the US. However, upon thinking some more about my credentials I decided that I had overestimated my abilities, so I would like your input on which schools I could send my applications to that would be right or safe for me.
I am looking for a PhD program in Computer Science. My interest in research is in Natural Language Processing (I’m writing my Master’s thesis on this topic right now), so I had looked up schools with NLP research. However, if a suitable school doesn’t have this as an option, I would be happy with Software Engineering as an alternative.
My country uses a different grading system from the US, so I don’t know exactly how to translate it into a GPA, but I roughly estimate it to be about 3.34, which is one of the weaker qualities of my application. I also don’t have any research experience besides what was involved in my Master’s and Bachelor’s thesis (I actually got top marks for my BA thesis, placing among the top of my year). I have positive recommendations from two professors I had worked with and studied under, and one from an assistant professor who is my research adviser.
My exam results are:
GRE:
V: 165 (95%)
Q: 163 (86%)
AW: 4.5 (80%)
TOEFL: 119
The schools I’ve applied to so far:
Brown University
Michigan University
John’s Hopkins University
University of Illinois, Chicago
University of Rochester
Stony Brook University
Rutgers University
University of Pittsburgh
I am not looking to get into a top-notch program, but would like to find a place that’s on my level. I would like to hear recommendations for schools that would be a good fit for me, and those that would be safe. I would also be willing to study in Canada, if there are viable options for grad schools there. Thank you in advance.
Your Masters GPA is quite low for a PhD candidate. In the US, PhD candidates typically have high undergraduate and graduate GPAs (close to 4.0)! Can you list your grades for all your graduate courses?
Do you mean University of Michigan? I agree that a 3.34 MS GPA is quite low; in the U.S., grade inflation in MS programs is pretty huge, so most people have MS GPAs of 3.5+. The bigger problem, though is that you don’t have any research experience beyond your theses. Even an undergraduate is expected to have some research experience, but a master’s student with no extracurricular research experience is not a competitive applicant. The question is - how do you know that you want a PhD if you haven’t done any research alongside your coursework?
Also, don’t settle for a secondary field of study. The whole point of a PhD is to go study something you are deeply, passionately interested in. So if a school doesn’t have a natural language processing area, then don’t apply there. Only apply to schools that have a research interest area you actually want.
What are your career goals?
I think that research experience that results in a BA thesis and an MS thesis is reasonable experience. Your GPA is a bit low for some of the schools you have applied to but you certainly have a good shot at UIC. Since you are interested in computational linguistics or similar fields, make sure you find a program that has thatas an option for research.
I’ve used a proper GPA calculator to recompute my GPA, and it turned out to be 3.39—and that’s without some of my coursework, so it’s likely to be higher than that at the end. The way higher education is set up in my country (Russia) is that we do not have majors or elective subjects, but a predetermined program of study. This means that my CS program was filled with various single-term humanities subjects like history or ecology. These were mandatory but shallow, and the various reports and presentations necessary for these courses always took up a significant amount of time from more important subjects. Many of my B’s are on these courses.
At the same time, the CS subjects in my university are characterized by extreme rigor and by demanding a great amount of effort from students. My university is considered one of the top (if not the best) CS and IT universities in my country, and my department in particular is notorious for its standards of education. We are also well-known internationally. I write this simply to say that getting a high GPA is not easy here, and even B’s from my university are regarded well by employers.
As for research experience, I’m afraid that doing research outside of thesis work is simply not a normal thing for my university. We consider ourselves more a school for engineers, with an emphasis on the practical side of computer science. Most students find work as software developers, and very few professors give any opportunities for student research. Whatever research opportunities we do have are reserved mostly for our PhD students (or rather, our equivalent). I do enjoy programming, and I hoped to work in industry instead of the sciences, but I believe that a degree from a US university would give me a lot more opportunities, not to mention the chance to further my education. This is why I would be equally happy with software engineering as an option for research. Of course, I understand the challenge of PhD research, and while I cannot boast to have too much experience, I would still like to try to do my best.