<p>Hi there, I am currently a humble freshman at a LAC majoring in ECE. After my Spring semester my GPA probably will stay around 3.75, with my writing classes consistently pulling my grades down. My school is not as challenging as it should be, I really don't know how it is going to effect admission. If time permits, I am probably going to do a Econ double. </p>
<p>Here are some questions I have yet to figure out:</p>
<p>What is a "cut off" for the most competitive programs such as Stanford and MIT?</p>
<p>Can you list some other factors besides GPA, and GRE that are crucial to the application process(like LOR and Research) and give me some advice to prepare myself to become a more competitive applicant (something that is in my ability to do)?</p>
<p>I am not 100% certain that I want to do grad school, let alone the field. But I want to keep my options open. It would be great if someone can post links to admission stats for the stop schools.</p>
<p>Grades and GRE’s will not do it alone. Nor will LORs. Nor ECs. Nor Research. Nor Projects. Nor being from a recognised school. Or even IQ… But may be, all-of-the-above, with a bit of luck, and asking the right person/school at the right time in the right field. finally, Sometimes it may help to be able to pay for it.</p>
<p>Based on my interview with adcoms, it’s your LoR (your “pedigree”) and research experience (publish vs no publish, thesis, etc etc). GPA and GRE are there to make the “cutoff” but LoR and research makes up more than 50% points for the decision.</p>
<p>Someone with 4.0 GPA and 750V/800Q/6AWA from top 5 public school, but doesn’t have good research experience and/or LoR from top prof,</p>
<p>Versus another person who has like 3.6 GPA, 600V/800Q/4 AWA from top 20, but got LoR from top prof in his field and 1 2nd author, 1 first author in, 1 thesis publication working with said top prof,</p>
<p>The 2nd person will have more chance to get in, because he showed he can handle grad school which is basically all about research (it’s research degree)</p>
<p>Of course GPA GRE can’t be too low either, like <3.2 and hope to get in top school (except if you get authorship in very high impact paper in line with nobel laureate winner paper)</p>
<p>I mean, grad school is not about “grades”, it’s how you deal with research</p>
<p>When I visited grad schools, all the grad students and even the professors told us that we shouldn’t try too hard in class because that’s not the important thing, it’d only distract you from doing research. Of course, you’d still have to maintain a 3.0 to stay in the school, but there’s no need anymore to get A’s in everything.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. Stumbling through profiles of many past successful applicants, many of which had research experience during the school year, I wonder how did they manage to fit it into their already busy schedule? In my school, there is no research offered that I have heard of during the school year. Where should I look for these kinds of oppotunities? I also noticed that our ece program, though rigorous and abet accredited, the math sequence stops at diff. eq. Is it necessary to take more math classes? If so, how deep into math should I go(for every extra math I take, I have to sacrifice an econ class)?</p>
<p>The required math curriculum at my school includes Calc III, Linear Algebra, ODE and PDE. That’s it. And I did very well in my results. My feeling is that you’ll learn more complex math in grad school as you need to–professors are always learning new things as the need arises, so why not grad students? That said, I’ve been told statistical mechanics is one of the most useful math classes you can take.</p>
<p>Actually I am worrying about getting in more so than being prepared at the moment. I feel that having less math classes under my sleeve would hamper my chance compare to most other students.</p>