I’m a freshman at Virginia Tech, and yes, I know it’s way too early for me to be worried about graduate school, but I’m just a tad curious.
As of right now, I’m pursing two degrees in Statistics and Computational Modeling and Data Analytics (CMDA). I’m leaning towards pursuing a graduate degree in Data Science. My top 3 choices as of right now are Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington. I got a 4.0 GPA last semester but I feel like the chances of me achieving that again, especially this semester are extremely low. I know I have at least six semesters left of classes to take after this one, but I just wanted to know if a GPA around 3.0-3.6 this semester is digging a hole for myself in regards of getting into one of my top 3 Graduate programs. I’m also really interested in doing Undergraduate Research while I’m here at Virginia Tech if that’s of any importance.
If you want to go to graduate school, you should spend more time on research and less collecting two Bachelors degrees. Graduate programs don’t really care if you have two degrees or not and if you can lighten the course load and give yourself time to do significant research, it will be all to the better.
Ah so I had 30 credits coming into college and I thought I could just take a normal amount of credits per semester and get two degrees, but you’re suggesting I take less and do more research in order to increase my chances?
Look at it this way. You only want to take 4 years in any case so if the two degrees take an extra year, why bother? I am speaking as someone who got two B.S. degrees but the alternative was graduating in 3 years and I was not ready for graduate school at that time. Instead, I finished my physics degree and then took a chemistry degree, including a number of graduate courses and finished the entire thing in 4 years.
Second, look at it from the perspective of a graduate admissions committee. Two degrees are not as impressive as a lot of research and elective graduate courses in the area of study you are applying for. This is not to say that you should not do it if you really feel strongly about it. I know a number of successful students whom I advised who did this but it was not the second degree that was the most important for getting into graduate school. In fact, I remember hearing the comment form a faculty member at another university who was considering this student for a Ph.D. in physics and called me up to say: “If he is so interested in a Ph.D. in Physics why did he spend an extra year getting an Aerospace Engineering degree?” I guess my answer was convincing because the student got in and finished his Ph.D.
This makes a lot of sense then. What about double majoring? Statistics is my current major, and I’m taking a computer science class not required for Stats but for CMDA. I’m not doing well in the class at all, and I’m considering dropping it and just focusing on my Statistics major right now. I just thought since CMDA had more Big Data implications, it would look better than just Statistics alone.
First, 3.0 to 3.6 is a very large range. A 3.0 is quite low for doctoral programs whereas a 3.5 is absolutely fine.
Graduate schools generally evaluate your grades as a whole and not on a semester-by-semester basis. So let’s say that you end up with a 3.64 overall GPA but you made a 3.2 second semester of freshman year - that’s not really going to matter too much (and in fact, many professors wouldn’t even notice that). I generally regard a “bad” semester as a semester in which you have a few grades at C or below. And even though, although a “bad” semester can negatively impact your chances of admission (just like anything bad could - bad GRE scores or a bad statement or bad fit), that won’t alone tank your applications altogether.
Secondly, while I think proceeding with graduate school in mind is a great idea, having “top choices” for specific programs in your freshman year is premature - especially in a field that’s so new. UW’s master’s program in data science is literally accepting its first class just this fall. In 4-5 years there may be double the number of programs and better indications of quality; moreover, your personal interests and career goals may have changed. It’s fine to generally aspire to highly ranked programs but identifying specific ones may be pushing it.