A Confusing Topic Regarding Ph.D. Admissions when Already Pursing a Masters.

[Crucial BBQ]

I have neither.  In reading many posts here on gradcafe I have come across something that can best be described as a similar thread: my undergraduate career royally sucked, my Master's career was stellar, I am worried about my Ph.D application.  

 

My undergraduate career royally sucked, too, in terms of GPA.  I was also rejected from every program I applied to during the admissions cycle.  Yet, a few of the programs I spoke to in regards to my application suggested that one of the best things I could do to aid my case would be to take a graduate level course or two; to prove I have the chops for graduate level study.  

 

This leaves me confused.  

 

There are members of this forum who claim to have completely bombed undergrad yet are having a stellar time in their Master's programs.  And now they are worried about applying to Ph.D. programs. Why then are they so worried about Ph.D. programs when based on my communications with grad adcoms taking one or two grad courses only is enough to "prove" yourself? 

 

Wouldn't the Master's program trump undergrad?  

[GeoDUDE!]

I have neither.  In reading many posts here on gradcafe I have come across something that can best be described as a similar thread: my undergraduate career royally sucked, my Master's career was stellar, I am worried about my Ph.D application.  

 

My undergraduate career royally sucked, too, in terms of GPA.  I was also rejected from every program I applied to during the admissions cycle.  Yet, a few of the programs I spoke to in regards to my application suggested that one of the best things I could do to aid my case would be to take a graduate level course or two; to prove I have the chops for graduate level study.  

 

This leaves me confused.  

 

There are members of this forum who claim to have completely bombed undergrad yet are having a stellar time in their Master's programs.  And now they are worried about applying to Ph.D. programs. Why then are they so worried about Ph.D. programs when based on my communications with grad adcoms taking one or two grad courses only is enough to "prove" yourself? 

 

Wouldn't the Master's program trump undergrad?  

 

 

Some of it anxiety, other parts of it are worthy.

 

Students pursuing and MSc and applying for a PhD are expected to be better than students who just have a BA/BS. So while you have more, the weight is higher. 

 

Graduate level classes are easier than undergrad classes, not in concept, but in amount of material.  The reality is if you screw up undergraduate GPA no matter what you will have an incredibly up hill battle getting into top 20 programs. Tons of research experience does not mitigate this: the best way to improve an application is to publish in a high impact factor journal or develop a skill that few have. 

 

There is also a small bias against MSc holders: may professors would rather work with a very strong undergrad than someone who has done their masters because of a weak undergrad. They get the students typically longer; The MSc student has that bad gpa mark on their record where the undergraduate is a clean slate. 

 

You might be asking, well, I see a lot of students with MSc's do very well here in admissions processes. There are examples sure, but the majority of students in many fields in top PhD programs come straight from undergrad. 

 

That being said, getting good grades after you have gotten bad grades helped a lot. My undergraduate GPA was 3.05 in Physics and I applied to Earth Science programs. Getting ~3.80 in my MSc helped. Even in undergrad, I had tons of experience including a REU at a top 5 Earth Science school thats an Ivy League. Btw, Im a white male, which already made it difficult to get an REU in the first place since they tend to target women and minorities.

 

So suffice to say, top teir students from top ranked schools in undergraduate will generally be the best candidates for graduate school in the admissions committee eyes.

The next tier of students are people who have really good grades, great research experience, and have some sort of special skill 

 

Where MSc students fit in is hard to tell, but they could be below the 2nd tier of students or above them depending. Kicking ass in an MSc program isn't just getting good grades, but having a novel thesis. The requirements for a thesis based masters is fairly low in most programs: most don't have to do publishable quality work. Thats where this anxiety comes from.

 

In my opinion, if you took a few courses but had a GPA ~3.0 or under, that would help but it would not be anywhere close to a slam dunk that you would get into any of the graduate schools you have listed unless you had a solid publication under your belt. The biggest misconception is overvaluing publications: they are important but only if they are solid work. Many undergraduates publish mundane work and overvalue their impact on admissions: you bet they actually read the publication. 

 

That being said, I am not on an adcomm, this was just the analysis my masters advisor gave me when we were working on my PhD applications.  But this also does reflect my experience.

 

Much of the anxiety comes from how much is out of our control in the admissions process, just like everyone else.  

[shadowclaw]

I don't have half the insight that GeoDude seems to have into this, but I am in the situation you speak of. So why am I worrying? Well, for starters, I think that I have a crummier overall undergrad GPA compared to many of the others on this board, although I don't have much to back that up with. It's just the impression that I have. I do, however, have a decent GPA from the college I graduated from, and all of the grades for my major courses are fantastic (all of those crud grades came from very different majors than the Environmental Biology I ended with), so that does offset some of the worry generated by the low GPA. I also worry that the many years changing majors and schools may reflect negatively on me.

 

Even though my two completed semesters of my masters program went very well (and thus prove I can handle a graduate course), I still worry that GeoDude will be right... that an undergrad with a fairly spotless transcript will trump my mixed bag, even though we probably have the same grades in our science courses. I also feel like many applicants may also have publications under their belts, which I do not. I am currently working on two manuscripts (a research paper and a review paper) which I hope to submit shortly (but that doesn't mean they'll be accepted anytime soon), but since I am still in the data collection stage of my thesis, I don't have any publications related to it. My undergrad college did encourage research and we all had to do a senior project (which some students put their heart and soul into, while with others, I don't even understand how their projects got approved), but not in the same way that bigger research-oriented universities do. There were no labs to join and only a handful of the faculty were actively working on research projects. So I feel that the lack of publication, especially at this stage of the game, will also reflect negatively on me, especially if there are some undergrads with pubs.

 

But I'm hoping that most of my worrying is just anxiety and has no real basis in fact

[bsharpe269]

A clean slate, perfect undergrad career will probably trump "a mixed bag", especially if you mean an undergrad GPA under 3.0 in that bag. In my experience though, professors have been much more interested in me DUE TO my MS work. This might be bacause I fall into the special skills category that GEOdude mentioed, Im not really sure... i do know that my subfield is pretty specialized and very interdisciplinary, requiring knowedge of physics through quantum and statistical mechanics, chemistry through physical chem, molecular bio and biochem, mathematical modeling, and strong programming. Alot of fields are like this though, requiring a wide spread of knowedge. I think that this is where MS degrees can be really useful. They can give you the chance to fill in gaps in knowedge and to read literature in your subfield. Most MS students are applying for PhD programs having read hundreds of papers in their field. In my experience, people right out of undergrad are strong in 1 or 2 of the areas above only and don't have any knowedge of the literature in the subfield they wish to study.

 

I guess this all comes back to how bad your undergrad really is. If I had a 2.5GPA then I bet that an undergrad with perfect grades might still beat my knowedge of the subfield. I think this also might depend on how specialized your field is. It is pretty common in mine for people to spend a year at least to figure out enough to contribute to the research. Even if a PI could keep a student fresh out of undergrad longer, it would come with the cost of spending a year training that person where someone with their MS might not need much training. Basically, I think it all just depends on how bad your undergrad career was and how much you can offer a lab after the MS to counterbalance it.