garylosh

I've gotten a lot of conflicting information on whether or not being able to fund yourself has an impact on your chances of getting in. I'm sure it varies from one program to another (notably for a master's vs a PhD), but I'm curious as to whether or not anyone has personal knowledge about it. If it's a load of nonsense I wouldn't be surprised... but then again I wouldn't be surprised if it went the other way either. Now I obviously would rather not fund myself (more money is better than less money!) but if it could mean the difference between being admitted and being rejected, it's not a terrible choice to make. Of course I know GPA isn't everything and I'm still working on improving all aspects of my application - LoRs and research experience in particular - but every bit helps and it'd be good to know if I should start putting away money for it now. Background: I was an incredibly lazy and stupid 18 year old when I first went to school, dropped out with terrible grades and several withdrawn semesters after I got a professional job ("I don't need no stinkin' school"), and have now returned to undergrad after spending 5 years in the field (software engineering). While I've received all As for classes since my readmission (~60 semester credit hours, all upper-division stat/math/finance), my cumulative GPA is abysmal in grad admissions terms (it'll finally end up around 3.3 or 3.4 from a 2.8; my upper-division GPA should be between 3.6 and 3.9 depending on which method you use to calculate it). I'm aiming to get a master's in statistics, if that makes any difference. Fortunately I was previously in a different program (CS then, BA in Math and BS in Stat now) so the Ws, Cs, Ds and Es on my transcript at least won't be next to courses in my majors. Thanks for any insight! /edit Sorry if this would have been more appropriate in "The Bank" section -- I figured I'd put it here since it concerns admissions chances rather than how to pay for grad school