aryt13

I don't really think highly of myself and I never said I was "smart". I have an average IQ (if that even indicates intelligence). I am surrounded by thousands of people who are essentially smarter than me, but they fail to see the most important part of things, precisely because they are smart and go through the problem quickly without seeing it from another angle. I speak based on facts and figures with no emotional prejudice whatsoever. You do not prefer egotistical people and that is a personal preference. If you are given a chance to decide who should get which scientific position, your personal assessment of the situation should not come into play. Some of the most distinguished scientists like Einstein, Dirac and Schrodinger were extremely egotistical. Einstein once sent an article for publication, when the editor wrote back that he has sent it for peer review, this is what Einstein replied: Dear Sir, We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the "in any case erroneous” comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere. Respectfully, In a way, being egotistical is part of what defines how dedicated you are to your cause. Non-scientist examples, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc. These people at some point in their career, eliminated their partners, because they believed they were being slowed down by their lack of vision. You see an egotistical monster. I see a genius! Ethical guidelines can never be clearly defined. Numbers speak for themselves. Had it not been for these egotistical actions, companies would have gone bankrupt, people would have lost their jobs and so one.

And I need to clarify something. When I said I don't listen to lectures if I don't enjoy them, it's not like I was mocking the professor or anything. I used to bring my own reading materials (often research paper), sit there quietly and read them during the class. Actually, I remember writing my first research paper during a Numerical Methods and Statistics class. The lecturer was boring as hell, but the subject in itself was very interesting. I was the only person who got A in the end. So that was a relative statement.

Thanks, but I would really appreciate if you could show me some of these extremely intelligent and qualified individuals, i.e. undergrads who have been publishing on their own and featuring in the news and creating startups and such. I am often invited to give speech to freshmen myself. They ask me to inspire them to be good scientists and so far, I haven't been successful to the slightest. They seem to attend college only to get a degree so they can find a higher paying job. They don't care about science and creativity. So I am genuinely interested to see if there are more people like me out there who understand the true meaning of higher education. People who have not been wasting 4 years of their lives only to get a piece of paper at the end.

I demand full transparency because 1) Berkeley is a public university which is funded by taxpayers' money. So the "I reject you because I can" response is not acceptable. They need to provide equal opportunity based on merits. I am not seeing that here. There are very clear rules and regulations. They asked for a minimum CGPA of 3.0 and a general GRE (no minimum score required). I look at university application as a kind of peer review. If you reject me, you need to give convincing reasons. If you claim that there are more qualified candidates, you shouldn't have any problem disclosing the data (of course, not the private info, but what exactly do you mean by more qualified). 2) I paid an application fee. You are offering a paid service. I am the customer and you are obliged to respond to my enquiries. About the "I am better than this class" argument: I attended an Asian university, so believe me when I say that a large portion of or class had 4.0 CGPA. How did they manage to do that? I give you an example, we were taking a programming course. 50% of the marks were based on assignments. Virtually none of the students developed the algorithms and wrote the programs on their own. They simply got a copy from senior student and submitted it. They were kind enough to send me a copy as well. However I refused to do the same. I tried to develop my own program. It was only partially functional, but hey it was working. I got C+, everybody else got A. When I told the lecturer that I expected him to value my original work, he didn't care. Another example, we were taking an optimization course, I developed my own algorithm and achieved 96% correlation, everybody else copied the algorithm from the notes (developed by the professor). They got 99% correlation. I ended up getting A- and everybody else got A.One more: In the Robotics class, my friend and I were the only people who actually solved the equations, rather than memorizing the answer. We never managed to finish answering 8 questions in 1 hour (even the professor knew there were too many questions, so he actually gave the answer a week before so everyone could memorize). Everybody else got A, we got B. I don't regret any of this. Now if you think i am arrogant, well good for you. I believe in doing science in a meaningful and productive way. I was nearly getting an F for not following the lecturer's instructions in a class. He taught us only basic HTML and CSS, I used advanced Javascript and AJAX in my website. He told me I was trying to make him look bad in front of the class! Is that how we are educating our students nowadays? We want them to be mindless slaves? Call me a bad "student", but you can't do that to me. About SOP and LOR: It's not applicable here. As I said, I only applied because the professor was interested in my work and his collaborator/ ex-post-doc invited me to. Besides, in all my papers, I am the corresponding author. LOR normally applies to those who have been working in a group as a student, so they need some sort of endorsement from the PI in the group. In my case, I was the PI myself and I have students. I only applied to 1 program because I already have 2 jobs (paid scientist by day, unpaid entrepreneur after working hours). PhD is only a title which is already carried by millions of people. I was only hoping to have easy access to the equipment. I even offered to bring my own funding for a joint research project. I guess when they were reading my SOP, they thought it was too good to be true!

So I have recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering (honors). My CGPA was not exceptional (3.38 out of 4.0), however I won the best student and the best project awards from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (UK) and I was also selected as the best student in the engineering department. I am the type of guy who refuses to copy the assignments or cheat/ memorize for the exam. If I don't enjoy it, I refuse to listen to the lecture. Grades are useless anyway. I have spent most of my time in the lab doing research on my own for over 4 years now. I have published 3 ISI Q1 papers as the corresponding author (in the field of nanomaterials), and I have 6 more under review (all as corresponding author). I am also a referee for several high-ranking international journals in Materials Science. I have won a number of international design awards and my works have been featured on USA Today, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist, Daily Mail, CS Monitor, etc. I have co-founded a company with a former CFO of Nokia and a former senior executive at Qatar Airways in which I also serve as the CTO. Since my senior year, I have been also appointed as a research fellow (same ranking and salary as an associate professor in our University). As part of my work, I co-supervised (and still do) PhD students (yeah, undergrad supervising PhD students!). Anyway, I am the first person to have synthesized this new material that was predicted to exist some 20 years ago. Think of graphene, but superior in every aspect, especially when it comes to industrial scale applications. We are still working on some of the details before we publish the results. One of my collaborators, a professor in Taiwan used to do his post-doc at UC Berkeley and he convinced me that I should apply for a PhD, so I can use the high-tech equipment at LBNL and make things go faster. So he introduced me to the professor. The professor said that he is going to take 2-3 students this year and depending on the outcome of my application, we need to talk more about my works. I had 3 very positive recommendation letters; one from that professor who was a former post-doc, another from my collaborator who is a research director at CNRS and lastly, my former supervisor and colleague who is an associate editor for one of the leading journals in the field of ceramic and composite materials. I received a rejection letter yesterday from Berkeley. How on earth do you justify that? They say in their decision letter that there are so many other well-qualified candidates and I cannot be recommended for admission. I talked to the professor and he said that he was not part of the committee this year and he is very sorry. Is UC Berkeley located on another planet inhabited by highly intelligent species and comparatively, I'm actually very dumb? No, seriously. Who makes these decisions anyway? I demand full transparency!