snappy

aem88, Good luck, be proud of your achievements, and have it reflect in your SOP. Try to make your SOPs distinct for each university if possible. I know this is time consuming, but I believe it will pay off. Also someone else mentioned strong LORs. Strong LORs are important. For example your LOR may read that you're in the top 10% of your class, but some PhD committee members can be superficial at times and claim it's not enough to be in the top 10%, you must be in the top 1-2%. I think this happens a lot more in the field of science. Apart from that, I think you've got the whole gamut of suggestions which are all of relevance. Good luck, wish you the best, I hope to hear from you next year with how you're having a nervous breakdown selecting from the many institutions that accepted you .

aem98, Sorry to hear about the rejections. Your profile seems outstanding compared to mine, and even though your GRE scores weren't quite up there, they're satisfactory in my opinion, and not the only thing looked at. Anyways, the first step I would consider is contacting the institutions that rejected you and requesting the particulars of your rejection. This will at least give you an idea of where you can begin to improve. I would also consider retaking the GRE. Also I'm not quite sure what your advisor said about "naming names," but if you researched the institution and found potential facutly to work with, I think your intent should be mentioned. They will want to try and pair faculty with applicants to make your transition into grad school that much more easier. Also for 2011, maybe consider getting in contact with potential faculty and stating your intentions to apply to their institution and your interests. I'm not quite sure if you're applying for PhD or masters, so things may be different. Sorry to hear about your misfortune, and I really hope that you accepted in 2011. Like I said, your profile seems outstanding and it's rather intriguing that you were rejected from all 7 institutions.

minnares, My understanding is credits from a decade ago are considered expired in many institutions. So maybe it's unnecessary to report such information. It might be best to first check the policies of the institution to see if such credit can be considered in the application. I highly advise contacting the admissions office of the institutions you're applying to. Anyways it is usually the case: 1 semester credit is worth 1.5 credits. So take semester credits * 1.5 = quarter credits.1 quarter credit is worth 1/1.5=(2/3) semester credits.Hope this helps.

Thanks for the insight. I've enrolled into the UCI program and quite happy with the decision. Allow me to clarify though, the reasons I chose UCI & UT Austin had less to do with prestige and more to do with good faculty and research programs in the areas I'm interested in. I feel the only requirement for me to do well is myself. But I just have that lingering feeling I should've applied to other programs elsewhere since CA has a list of decent schools doing cutting edge research in network security/crypto.

I went from undergrad to grad on the same campus, so many of the professors I will meet again. But I did get some LORs from outside academic departments and promised them to keep them up-to-date on my progress during graduate school. Most that provided LORs had a genuine interest to see me succeed. So I vow to make good on their LORs and excel in the field. As such, I will keep them updated of my progress.

Fellow grads & grad students, I wish to hear your perspective on my situation: Allow me to summarize my profile: B.S. in CS at UCI with a GPA of ~3.8 (expecting to graduate Spring '09)US CitizenNo formal research exposure (i.e. undesirable quality)GRE: Verbal:420 Quantitative:770 Analytical:4.55+ years of work experience in industry.Initially I intended to apply for the masters program at UCI, but one of my professors persuaded me to apply in the PhD program. During my senior year while taking several graduate courses, I had a genuine interest in network security & applied cryptography. Off the bat I set my sights for only two schools, UCI and UT Austin. I was accepted into UCI with full 4-year fellowship and have assumed rejection from UT Austin as they haven't sent any correspondence regarding my application. It occured to me that I only applied to very few schools, one which seemed out of my league (UT Austin). I'm wondering had I applied to other schools would I even have a chance? I believe I had strong advocacy in UCI from both the professor that pushed my application through and also letter of recommendations from UCI professors. Had I applied to several different institutions, would I have even had a chance? My profile appears rather generic and lacks formal research exposure which appears to harm my chances. During graduate visit day at UCI, I met with several students who seemed to have been accepted into a multitude of institutions, some very prestigious. I was thinking maybe I should have applied to different institutions (that have some specialization in network security/crypto) in order to be more academically diverse. Appreciate anyone's thoughts or similar experiences.