Hello! I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I've been feeling extremely anxious about my application due to my less than stellar undergrad GPA. I went to a decent public university for my undergrad and graduated with a GPA of 3.05 in... , I had a very personal, traumatic experience occur to me in college which affected my ability to perform to the best of my capacity. I also was majoring in Economics, but was not interested in the topic at all. I took a few courses in the computer/information sciences, which I ended up enjoying a lot more. Eventually I became involved with research at the Information Science School at my university during undergrad, got an internship working as a user experience research intern for a student learning mobile app, and had my independent project during my senior year published in a relatively well known journal for Human-Computer Interaction as an extended abstract.
All these factors, a relatively strong GRE, and a sensitively handled personal statement that disclosed the personal issue that I was confronted with, allowed me a chance to pursue a Master's in Human-Computer Interaction at a pretty great school in the field. With a fresh start, I ultimately graduated from my master's program with a 3.89 GPA. I worked as a research assistant for the full two years, was a co-author in a publication produced by the lab I was assisting with, as well as a successful master's thesis which was also published in a respectable journal. I also interned as user experience researcher at a major social media company in the summer during my master's.
Since graduating, I accepted a full-time offer as a UX researcher at a reputable video games company (think EA Games) and plan on working full time for two years. This means I'll be applying for my PhD next application cycle (Fall 2018). I retook my GRE and got a 163 V 163 Q and 4.5 AWA. Given this list, will my low UG GPA keep me from getting into a PhD program at a top tier school?
(Indiana-Purdue University, Indiana University, UT Austin, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of California-Irvine, University of Washington, Northwestern University, Cornell University)