ghanada

Of course there is always a chance she might not want to talk to you, but I wouldn't necessarily ASSUME that. Although I think that highlights a point I was trying to make: don't put all your eggs in 1 basket. It is good to find people of interest and try to make contacts, but at the same time don't get your hopes up. Try contacting many more people and apply to lots of places. I probably sent out like 20+ emails to potential advisors and got responses from like half. A few of them were even pretty enthusiastic. But at the same time, a lot of them told me that they were interested in me, but didn't have any way of "helping" me get in. It really depends on each school and their admission process. The schools that are more rotation based (as opposed to match-based) tend to not let their professors have as much say until later steps along the process. There is just so much variability so applying to a big range of schools is helpful. As per your chances, that is also hard to say as well. Particularly with top tier schools you NEVER KNOW. Your resume sounds good, but since you are international it will be even tougher for you. I would think you should have little problems getting into most schools in the 20-30 range. I also think you have a decent shot at getting into a handful of schools in the 10-20 range. But once you start talking about the top 10, it will be a toss up. It could really go either way. A lot comes down to who else your competition is and whether the people you want to work with have open spots and money. These things change so much every year so you could be a bad fit this year, but a perfect fit next year, just have no way of really knowing. You should read the profiles of the people on the EE PhD thread. Not sure what your exact GPA is, but for top schools I think 3.7 to 3.9 is about average and 780-800 Q GRE is pretty much standard. For reference, I had a really low undergrad GPA (<3.0), high MSEE GPA (3.8), 5 first author pubs, 5+ secondary author pubs, and 5 years of research experience when I applied. I am going to University of Michigan for the BME PhD, but I also had the choice to do EE as well.

I personally don't think it will be a problem since these are just first year undergrad courses. I would just take them at a CC and not slow yourself down. I highly doubt adcom committees would give you a hard time about that.

whoa you need to relax! Have you had much contact with professors before? This type of behavior is TYPICAL, especially at top universities. You should be thankful you got that first reply so quickly. But seriously, these things happen all the time and even moreso in the summer. You also need to realize these professors get emails like yours all the time, so among attending to current projects, grants, current grad students, etc., you being a random potential candidate asking for help puts you on the bottom of the ladder. She probably either forgot about wanting to schedule a meeting with you or got too busy to find time herself. I would just wait til like Friday or even Monday to send a friendly e-mail seeing if she still wants to try and talk in the future. But realize it is July, apps aren't due for like half a year, so no need to start freaking out over nothing.

if you seriously don't even have a major in mind for which you would do a PhD in, you should not do a PhD

For salaries, try this: http://chronicle.com/article/faculty-salaries-data-2012/131431/ Like Eigen said, it varies from field to field and by university. Also keep in mind that there are differences in salaries for research professors (whom also usually teach) and teaching only professors. The former has the potential to make a lot more money based on grant funding. In general, for tenure-track professorships, a PhD is required. And even then, these positions are extremely difficult to get and highly competitive. You should talk to more people in your field or even your previous universities to get more info.

I don't see why being married affects the expense of grad school if your husband has a job? If anything, his extra income would make it more affordable for you since he will probably be making more than you (depending on funding/loans). I lived within 20 miles of UCLA for 8 years and I honestly don't think it is that hard of a place to live with modest expenses. I currently live in Boston and it is a lot more expensive to live out here than it is in LA. As far as big cities go, I think LA is one of the cheaper places because there is a HUGE range of housing prices. Also, for everyone considering a car or not. The main point should be that you CAN live in LA without a car if you need to, but I personally would never try it. You are missing the entire experience of LA. It is such a huge and sprawling area that you will never see amazing places if you don't have a car. I used to travel by car and motorcycle more than the average angelino (prob did around 25k miles/year) and I still never saw a fraction of the great things LA has to offer in all my time there. Not having a car in LA is sorta like owning a car in NY. It is doable, but again, you are going completely opposite of the lifestyle that the city is suited for.

I can't stress this enough, DO A JOB SEARCH! It took me like 5 minutes of looking up job postings in my own field to figure out that all the jobs I want require a PhD. Absolutely REQUIRE. This may or may not be true for you, but you won't know unless you find the jobs you eventually want to get. But I agree, don't do grad school unless you know EXACTLY what you want to do.

I have a Masters in engineering and am going for my PhD this fall. As kateausten said, it depends. Getting a PhD is all about the ability to independently work on a specific topic, research it, conduct experiments, and do something meaningful enough to publish the results. If that is the type of work you want to do in industry, that is what they are looking for. If you are interested in the research side of R&D and want to LEAD a team of researchers or be the MANAGER of those teams, PhDs are often required. If you are more focused on product development, simulations, quality assurance, etc, than a Masters is fine. The best way to get a sense of this for your specific job interests is to do a job search. Find jobs you like, read the descriptions to see if that is what interests you, and then read the qualifications. That should give you a good sense of whether or not a PhD is necessary. I know for many research focused industry jobs, they often say things like "Masters with 5 years experience" or "PhD" required. So if getting a PhD and being heavily involved in research does not interest you, a PhD is probably not the way to go. And if you don't mind working your way up, a Masters will definitely get you into decent starting jobs. The other side of industry that a PhD can help is for start-ups. If you are trying to create new things that aren't mass produced, than obviously research and specialty knowledge is critical so a PhD is pretty much necessary in start-ups if you want to be at the VP or CEO/CTO level. Also, start-ups need to back their products up with solid research and it always helps to have someone with a PhD title associate their name with said research. So sometimes just the title alone can be helpful.

yeah, I honestly was a bit depressed during the beginning of app season getting so many rejections. I really thought I did everything in my power to make up for my bad undergrad GPA and I thought I could be a good candidate at these schools. But the reality is, and this is what I heard from professors, that at the top tier schools my credentials are very good, but so are everyone elses. So those that are getting accepted have just as good as credentials as me, but they don't have my crappy undergrad GPA. So when it comes down to it, they can either accept me or someone just as good as me without any negatives. That is how ridiculously difficult it is to get into these top of the top programs. With that said, I only applied to top 25 programs, but I applied to 18 schools. I got accepted at UMich, BU, and Columbia. So all in all I got some great acceptances, and I couldn't be happier. But at the same time the only reason I got these acceptances were because I either had established strong contacts early on or people needed me specifically for my previous research skills set. The rejections were all from schools that I couldn't establish a meaningful contact with a POI or from schools that were more rotation based and didn't allow their faculty to push people through. But really I think that is just how it always goes for the really competitive programs. You either have an immaculate resume or you know people that help you get in. Otherwise, if you are solid but have a slight negative, it will be a toss up every time.

I was in a similar situation myself. I had 2.57 undergrad GPA (originally pre-med) with almost identical GRE scores. I did a lot of research, got many first and secondary pubs out, and got great letters of rec. I did a MS first, upped my GPA to 3.8, and then got into a BME PhD at University of Michigan. If you can stay at Berkeley with your current PI, DO THAT! Even if you do a Masters and up your GPA to 4.0 you will still have a difficult time getting into top 10 programs (ie Berkeley, Sanford, JHU). I heard from admissions committee members that I did not get acceptance at some top 10 schools because my undergrad GPA was so low, even though I graduated 6 years ago and since retook tons of classes and got a Masters with near perfect GPA. At the time of apps I had 5 first authorships and about 6 secondary authorships. Basically, be aware that you will NEVER escape your undergrad GPA...all you can do is increase the other parts of your resume and hope that some people are willing to overlook your uGPA. I also found out that committee members NOT in my field used my undergrad GPA as an excuse to not accept me and take less qualified people that matched their field. So I was fortunate enough to find an advisor at a top 10 school that needed exactly my skill set and wasn't concerned with my undergrad GPA and he basically made the BME dept chair accept me. I was VERY lucky and know that it could have gone ether way. You should have a fairly good shot at getting into some of those MS programs you mentioned. The acceptance rate for an unfunded Masters is MUCH higher than PhD and they are more likely to overlook your GPA since you have a very strong research upside. Since your MS will be unfunded, my advice to you would be to goto a 2 year program at a Cali school where you can get in-state tuition to save money. Then apply for PhDs during your second year or even after 2 years when you finish the Masters and take 1 year off. You will want to give yourself more time to up your GPA and show that you can handle grad courses. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP YOUR GPA CLOSE TO 4.0! No excuses, do whatever it takes to have a stellar GPA so you can argue your intelligence and dedication in your SOP for PhD apps. If you need any further specific advice, message me since I was in your exact situation.

Yeah I mean I guess brand importance might vary field by field. I was speaking toward the science/engineering fields since this post was about CS. You can read thousands of posts on this forum and others that echo how brand name matters much less than the research work, professors, or even sub-field specialty rankings. I have also confirmed this with many tenured professors and industry engineering managers (who do the hiring) and they have all stated the same thing. They care much more about your actual skills and the training you have more than what school you came from. And if anything, if at all, school name could help you for your first job out of school, but nobody cares after that. Now I will agree that the brand name has a bit more importance if the OP is planning on staying in academia, and moreso if she tries to get a TT professorship at an ivy, but even stil I would be hard pressed to think that those reasons would be strong enough to give up admissions to 3 top tier schools. I could even understand the brand name thing if we were comparing like cal state LA to Harvard, but my arguments are based on the fact that she has offers at UMD, UCLA, and UCSD. Also note that in overseas world rankings in engineering and technology, UCLA is #8 according to TImes Higher Education. Harvard is not in the top 50. Again, I am only speaking toward the engineering side of PhDs so your experiences might be different.

Uhhh I'm Asian, but I don't agree with you. I get where you are going with the model minority stereotype, but I think you are jumping to conclusions way too quickly. There is a big difference between trying to please your family and wanting to hobnob with ivy leaguers (which she said earlier that she wanted to do). I also don't use "being Asian" as any type of excuse for prestige chasing. If you aren't mature enough to do whatever it is you want to do regardless of what your family thinks, than you prob aren't mature enough to be going for a PhD degree. Putting yourself through a program you don't care about because your parents are impressed would be miserable. Again, I think this is generalizing way to much. To me there is a HUGE difference in being from Asian and being Asian American. Foreign students often come to the US for grad school because they want to go back to their own country and having an American degree (especially because it is in English) is a huge deal. It actually makes sense for them that going to big name schools will help a lot because a name like Harvard is known internationally whereas a small state school is not. The attitude is completely different if you are a domestic citizen and plan to work in the US. For a research based (non-professional) PhD, everyone knows that research fit is the most important factor and that US News rankings don't carry a lot of weight. Clearly the OP has no intention of going to one of these top schools because of the research fit or professors there. It is solely because of the name. So if you are that obsessed with school name than that is your self absorbed issue you need to work out. And I think that is what everyone here has been trying to do.

My previous post was in response to your #15 post. I was trying to validate why you can statistically say why a grad student has a "higher" chance of acceptance over an undergrad student. But keep in mind it really depends on each school, degree, department, etc. I have had a number of friends (>5) get into the Masters (and complete it) in Educations at Harvard (HGSE). They all agree that it wasn't particularly competitive or hard to do. I also know their backgrounds are strong, but not like "OMG you are a genius" level. And compare that to getting into Harvard for medical, business, or law school and things completely change. I don't think it would be hard to argue that getting into Harvard Law is more impressive and difficult than getting into Harvard undergrad. Like I said before, I go into a fully funded, generous stipend ($33k/yr) ivy program for my PhD where the school is ranked in the top 15. However, I don't consider myself an amazing applicant and I am DEF not anywhere close to the "OMG you are a genius" level at all. I'm more than thankful and appreciative I got in, but at the same time I don't think getting in was any harder than getting into the undergrad program, relatively. But here's the thing: WHO CARES??? There are no hard facts either way to 100% quantify in a precise way what the subjective "competitive difference" is. Whether you get into an ivy for undergrad or grad, just be happy and pat yourself on the back for the work you have done to achieve that. Seriously, it is a validating accomplishment no matter what me or anyone around you says. Anyways, I am not sure as to why you are stressing about this so much. Why do you care so much about what other people think? Especially since you are in education I would imagine you must be pretty selfless and devoted to bettering our country with little praise and reward for your efforts. Why do you care if some people consider your ivy degree as a tiny amount less prestigious than undergrad? If one of the ivy programs is your best fit, than go there and don't look back. Nobody will fault you for picking the best career move for yourself.

Is your MEng program 1 or 2 years? If you plan on applying for Fall 2013 this will be very tricky since you won't have much time at your new program before you have to turn in apps. This means your app won't really be that different than it was this last year when you applied. My advice would be to not apply for PhDs until Fall 2014 so that you can get a full year of this MEng program under your belt. Hopefully in that time you will build up connections and find some research positions and get good letters of recs. You should not expect to get a paid RA position, but rather do it on a volunteer basis. If you do it this way you should have no problems finding professors that would take you on. Doing research on your own would really help improve your skills and get a good letter for PhDs apps. Also improve your GRE. At least make sure your Quant. is > 780, especially for EE.

ratemyprofessor is not a great way of picking advisers. The only people that review are people on the poles, they either loved or hated a class. And I personally don't think how a prof teaches an undergrad class of 300 people has any correlation with how this person will be as a PhD mentor. If I were a professor, you could be sure I would care a whole lot more about my grad students than a pre-req class that nobody even wants to be in. Have you talked to current and former grad students from the labs you are interested in? THAT is how can get a better judgment of your would be advisers. I had long phone and in-person conversations with current senior members from the labs I was looking at and grad students are very good about not being fluffy about their feelings. Seriously, talk to those people and it should be clear which one is favored. You should easily be able to find their e-mails and they were always eager to offer advice and had lots to say about their lab. From a Cali perspective, UCLA has the better name. Just like Berkeley has a better name than UCLA even though they get ranked in many things very similarly. UCSD is a much newer school (1960) whereas UCLA was founded in 1919. So UCSD has slowly moved up the ranks, but older generations like our parents' age would not realize how strong UCSD is. In fact, UC Irvine was thought of as a better school up until around the mid-90's and then UCSD started to pull ahead. Now UCSD is right on the heels of UCLA and even stronger in many areas. However, UCLA garners strong recognition for its professional schools. It is very good in Law, Medicine, and Business.

I think it is terrible that these professors you talk to are so curmudgeonly an unsupportive of you. My Masters adviser genuinely cares about me as a person, so when I told her where I had acceptances, she first asked me about who I would work with, what work I would be doing, how the funding is, etc. before making any type of judgments about the schools themselves. To immediately blow off UCSD and UCLA shows a lot of resentment and just plain snobbery. I am from the west coast, lived there for over 26 years, and I can tell you that UCLA and UCSD are HIGHLY respected schools (on the level of Harvard/MIT) over there. I personally did my undergrad at UCLA and it is a top notch school. Even for undergrad, getting into UCLA was just as respectable as getting into an ivy. In fact, on the west coast, most people wouldn't even be able to tell you what cities Yale, Cornell, Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth are in. If you have any desire to work on the west coast, I would argue that going to either UCLA or UCSD would give you a leg up on graduates from Harvard, Columbia, Yale, etc. Plus if you spend 5-6 years doing a PhD there you would make tons of connections on the west coast and the profs you work with would also have tons of connections. Employers on the west coast really look favorably at graduates from the top UCs and Stanford. As an example I had close contacts in industry on the west coast and I asked them about my school options (1 of them being Columbia) for biomedical engineering and nobody cared about the ivy name. I even specifically asked if going to Columbia for the ivy name would help, and they all said no, they just care about WHAT work you do and what skills you have. And then everyone in my field that I talked to about Columbia was like "oh? is that even a good school?" since they are not particularly well known for BME even though they are ranked #15 on US News. Seriously, don't let stuck-up professors choose your life for you. If you genuinely don't like UCLA or UCSD, you don't like the research, you don't like the atmosphere, or you just hate socal than those are understandable reasons to not go. Give up your spots, there are literally hundreds of people ready to jump on those spots given the opportunity. To many (and probably MOST), those are dream schools and I know lots of people that would literally cry of happiness to get in.

*sigh* it is so frustrating at how much you value school name, ivy prestige, and undergrad rankings for a STEM field PhD. I'm pretty sure most the people in gradcafe or applying in general are astounded that you would turn down 3 top 15 fully funded offers from amazing schools in CS just to impress other people with the name of a prestigious undergrad school. Looking at your list, these are all name brand undergrad schools, but not necessarily even known for strength in CS (Yale?) . Whereas you left off extremely good CS schools whose names don't necessarily impress the average joe (CMU, UIUC, UT-Austin, etc). And what is so crazy is that you are giving up multiple great offers that anyone in their right mind would kill for to re-apply again to schools that are all complete gambles! Every one of those schools you listed are schools in which everyone hates trying to make guesses about because the variation is so high. I know plenty of people with 4.0 GPAs, 99% on all GRE sections, first author pubs, etc. that get rejected from every one of those schools. As much as you can have a "perfect" application, there is just no guarantee with those schools. It is like someone offering you $10 million now, OR wait 1 year, put in lots of time, money and effort to reapply for a 50% chance at getting $11 million next year. At least in your last thread you made it sound like you decided that a math PhD was a better fit: But now you are polling about CS AGAIN so it clearly means you just want to move up a bit higher in the rankings, which again as everyone has told you in that thread and your first thread (), is such a terrible way of picking schools. It seems like you are asking for advice, ignoring said advice, and then rephrasing the same questions to try and get people to answer in a different way that validates your poor decisions. Obviously you are just going to do whatever you want to do, why keep asking the same question over and over??

hey, it sounds like you are on a similar path as myself. I have an MSEE and will be starting my PhD at U Michigan - Ann Arbor this fall in BME (although I had the option to do EE as well). I also do DSP, but particularly in neuroimaging. You should try and not freak out about responses (or lack thereof) from potential advisors. This is extremely common in academia. You have a fantastic resume, great research potential, and your undergrad GPA isn't bad at all. It is prob about average for the schools you are looking at, and it won't keep you from being looked at. However, one reason I can see you not getting as favorable responses as you would think is because of your area of previous research. When you cold contact most professors about working with them, they probably don't care so much about your scores as they do your actual skills. So if you are contacting people that are doing work in which you have no particular skills for, they prob won't be fighting to get you into their lab. An example of this, I had a 2.6 undergrad GPA (long story), but the people I contacted were doing work in which I had lots of skills in and have published in. So I actually received some good responses from professors and had some fight to get me into the program. They didn't care about my undergrad GPA (granted my grad GPA was 3.8). Also, I am not sure how you are wording your e-mails, but make sure you keep your e-mails brief and to the point. Just state your general background and be sure to personalize each e-mail and ask or at least mention their current work and how you relate to that. They are less likely to respond if they feel you are mass e-mailing people. They don't need your full resume to start (I had some request my CV after my initial e-mail) and you are basically just asking if they will be accepting students into their lab next year and if they think you might be a good fit. Probably half the professors responded back and half of those continued to correspond with me. The others gave more general answers as to whether they were accepting students or like you mentioned that they didn't have any control in who gets accepted. One thing that you should also realize is that the summertime is not always the best time to try and contact people. Many professors take vacations, so I personally think sending e-mails in the beginning of the Fall semester is a little better. The other tricky thing is that a lot of professors won't even know whether they will have space/funding for Fall 2013 yet because they don't know who will be joining their lab in the 2012-2013 school year. It is good you are doing all this research now, but you still have plenty of time to make these connections before your apps get reviewed (around January). As for general app advice, try and get a perfect GRE Quant score since that is basically the average for top EE programs. In your SOP, be sure to mention specifically who you would want to work with and why. Since you are sort of switching specialties you should probably try and state how you see your previous research background/skills as useful in bioimaging/DSP. Try and think from an advisor's standpoint as to why they should want you in their lab. You should also know these peoples' work well enough that you can say which projects you see yourself working on and what you would contribute. You should def apply to all those schools you mentioned and I personally think you would get into a handful of them with your resume. But, at the same time you never know with top tier schools, there are SO MANY variables. That is why people won't ever say thing like "you should def get into School X". We have all heard of all-star applicants that sound amazing on paper but for some reason don't get in. I also think you should apply to some lower ranked schools as well. I wouldn't call them "safety" schools, but just not top tier. I'm sure there are lots of people doing work you want to do at these schools. But again, make sure these are places you would seriously goto if you didn't get into a top tier school, otherwise what is the point in even applying there? Good luck, feel free to PM me if you have any other questions about applying. I haven't moved to Michigan yet, but if you want to know more about UMich after school starts I'm sure I will have lots of opinions.

sorry, I was trying to make a very general quantification for competitiveness between undergrad and grad. I specifically said the AVERAGE applicant for each, meaning if you just took the middle level applicant from both pools respectively, the middle level applicant for the grad program would probably have a statistically higher chance of gaining admission than the undergrad applicant. I understand that that grad programs have fewer, but more qualified applicants than at the undergrad level, but still it gives some basis for comparison. I really don't want to take anything away from those attending ivy league grad programs or those that got acceptances, just getting in is a serious accomplishment and should not be overlooked. But for example, in my field (engineering) I would not be particularly impressed if you got into Harvard. I would, however, be impressed if you got into MIT.

One of my best female friends used to half-heartedly joke about how she wasn't super picky about men. She just required that they have a job and no felonies. Haha sadly enough, those 2 prerequisites knock out a good amount of the population!

To address your questions about competitiveness, it is generally much more difficult to get into ivy league undergrad than graduate. Obviously there are lots of factors, but really it comes down to the numbers. For instance, Harvard's undergrad acceptance rate was 7.2% this year. Now, compare that to whatever grad program you are looking at, and usually the acceptance rates are a bit higher than 7%, and depending on the department, the acceptance rates are WAY HIGHER. So if you look at it like that than you could say the average student applying for Harvard undergrad will have a lower chance than the average student applying for the PhD program. Now in general, like others have said, the ivy league name will only really impress family and friends. You can be sure the people within your specialty all know the rankings of said specialty. So they will not be impressed by ivy league names if they know that the school isn't ranked well. I was actually in a similar situation deciding on where to do my PhD. I narrowed it down to an ivy and a public school. For engineering ivies aren't particularly strong, with only Cornell barely reaching the top 10. So whenever I asked friends/family about advice it was always bias towards the ivy. However, anyone in engineering I talked to (colleagues, professors, advisers, etc) all respected the public school much more and could care less about the ivy school. ok with that all said, when you asked about how to base your decision, if you are looking at research-based degrees (particularly PhDs) than your #1 priority should be research fit. Forget about rankings, prestige of school, location, etc. It comes down to the work you will do for your PhD and whom you are doing it with.

yes I agree with what has been said. You should never expect to have your name on a paper just because you are working in the lab. Most professors take publications very seriously and don't just throw names on papers if you didn't do anything to help. If you do have a valid reason your name should be on a paper because you legitimately helped in a meaningful way, than you can always ask what why you weren't added as an author and what else you can do in the future to be put on as an author. Don't just "hope" to see your name. Be active in finding out what his expectations are of you in order to be acknowledged.

I remember back in April when you were really scattered about where to go in this thread: It sounds like you are really all over the place now and are kind of lost. In that thread you were picking schools based on ivy status, location, weather, etc. Then you finally (after 2 pages worth) mentioned research and you made it sound like all of your options were great fits for what you wanted to do. Now you don't even want to do a PhD in CS anymore? You seem like you could benefit from taking some time off (maybe more than just this next year) to really sort out what you want. Seriously, taking time off from school can really help give you perspective and lock down what it is you are passionate about. I took 3 years off from undergrad to do that and am happy I did. It completely changed my view on the types of jobs available and I took a lot of time planning out the best track to get there. I just finished a Masters and will start a PhD this fall. I'm 29 now so I can say it really isn't a big deal starting grad school a little later in life. You will hate life if you try taking on a PhD you aren't interested in. Also realize, doing a PhD is about specializing and becoming an expert in some field. Nobody wants a jack of all trades that isn't particularly strong in anything. This is why you need to lock down your interests now so you don't waste time jumping around advisers/departments/schools.

Allston is cheap but it is the undergrad ghetto. It can get loud at nights and on weekends. But if you don't plan on trying to get a lot of work done in your apt than you should be fine. Wash. Sq./Coolidge Corner are nice but they are in Brookline so if you are planning on bringing a car than you won't be able to street park overnight unless your apt comes with a parking space. I actually lived in Brookline for 2 years (off the D line which is definitely the best branch of the green line) and it was nice, prob 15 min train ride + 5-10 min walk to campus. Cambridgeport is ok, but there's no direct trains to BU. There is a bus or you could walk across the bridge. I think Allston or Brookline are more convenient than Cambrdige/Cambridgeport. I currently live in Jamaica Plain and love it.. By far the best cost/benefit ratio, BUT you definitely need a car since public transportation to BU is tricky and requires transfers (takes about 45min to 1hr to get from Jamaica Plain to BU by busses). If you want convenience and really great location, Kenmore Square area/Back Bay are great but pricey. You should definitely get going on apartment hunting soon cause the good ones go quickly. Try and find places that don't have any broker fees or at least are only half-fee. Also, if you are going to need a UHaul, reserve that NOW. Like 95% of all apartments around BU area have leases that start on Sept. 1st. So UHauls get reserved before the end of summer and some people have to go all the way to New York to get the closest one. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me.

That is exactly the point I was making. I had a 2.6 undergrad GPA but will be attending a top 10 school for my PhD. However, I basically only got into schools that I knew the PI and they fought to get me in. So you can get AROUND a bad GPA, but you can never fully escape it.