Application/general advice: PhD in materials science

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Hey yall

 

I'm currently a third-year undergraduate in the UK and will start my PhD applications next summer. Would appreciate if anyone can chance me for MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard (all for PhD in Materials Science) and give me some advice on how to best write/tailor my application as I have a year left before I need to start, or how to approach professors for recommendation letters, etc. Anything helps really!

 

*I'm borrowing a template from a previous MIT-DMSE thread*

Undergrad Institution: Imperial College London, UK
Major(s): Materials Science and Engineering
GPA in Major: 81/100 (first class honors)
Position in Class: top 5-10% of 120 people
Type of Student: international

GRE Scores: Q: 170, V: 163, W: 5.0

Research Experience: Coauthored two papers back in high school but the paper were only published after I started my first year at Imperial.

Research after college:

- Conducted an 8-week independent research project as organized by an innovation-type competition; no publication and no start-up

- Research internship at EPFL; quite prestigious of a program as they only admit ~15 people per summer and most are from North America. My professor at EPFL is also a former prof from MIT DMSE  Hoping to get coauthorship but results do not seem promising

(Also unable to perform research during the academic year as it is actively discouraged in my department)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: predominantly academic awards (nothing major)

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: tutoring; volunteering engineer of a humanitarian engineering start-up