Profile Evalunation for PhD EE/EECS Berkeley Stanford MIT Fall 2011

[paxboyo]

Hi All,

Would seriously appreciate comments, particularly from students enrolled in the 3, on my chances with or without financial aid.

My Profile:

BS from accredited school outside US

BS US-equivalent GPA 3.6/4.0

MS from a US top ten school in EE

MS GPA 4.0/4.0 (more graduate level courses than required for masters)

6-7 conference papers in good/accredited conferences in bio-optics

GRE: Q800 V560 AW4/6

More than six months internship experience in a good biotech company in bay area

Oh and two questions,

Is it usually the case that profs from Stanford and Cal refuse to talk to you about the possibility of hiring you if you are not already enrolled/admitted in the school? I have tried talking to some profs at Stan/Cal and all I have heard has been rude comments basically saying "don't waste my time if you are not enrolled here". I am only asking because this is totally not the case in my current school.

How much do recom letters count? My experience with grad school admission back when I was an undergrad has been that recoms/SOPs just have to be there but they are not what breaks it or makes it.

thanks,

paxboyo

[newms]

Oh and two questions,

Is it usually the case that profs from Stanford and Cal refuse to talk to you about the possibility of hiring you if you are not already enrolled/admitted in the school? I have tried talking to some profs at Stan/Cal and all I have heard has been rude comments basically saying "don't waste my time if you are not enrolled here". I am only asking because this is totally not the case in my current school.

How much do recom letters count? My experience with grad school admission back when I was an undergrad has been that recoms/SOPs just have to be there but they are not what breaks it or makes it.

thanks,

paxboyo

I'm not enrolled in those schools and I'm not in your field so I won't comment on the first part, but for your questions, here is what I think:

1) I don't know any profs from Stanford or Cal, but the comments you received do seem like they were irritated. Did the profs have websites with information about how to contact them? A lot of profs I've seen have notices on their sites that say that you should not contact them if you're not enrolled at the school. Perhaps there was a notice like that on their sites and hence they sent the reply they did.

2) I've heard the opposite of what you say here. That the recommendation letters and SoP can help your application a lot and can probably hurt your application too. If the recommendation letters are from profs that the adcomms know or know about and they say that you are a future superstar in the field, you can bet that will help your application a lot. Most LoR's I would imagine, are from profs that the adcomm will not know or know about and would probably say something along the line of you did well in school. Those letters aren't worth much and probably won't help you and could hurt you relative to other applicants. Obviously a bad LoR will definitely hurt you.

Here's a good site with lots of information for applicants to grad school. http://sites.google..../gradappadvice/ It's from a prof that isn't in your field, but the advice is still relevant.

PS. With your publications I'm guessing you should have a pretty good shot at Berkley and Cal, but that's just a guess since I'm not in your field.

Edited November 18, 2010 by newms

[akraz]

I think you should have a very decent chance at the top scholls. Regarding SOP and recommendation I asked this question direct to my MS advisor (who was a phd from MIT) and his reply was SOP matters alot at top schools such as MIT, Stanford, WashU and Illinois.