--My Chance of Getting IN? GRE 1530, GPA 3.9, Some Research Experience, 3 Interns--

[noschoolwantsme]

Hello,

Thank you for your time. I am thinking about applying to MS in Computer Science.

About me:

*International Student, But Go To US 4-Year College, Rank 60-70th

*GPA 3.9 (both major and overall)

*Top 10% in my class in my major

*Some Research Experience (submitted one paper, 2nd author, stilling waiting for result)

*GRE: V730 Q800 AW 3.5

*3 Internships in Top Companies in the industry

*LOR - unknown

I am thinking about MS only in the following schools, (in my order of preference)

Stanford,

MIT,

Harvard,

Berkeley,

Princeton,

CMU,

Princeton,

Yale,

UPenn,

UCLA,

USC,

University of Washington

Please, could you guys give me any input of my chance of getting into those? I would really appreciate it!

Thank you!

Edited June 14, 2011 by noschoolwantsme

[chaospaladin]

You should apply for a PhD program and drop out with an MS so you can get it for free with no debt.

[noschoolwantsme]

You should apply for a PhD program and drop out with an MS so you can get it for free with no debt.

Do you think I have any chance of getting into some of these PHD programs? How much chances?

Do a lot of people enroll as a PHD but drop out after MS?

Thanks!

[tt503]

Do you think I have any chance of getting into some of these PHD programs? How much chances?

Do a lot of people enroll as a PHD but drop out after MS?

Thanks!

With a 3.9 GPA and 1500+ GRE, I'd be surprised if you didn't get into a couple of the schools on your list (for a Ph.D.). Just make sure there are professors in the departments who are doing the same kind of work that you're doing, and see what happens. :-)

Good luck!

[newms]

Do a lot of people enroll as a PHD but drop out after MS?

Thanks!

Some people do it, but usually those people go intending to do a PhD program but change their minds while they're there. To intentionally apply for a PhD knowing you'll drop out after the MS would be bad form in my opinion.

Firstly, when you're applying you're going to have to state that you're applying for the PhD while you know that you just want a MS, which is a bit shady.

Secondly, chances are, your funding would come from a prof's research grant and they would be expecting that the sunk costs that they would be paying in your tuition would lead to an additional researcher for their lab as you pursue your PhD. So when you end up dropping out, you'd in effect be disadvantaging the person that would have been paying your tuition. This, needless to say, could lead to burnt bridges.

So you should really only drop out of a PhD and take the MS if you honestly had a change of mind during the program.

While most MS programs don't provide funding, some of the top ones do, so I would encourage you to investigate those (which I think you'd have a pretty good shot at), rather than applying to a PhD program with the intention of dropping out after the MS.

Edited June 15, 2011 by newms

[noschoolwantsme]

While most MS programs don't provide funding, some of the top ones do, so I would encourage you to investigate those (which I think you'd have a pretty good shot at), rather than applying to a PhD program with the intention of dropping out after the MS.

Thanks man!

Ｉt would be nice to have funding for MS. If I am unlucky that I cannot get funding, I am OK with it.

I know few top schools have funding for MS but I am just not too sure if I am able to get in. I may be able to get into some not-to-top schools' PHD with funding. But I may not really want to go.

This is confusing~~~ Does anyone know my chances of getting to some top schools (Stanford, CMU, MIT, Harvard, Princeton) if I don't want any funding?

[noschoolwantsme]

With a 3.9 GPA and 1500+ GRE, I'd be surprised if you didn't get into a couple of the schools on your list (for a Ph.D.). Just make sure there are professors in the departments who are doing the same kind of work that you're doing, and see what happens. :-)

Good luck!

Thanks! What about MS? I want to go Master-only.

Could you please evaluate my chances of getting into top schools? (Stanford, CMU, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley)

Thanks!

Edited June 15, 2011 by noschoolwantsme

[We regret to inform you]

I find that 1500 GRE doubtful. Anyone asking 'how much chances?' isn't likely to have scored that highly on the verbal component, and if they did then pretty clearly the GRE needs significant revision.

I'm skeptical as well. Also, how can you score so high and have such a high gpa and yet only get a 3.5 on the AW? To get a 730 on the verbal requires a pretty strong grasp of difficult and uncommon words. Certainly writing a couple of 4-5 paragraph essays in 75 minutes can't be that challenging.

Also, the question the poster is asking is pretty ridiculous. If the poster is telling the truth, then he or she should be smart enough to realize they stand a good shot at any top ranked school and that asking a bunch of fellow applicants on the applicant board rather than the board for recently accepted students is also pretty silly.

Edited July 2, 2011 by We regret to inform you

[fuzzylogician]

No offense to the two posters above me, but judging people who post to this forum is completely unhelpful and is not in the spirit of theGradCafe.

Many who start this process are insecure and underestimate their chances, and many international applicants initially don't understand how the US grad school application process works. There is a lot that is hard to understand and is unintuitive for people from higher education systems that are different than the American one. Not to mention how many Americans don't know understand how the process works either. No one can estimate how successful anyone will be, regardless of their stats, and it's completely acceptable to ask what you call silly questions. We don't claim to be experts here but we can offer some advice some of the time, or at least help posters decide who to address their questions to, if we can't help.

You're both new to this site but if you spend some time in the GRE forum you'll learn that insecurities and retake questions about genuinely high scores are actually pretty common. If the OP is lying about their stats, then the answers they will get here will be useless for them. Others may still benefit from them, which for me is always a reason to give the OP the benefit of the doubt and write a serious reply. Or you can just choose not to reply if you don't have anything useful to contribute. I understand that some people want to brag and/or don't want to admit that they got low scores, but still, it's an anonymous forum. In any event, I don't think it's all that difficult to understand how someone could get a high score in one section of the GRE and a low score in another: they test different skills. Writing could be more difficult for a second-language learner than memorizing "difficult and uncommon words." I could also link to numerous posts about the outrageous way in which the writing section is scored and to outraged posters who got low scores that they think they don't deserve. But this is beside the main point, which is: please only reply to posts if you have something to contribute to the discussion, and not otherwise. This is what has made this site so pleasant and successful in the past.