Dramatically increase my PhD chances in 2 years?

[bmee10]

So I was a lazy undergrad, and i didn't push myself, get to know the faculty and get quality research experience as an undergrad, so in effect my record wasn't amazing. But I did have some interesting experiences and came up with the following:

School: SUNY (State University of NY)

GPA: 3.21

Major: Biomedical Engineering

Research: 2 years in National Laboratory, 1 Conference Presentation, No Publication

Extracurricular: founded 1 club, President of Fraternity, founded a small IT Startup company

I had bad research experience in my previous lab. I was immature, and after a failed experiment of 7 months, my PI blamed me when it was the tissue samples I performed experiments on (they were old). My PI sidelined me from major experiments and I lost the motivation to do work, so I got lazy and in the end amounted to nothing and lastly, he tricked me into firing me by saying we would work on the manuscript together via email correspondence (but never emailed back)....so no LOR.

But somehow, I ended up getting into Cornell's MEng program even without a LOR from research professor because MEng is a non-research degree. Since coming to Ithaca, I've found a research group who I will be working for the next year for, got a graduate TA position, and become more focused in school.

My question is, if I dramatically improve my research performance at Cornell this upcoming year, get great LORs from the PI and collaborators, and achieve a high GPA, will this dramatically increase my PhD chances for the following cycle (Dec 2012)? By this time I should have 1 year of solid research experience in a great school and industry experience for 3 months.

Thank you!

Edited September 7, 2011 by bmee10

[fuzzylogician]

My question is, if I dramatically improve my research performance at Cornell this upcoming year, get great LORs from the PI and collaborators, and achieve a high GPA, will this dramatically increase my PhD chances for the following cycle (Dec 2012)? By this time I should have 1 year of solid research experience in a great school and industry experience for 3 months.

Of course great research experience, glowing LORs and a high GPA will help increase your chances of being accepted to a PhD program!

What's more, if you get strong LORs from professors who you are currently working with, no one will be particularly worried that you didn't get a LOR from your old lab. Letters from current collaborators are more relevant than letters from old collaborators who you are no longer in touch with, so your LORs shouldn't raise any red flags. Also, no one needs to know that you were fired from your old position (you can just state the dates when the position began and ended on your CV) and no one needs to know that there was a publication in the works that didn't come through. Talk about the positives in your SOP (=what you learned from the experience), don't mention the negatives, and spend most of your space on what you are currently researching and what you plan to research during your PhD.