Chances of acceptance at top schools for EE PhD with an NSF Fellowship ?

[Jema]

Here is my profile

Under graduate and Graduate Univ. : University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Currently doing MS in EE (thesis) GPA: 3.95/4.0

UG GPA (EE major) : GPA : 3.703/4.0

G.R.E : Will take in a month

Applying to : EE PhD

Interests : DSP, bioimaging

Research experience : will have 5 years experience in my advisors lab by 2013

Fellowship : NSF GRFP (on reserve), NSF GK 12 '11-'13

Conference Publications : 2 , one at an IEEE DSP workshop and another at an ASA (Acoustical Society of America) meeting. Both of them in the field of human-computer interaction.

Presentations : 9 conference presentations in areas of communication, acoustics, signal processing and fluid dynamics at ASA, APS (american physical society), IEEE, argonne symposium etc.

I was first author on all of my publications and presentations.

I also expect very strong LOR's from my advisor and another professor from my lab where I've been working and also one from by dept. head who knows me personally.

Universities I thought I had a shot at :

1) MIT - EECS

2) Univ. of Cal Berkley - EECS

3) University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign - ECE

4) Univ. of Michigan- Ann Arbor - EE:S

5) Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

6) Harvard SEAS Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering.

7) Cornell ECE

8) Princeton EE

I felt I was in heaven when I won the NSF GRFP. I felt that I had the ticket to any PhD program. I chose to continue my masters at the same Univ. where I did my UG coz I had a great advisor and was churning out substantial amount of work from his lab. I was also offered a free ride for my masters (had the choice to reserve my NSF fellowship for up to two years.). I also thought I had a good shot at top schools with funding at hand when I apply for my PhD.

Now that Its time for me to start hunting for my PhD admissions to for fall 2013, I started emailing professors from the universities I listed above. Then came the shock !! None of them seemed to be interested. Some of them replied saying admissions were done by adcoms and they dont have a say. Most of them ignored and did not even reply.

I dont know if its common practice not to reply to prospective students. I've worked with an advisor who has always been upfront and prompt with all my enquiries. May be I was pampered a bit, so I expected all of them to reply at least. But in retrospect, I think I do have certain things that pull me down.

1) first and foremost , I think its my UG and graduate univ. reputaion. Its ranked like 127th the last time I checked

2) my UG GPA isn't as high as what is desirable for the programs I've listed.

3) My MS thesis is about mathematical modeling of acoustically driven fluid flows which is MechE. I also dont intend to continue my Phd in the same topic. My interests are in bioimaging and DSP. My advisor is interested in acoustics, Human-computer interactions and fluids so most of my UG and graduate research were in those areas.

Now the only thing that I can change in my profile that is of interest for Adcoms is my GRE which I'll be giving in a month or so.

I'd like get some feedback from members of grad cafe on whether I should lower my expectations and try for programs outside top 10 or 20 or to just stay put and hope for the best.

Thanks

[ghanada]

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.

[Jema]

Ghanada, Sweet heart, thanks a lot for your reply !! You have no idea how much effect your post had in calming me down. Thanks for all your suggestions. I too feel that I should maybe delay my enquiries to Prof's and start doing so at the beginning of the Fall semester.

I'll def PM once you move to Michigan. I have a professor in mind (Dr. Jeff Fessler) with whom I'd like to work with.

Wishing you all the best at Umich. Have a blast !!!

[HassE]

Jema,

Congratulations on your stellar porfolio, wow. It's great to see that type of work being performed at UML. I'm a lowell resident so welcome to this forum.

In terms of the schools your applying to, I think your well aligned to applying to those schools. You clearly have defined that your very good at research, and you have showed that you can handle the coursework in a graduate engineering program as well. Given that your advisor will most likely give you a phenomenal LOR, I think your on the right path.

I will keep in mind though that those schools receive similiar applications from more reputable schools all the time, so do not expect all or nearly all of them to accept you, however I will be extremely shocked if at least 2-3 don't accept you.

One of the bigger questions however is are you a domestic canidate or an international student? Most international students have similiar resumes compared to you as well, whereas most domestic canidates aren't as strong. Most US schools would rather accept the few and rare domestic students rather than the somewhat common international students especially in this field and those universities.

If your a domestic student i'd say at least 5 of those schools will offer you an acceptance letter, whereas I still feel 2-3 of them will offer you an acceptance letter if you are an international.

I wouldn't worry so much about getting a perfect score on your GREs though, do well on the math and make sure the verbal is just average and you'll be fine. I believe Harvard's math GRE score was in the 770's (out of 800 for the old scale).

Please contact me as well if your interested. I was accepted into a PhD program, however decided just to complete the Master's there and will be applyign to similiar schools as you. I'm also in the DSP/Image Processing field and will look forward to sharing advice to each other

[Jema]

Jema,

Congratulations on your stellar porfolio, wow. It's great to see that type of work being performed at UML. I'm a lowell resident so welcome to this forum.

In terms of the schools your applying to, I think your well aligned to applying to those schools. You clearly have defined that your very good at research, and you have showed that you can handle the coursework in a graduate engineering program as well. Given that your advisor will most likely give you a phenomenal LOR, I think your on the right path.

I will keep in mind though that those schools receive similiar applications from more reputable schools all the time, so do not expect all or nearly all of them to accept you, however I will be extremely shocked if at least 2-3 don't accept you.

One of the bigger questions however is are you a domestic canidate or an international student? Most international students have similiar resumes compared to you as well, whereas most domestic canidates aren't as strong. Most US schools would rather accept the few and rare domestic students rather than the somewhat common international students especially in this field and those universities.

If your a domestic student i'd say at least 5 of those schools will offer you an acceptance letter, whereas I still feel 2-3 of them will offer you an acceptance letter if you are an international.

I wouldn't worry so much about getting a perfect score on your GREs though, do well on the math and make sure the verbal is just average and you'll be fine. I believe Harvard's math GRE score was in the 770's (out of 800 for the old scale).

Please contact me as well if your interested. I was accepted into a PhD program, however decided just to complete the Master's there and will be applyign to similiar schools as you. I'm also in the DSP/Image Processing field and will look forward to sharing advice to each other

Hi HassE,

Thanks for the encouragement. Would need lots of it from now on..

I'm a US citizen (naturalised). If like you said US schools prefer domestic students, I'll have a slight advantage that way.. I hope everything adds up and all is well in the end..