Applying to two different departments at Berkeley possible?

[Lyapunov]

Hi Everyone,

I'm planning to apply to two different labs at UC Berkeley for my PhD. Both these labs fall into different departments of engineering. 

I started an application for one of the departments, and haven't submitted it yet. When I tried to create a new application(using the same email address) for the second department, I was told that I couldn't submit two different applications at a time. I was then told to email their admissions office, which I did immediately. But I haven't heard from them yet.

 

I was wondering if someone else was in a similar situation, and if so, how did you get around it?

 

 

[Physwimic]

I tried applying to two different departments two years ago and was told you can't do it.

[TakeruK]

I encountered something similar when applying to programs at UC Berkeley for Fall 2012 too. My research could lie in either the Astrophysics or the Earth & Planetary Science programs. I was not able to apply to both departments. On this page, https://gradadmit.berkeley.edu/apply/start.html, it says:

 

IMPORTANT: Applicants may only apply to one single degree program or one concurrent degree program per admission term. You will not be able to change your program, after you selected it and created an application account. If you select a program in error, contact the respective department.

 

Your individual case may be different and in fact, I think a lot of grad admission is case-by-case so your best bet is probably to wait and see what the departments you are applying to will say. In my case, it was not a huge problem to apply to only one program, because some programs allow their students to work with professors that are formally affiliated with a different department. Sometimes, profs may be affiliated with two departments (one full affiliation and one adjunct affiliation) which makes it easier for e.g. astronomy grad students who do planetary research to work with a professor that is in the earth sciences department. When I talked to profs at these schools, they basically said that since I'm allowed to work with people from outside the department (with approval) then which department I apply to should be decided based on which degree requirements (and thus training) I wish to follow and where I want to have an office etc.

 

However this is only true assuming that the two labs you are interested in are actually related in some way, like in my case where my research interest is applying astronomy/physics knowledge to solve planetary science problems so I could potentially fit in both places. If you are interested in applying to two unrelated programs because you aren't sure what your interest is, then this may not be possible and you might have to make a choice at this point. But, again, this is really dependent on each case so wait and see what each of the programs say!

[Lyapunov]

Thanks Physwimic and TakeruK. 

TakeruK: Yes, I am applying to two different and quite tangential fields of research. I've worked on both topics equally and was therefore planning to apply to universities that have worked on any of these topics.

 

Since the program I'm more interested in applying to is the one I tried to start second, I guess my best bet is to ask the admissions department to change the program on my online application.