Grades or Research Papers?

[alive1208]

Hello everyone

I was just looking for universities these days and just our of curiosity, I have a very general question. For applying to an engineering PhD program, Which one of these has a better chance of acceptance at universities like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley or caltech? :

a) someone with department rank one in undergrad major (really high GPA) but no publications, and moderate recommendation letters.

or

b ) someone who is in top 10% of the class (not rank 1) but with 3 research publications in some top journals of the field, and great recommendation letters.

You can assume that rest all factors are same for both. 

Edited August 17, 2015 by alive1208

[Eigen]

Since you're talking about top 10% vs Rank 1 (I'm assuming this is something specific? It's not a common delineation in US schools), the second candidate will be far better. 

But that's because you're comparing 3 publications to none, and great recommendation letters to moderate letters. 

GPA helps, it's very low on the list of important qualifiers. 

That said, there's also a false dilemma that many prospective graduate students set up when they ask "which is more important". For top schools, the answer is "it's all important". Top schools will take someone with a great GRE, a good publication record, and great letters over people outstanding in one category but lacking in others.

[alive1208]

Since you're talking about top 10% vs Rank 1 (I'm assuming this is something specific? It's not a common delineation in US schools), the second candidate will be far better. 

But that's because you're comparing 3 publications to none, and great recommendation letters to moderate letters. 

GPA helps, it's very low on the list of important qualifiers. 

That said, there's also a false dilemma that many prospective graduate students set up when they ask "which is more important". For top schools, the answer is "it's all important". Top schools will take someone with a great GRE, a good publication record, and great letters over people outstanding in one category but lacking in others.

That sounds logical  Thanks for the response..