GRE/GPA

[chandramoulipalit]

well.... i am an international student with a GPA of 2.92...but my other scores are (as i believe)way above the average and i have excellent recommendations...

these are my details...

GRE score verbal 700 quant 800 AW 4.0

TOEFL 113/120

have done 2 undergraduate projects and a summer internship at University of Colorado, Boulder.

What do u guys think about my chance of getting into a gud grad school??

[DrFaustus666]

well.... i am an international student with a GPA of 2.92...but my other scores are (as i believe)way above the average and i have excellent recommendations...

these are my details...

GRE score verbal 700 quant 800 AW 4.0

TOEFL 113/120

have done 2 undergraduate projects and a summer internship at University of Colorado, Boulder.

What do u guys think about my chance of getting into a gud grad school??

From which university did you earn the 2.92 ? If it's from a very strong school (and one that does NOT inflate grades) then I'd say your application is very competitive.

If those conditions are not the case, I'd suggest, as many others have in this forum, that you work your butt off to get the best possible Statement of Purpose; that you explain any mitigating circumstances that contributed to your GPA (for example, if you got mononucleosis in your sophomore year and were basically out of class for six weeks straight); and if you can wrangle a recommendation from someone who's very well known in your field, that would be a help too.

Good luck!

[chandramoulipalit]

Thanx DrFaustu for ur help. Well i have earned the GPA of 2.92 in a school called Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Bombay, India. Dunno whether u know bt it or not...it was recently reported at par with UMich in engineering studies. One of my recommendation letters is from a professor who is very well known and was the editor of a well known internation journal for sometime.

[coaks]

I would be worried if I had a surgeon operate on me who (somehow) got into medical school with a 2.7 undergraduate GPA. Just saying.

You know what they call that surgeon who got into medical school with a 2.7 undergraduate GPA and that general practitioner who finished at the bottom of his class in Low-Tier State School? Doctors. And probably doctors that take your insurance, listed on the insurance company's website with no other credentials than the M.D. next to their name and address.

[DrFaustus666]

You know what they call that surgeon who got into medical school with a 2.7 undergraduate GPA and that general practitioner who finished at the bottom of his class in Low-Tier State School? Doctors. And probably doctors that take your insurance, listed on the insurance company's website with no other credentials than the M.D. next to their name and address.

I've said it before, and now I feel I must say it again.

When graduate school admissions committees choose students to accept and/or fund AND when all of us choose a physician, lawyer, accountant, consultant, or any other kind of service person---in these selections we should look at the whole picture. Does the physician have a state board certification? Does he/she have any malpractice judgments against him/her? What do his/her colleagues and patients (customers, etc) have to say about him/her? Will he/she grant you a (free or essentially free!) interview before you are treated by him/her? How does he/she react if you tell them you'd like a second opinion? And on and on and on.

NOT EVERYBODY has the maturity or judgment to buckle down and decide to "do whatever it takes" to earn a 3.8+ average with all AP courses in high school, then repeat their 3.8+ with all "honors seminars" in a prestigious undergraduate college. That does not and should not exclude them irrevocably from a successful professional career. Though I freely add, a consistent record of low achievement merits examination. But it does, or at least should NOT merit summary rejection.

[gollux]

I just got into a great program at a great school with a 2.68 undergraduate GPA, so I'm here to tell you it can be done! Of course, I'm in area studies, and I only applied for an MA (unsure if want Ph.D/unlikely to get one with said GPA) and thus, I was up against a lot less competition than a PhD applicant or someone in an insanely over-populated and cutthroat field. Still, though, it's not a completely obscure field, and a fair number of people want to be in it.

I know facts are facts and acceptance rates are low for the good programs in any discipline. Nonetheless, it is preposterous to imagine that someone wouldn't perform well in graduate school because he or she had a poor showing in college, and I find it hard to believe that Admissions Committees always believe that is the case. I started college when I was 17. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I didn't particularly care, and stuff happened, and it shows on my transcript. But then I got older, developed interests, had life experiences, pulled my head out of my ass and supported myself, and evidently, became a strong candidate. I did, it must be said, study hard for the GRE, and I did well. I figured that I had to, to compensate for the ol' 2.68.

I've gotten rejected to a couple of programs so far, and I'm sure my GPA was a factor. But then I had the good news. Some programs won't make you pay for your youthful indiscretions forever. So don't lose hope.

Then again, some programs will shun you over and over with a perfect GPA/GRE/experience combo. I only know my story, and it has (knock wood, spit three times) worked out pretty well so far.

Good luck to everyone. This process is awful in a really specific and nerve-shredding way, and it can make you feel worthless. But no one (expect someone who kicks kittens, and a few other kinds of villain) is worthless.

This ends my little PSA.

Edited February 24, 2010 by gollux

[immunogoblin]

not to drag this back up but i should say that my undergrad is a paltry 2.65 to this day, and ive got no excuse for it except that i believe the curriculum is stupid and i simply lack the patience to be that tuned into classes. nonetheless, i am looking at a phd offer in biomedical with full scholarship and 23k/yr stipend at a well ranked institution, not top tier obviously but very solid by all accounts. i did have a strong gre 610v 730q and my letters were strong (wasnt completely wasting the time i could have spent in class, i remained committed in my research), not to mention i made sure to kill my interview. my point is that if you want a phd, apply for one. i dont believe in this idea of clowning around in masters programs when your true aspiration is a phd; i considered this but my mentor advised against it, it may work in some cases but i was advised to ante up and target what i really wanted, just pull out all the stops and hope for a hit. others may not be as lucky as i, but i wasnt always lucky myself and regardless, life is short and masters are being viewed more and more as terminal degrees, i feel.

[DrFaustus666]

not to drag this back up but i should say that my undergrad is a paltry 2.65 to this day, and ive got no excuse for it except that i believe the curriculum is stupid and i simply lack the patience to be that tuned into classes. nonetheless, i am looking at a phd offer in biomedical with full scholarship and 23k/yr stipend at a well ranked institution, not top tier obviously but very solid by all accounts. i did have a strong gre 610v 730q and my letters were strong (wasnt completely wasting the time i could have spent in class, i remained committed in my research), not to mention i made sure to kill my interview. my point is that if you want a phd, apply for one. i dont believe in this idea of clowning around in masters programs when your true aspiration is a phd; i considered this but my mentor advised against it, it may work in some cases but i was advised to ante up and target what i really wanted, just pull out all the stops and hope for a hit. others may not be as lucky as i, but i wasnt always lucky myself and regardless, life is short and masters are being viewed more and more as terminal degrees, i feel.

[DrFaustus666]

not to drag this back up but i should say that my undergrad is a paltry 2.65 to this day, and ive got no excuse for it except that i believe the curriculum is stupid and i simply lack the patience to be that tuned into classes. nonetheless, i am looking at a phd offer in biomedical with full scholarship and 23k/yr stipend at a well ranked institution, not top tier obviously but very solid by all accounts. i did have a strong gre 610v 730q and my letters were strong (wasnt completely wasting the time i could have spent in class, i remained committed in my research), not to mention i made sure to kill my interview. my point is that if you want a phd, apply for one. i dont believe in this idea of clowning around in masters programs when your true aspiration is a phd; i considered this but my mentor advised against it, it may work in some cases but i was advised to ante up and target what i really wanted, just pull out all the stops and hope for a hit. others may not be as lucky as i, but i wasnt always lucky myself and regardless, life is short and masters are being viewed more and more as terminal degrees, i feel.

Hi Immunoglobulin and anybody else who might have felt intimidated by all these people with 4.0 GPAs from top undergraduates programs, and 1500+ GREs (or 770+ GMATs),

Thanks for your very encouraging news ! And (geez I forget my manners at times !) A HEARTY CONGRATULATIONS! Best of luck in your program, work hard, study hard, and so on.

It must feel really validating and encouraging, I would think, to be "in" even when many supposedly knowlegegabele and well-informed people would tell you that you have little chance --- or at the very least, you can count on PAYING YOUR OWN WAY through school

THREE CHEERS FOR YOU!

John

[cpu90]

I've said it before, and now I feel I must say it again.

When graduate school admissions committees choose students to accept and/or fund AND when all of us choose a physician, lawyer, accountant, consultant, or any other kind of service person---in these selections we should look at the whole picture. Does the physician have a state board certification? Does he/she have any malpractice judgments against him/her? What do his/her colleagues and patients (customers, etc) have to say about him/her? Will he/she grant you a (free or essentially free!) interview before you are treated by him/her? How does he/she react if you tell them you'd like a second opinion? And on and on and on.

NOT EVERYBODY has the maturity or judgment to buckle down and decide to "do whatever it takes" to earn a 3.8+ average with all AP courses in high school, then repeat their 3.8+ with all "honors seminars" in a prestigious undergraduate college. That does not and should not exclude them irrevocably from a successful professional career. Though I freely add, a consistent record of low achievement merits examination. But it does, or at least should NOT merit summary rejection.

Hi,

I think you guys are all really stating what admission committees SHOULD be doing, by considering the upward trend of the undergrad grades, other accomplishments, and to see the whole picture before making the decision of admitting x or y. I agree, this should be done by the committees, but in the committee meetings, the pre-screening secretaries, in the real world, they try to do that and it is often difficult. With that said, a low undergrad GPA will inevitably doom your high tier grad school (phd, or even master's) dream, even if you do well on all other things. This is just the fact.

I'll run down how it works when a department accepts students and review applications:

1. the graduate secretary, and the graduate coordinators gather each and every application, put together the materials, file them and organize the data.

2. shortly after the application deadline is reached, the graduate secretary does the pre-screening by discarding applications that do not meet the minimum requirement to reduce the number of applications that they will actually review in more detail. What are the minimum requirement? undergrad GPA, GRE, and TOEFL for international applicants. Most of the schools keep the undergrad GPA threshold at 3.0, TOEFL at between 80 to 100 iBT, GRE of at least 1100 (competetive schools' GRE threshold is usually at 1250). If an application fails to meet any ONE of the 3 requirement, it is discarded, rejected before further review.

3. The pile of applications that have passed the pre-screening, will be sent to different professors of different area of focus in the department, depending on what the application specified as the intended area of focus.

4. the professors go through the remaining applications to see which students he wants as his RA, and recommend those students for admission to the graduate committee.

5. if there are still open spots available after the professors have made their RA selections, the department will offer TA (or no funding) to the selected applicants from the remaining application pool by holding a late round of graduate admission committee meeting. This is done twice if such department keeps a waiting list.

Now, from the above steps, it is easy to see that if your undergraduate GPA is low (below 3.0), your chance of getting into any decent graduate school is slim, because such a person would be cut from the very first pre-screening phase, simply because it is impossible for departments to review each and every application in detail, they must reduce the review to a realistic number before they start to actually review the applications. Take computer science for example, it is a popular field and for many schools they receive over 3000 applications for phd+ms (take maryland for example, this year they had around 2000 applications for MS and 1000 for phd. I don't know about MS's situation but I know that they sent out 100 offers for phd, expecting 30 to 40 of which to accept the offer. I know because I called and asked...and myself being one of the applicant and on their phd waiting list.)

I've posted my 2010 application result on the computer science section of the forum, but I will describe it again here: I also have very low undergraduate gpa, overall was 2.71, with my major gpa even lower...maybe 2.5? I am a computer science major, and I really didn't care about school much, I started to work hard from 3rd and 4th year after being suspended at the end of my 1st year due to gpa below 2.0...I started to work hard because I was doing an internship at a nearby medical school as a programmer, and the research that they did really intrigued me and motivated me to work hard and continue my education.

But the fact is that with a very bad foundation (what do you expect from a guy who got gpa of 1.9 from freshman year, and maybe around 2.3 from sophomore year? this indicates I didn't learn much and my knowledge/practice was very limited), it is very difficult to do well for the later years, I had to re-learn my 1st and 2nd year material and really change my life style. It wasn't easy, and I averaged maybe 3.3 or 3.5 for my 3rd and 4th year, but when you average those all together, it was still just a lowly 2.71 cumulatively.

I didn't want to apply to schools at that point, cuz I think nobody will accept me anyway. my own school ended up accepted me into their MS program with probation: I had to keep my gpa above 3.0 or I'm out. I managed to graduate from it with 3.89 GPA, and an graduate student award that was given to 2 students out of the entire department.

I started my 2nd MS to try to boost my application further, I am about to graduate from my 2nd MS this May with GPA of 3.56, with 1 journal and 4 conference publications. So I applied to PhD programs a few months ago. Guess what, I got accepted into just Stony Brook, rejected from 10+ other schools, wait listed on 3, and no-reply from 5 (probably will turn into rejections eventually).

by the way my GRE is 770 math 630 verbal 4.5 writing.

I've done everythign else right. But my undergraduate 2.71 is more of a problem than any of you can imagine. as nice as you guys are, saying there can be any reason that causes a nice boy to have a low undergrad GPA, the grad committees don't care. There are thousdans and thousands of applications from around the world, VERY MANY of them are good students through out their lives, consistent through out their academic years, no mistakes ever made. The graduate schools have more than enough of those perfect students to choose from, and the sad truth is they will like those guys and pick them...and for people like me, we really are just stuck being wait listed, or admitted to ok schools, with our undergrad gpa haunting us the entire life. The depatments don't have the time to understand why we messed up at the beginning, nor do they care, they are like a business that they admit students who demonstrate consistency and potential for success, and they usually get more than enough of those applicants since people from around the world apply each year.

undergrad gpa, like the GRE and TOEFL, is the pre-screening selection criteria. They don't look down at you, they don't think anything of you, they just discard you if you don't score higher than their minimum threshold hold simply because they cannot and are not able to physically review the initial 3000+ amount of applications that come in, and they have to have a way to reduce this number down to a realistic sized pool, and the best way they can think of is undergrad gpa/gre/toefl combination. I can't say that this is wrong, but this is just the sad truth that if we mess up undergrad, we seriously need to put 100x the work and try to get lucky..

[DrFaustus666]

Hi,

I think you guys are all really stating what admission committees SHOULD be doing, by considering the upward trend of the undergrad grades, other accomplishments, and to see the whole picture before making the decision of admitting x or y. I agree, this should be done by the committees, but in the committee meetings, the pre-screening secretaries, in the real world, they try to do that and it is often difficult. With that said, a low undergrad GPA will inevitably doom your high tier grad school (phd, or even master's) dream, even if you do well on all other things. This is just the fact.

I'll run down how it works when a department accepts students and review applications:

1. the graduate secretary, and the graduate coordinators gather each and every application, put together the materials, file them and organize the data.

2. shortly after the application deadline is reached, the graduate secretary does the pre-screening by discarding applications that do not meet the minimum requirement to reduce the number of applications that they will actually review in more detail. What are the minimum requirement? undergrad GPA, GRE, and TOEFL for international applicants. Most of the schools keep the undergrad GPA threshold at 3.0, TOEFL at between 80 to 100 iBT, GRE of at least 1100 (competetive schools' GRE threshold is usually at 1250). If an application fails to meet any ONE of the 3 requirement, it is discarded, rejected before further review.

3. The pile of applications that have passed the pre-screening, will be sent to different professors of different area of focus in the department, depending on what the application specified as the intended area of focus.

4. the professors go through the remaining applications to see which students he wants as his RA, and recommend those students for admission to the graduate committee.

5. if there are still open spots available after the professors have made their RA selections, the department will offer TA (or no funding) to the selected applicants from the remaining application pool by holding a late round of graduate admission committee meeting. This is done twice if such department keeps a waiting list.

Now, from the above steps, it is easy to see that if your undergraduate GPA is low (below 3.0), your chance of getting into any decent graduate school is slim, because such a person would be cut from the very first pre-screening phase, simply because it is impossible for departments to review each and every application in detail, they must reduce the review to a realistic number before they start to actually review the applications. Take computer science for example, it is a popular field and for many schools they receive over 3000 applications for phd+ms (take maryland for example, this year they had around 2000 applications for MS and 1000 for phd. I don't know about MS's situation but I know that they sent out 100 offers for phd, expecting 30 to 40 of which to accept the offer. I know because I called and asked...and myself being one of the applicant and on their phd waiting list.)

I've posted my 2010 application result on the computer science section of the forum, but I will describe it again here: I also have very low undergraduate gpa, overall was 2.71, with my major gpa even lower...maybe 2.5? I am a computer science major, and I really didn't care about school much, I started to work hard from 3rd and 4th year after being suspended at the end of my 1st year due to gpa below 2.0...I started to work hard because I was doing an internship at a nearby medical school as a programmer, and the research that they did really intrigued me and motivated me to work hard and continue my education.

But the fact is that with a very bad foundation (what do you expect from a guy who got gpa of 1.9 from freshman year, and maybe around 2.3 from sophomore year? this indicates I didn't learn much and my knowledge/practice was very limited), it is very difficult to do well for the later years, I had to re-learn my 1st and 2nd year material and really change my life style. It wasn't easy, and I averaged maybe 3.3 or 3.5 for my 3rd and 4th year, but when you average those all together, it was still just a lowly 2.71 cumulatively.

I didn't want to apply to schools at that point, cuz I think nobody will accept me anyway. my own school ended up accepted me into their MS program with probation: I had to keep my gpa above 3.0 or I'm out. I managed to graduate from it with 3.89 GPA, and an graduate student award that was given to 2 students out of the entire department.

I started my 2nd MS to try to boost my application further, I am about to graduate from my 2nd MS this May with GPA of 3.56, with 1 journal and 4 conference publications. So I applied to PhD programs a few months ago. Guess what, I got accepted into just Stony Brook, rejected from 10+ other schools, wait listed on 3, and no-reply from 5 (probably will turn into rejections eventually).

by the way my GRE is 770 math 630 verbal 4.5 writing.

I've done everythign else right. But my undergraduate 2.71 is more of a problem than any of you can imagine. as nice as you guys are, saying there can be any reason that causes a nice boy to have a low undergrad GPA, the grad committees don't care. There are thousdans and thousands of applications from around the world, VERY MANY of them are good students through out their lives, consistent through out their academic years, no mistakes ever made. The graduate schools have more than enough of those perfect students to choose from, and the sad truth is they will like those guys and pick them...and for people like me, we really are just stuck being wait listed, or admitted to ok schools, with our undergrad gpa haunting us the entire life. The depatments don't have the time to understand why we messed up at the beginning, nor do they care, they are like a business that they admit students who demonstrate consistency and potential for success, and they usually get more than enough of those applicants since people from around the world apply each year.

undergrad gpa, like the GRE and TOEFL, is the pre-screening selection criteria. They don't look down at you, they don't think anything of you, they just discard you if you don't score higher than their minimum threshold hold simply because they cannot and are not able to physically review the initial 3000+ amount of applications that come in, and they have to have a way to reduce this number down to a realistic sized pool, and the best way they can think of is undergrad gpa/gre/toefl combination. I can't say that this is wrong, but this is just the sad truth that if we mess up undergrad, we seriously need to put 100x the work and try to get lucky..

You wrote:

I can't say that this is wrong, but this is just the sad truth that if we mess up undergrad, we seriously need to put 100x the work and try to get lucky..

I work for "the government" ... and when we hire somebody for a permanent full time position (as opposed to temporary or contract positions, which are generally easy to obtain), the situation is very very similar to what you describe: several layers of secretaries and assistants "weed you out" before you even have a chance at talking to a manager.

But there are always outliers, there are always "a few good (wo)men" who have the initiative to DO the 100x extra work to get in.

I did not say, nor do I deceive myself into thinking it is easy for a nice guy with a crummy UGPA to get in. I only said it was POSSIBLE and NOT IMPOSSIBLE if you (anyone) have enough drive and can withstand setbacks. You may never be admitted into the inner sancta of MIT or Harvard or Stanford or whatever your dream school is, but you can pursue your dream, possibly with reduced expectations (e.g., no funding).

Absolutely correct. To get in via the NORMAL FRONT DOOR ENTRANCE is tough and one's application must be near-perfect. But there are a lot of side doors, at least in our environment. And I'm naive enough to think it must be that way in academia too.

Wishful thinking? Naiveté? Just plain stupidity? Maybe. But I hope not.

Best wishes to all.

[cpu90]

You wrote:

I can't say that this is wrong, but this is just the sad truth that if we mess up undergrad, we seriously need to put 100x the work and try to get lucky..

I work for "the government" ... and when we hire somebody for a permanent full time position (as opposed to temporary or contract positions, which are generally easy to obtain), the situation is very very similar to what you describe: several layers of secretaries and assistants "weed you out" before you even have a chance at talking to a manager.

But there are always outliers, there are always "a few good (wo)men" who have the initiative to DO the 100x extra work to get in.

I did not say, nor do I deceive myself into thinking it is easy for a nice guy with a crummy UGPA to get in. I only said it was POSSIBLE and NOT IMPOSSIBLE if you (anyone) have enough drive and can withstand setbacks. You may never be admitted into the inner sancta of MIT or Harvard or Stanford or whatever your dream school is, but you can pursue your dream, possibly with reduced expectations (e.g., no funding).

Absolutely correct. To get in via the NORMAL FRONT DOOR ENTRANCE is tough and one's application must be near-perfect. But there are a lot of side doors, at least in our environment. And I'm naive enough to think it must be that way in academia too.

Wishful thinking? Naiveté? Just plain stupidity? Maybe. But I hope not.

Best wishes to all.

Totally agreed..

not impossible, there's still chance, I got into stony brook and penn state with full funding and fellowship (although rejected from everywhere else) but I still made it, but it's tough, and I've given almost that 100x extra work.....but the setback is just extremely real to me because I am the guy with the low UGPA who tries to make it and gets that slap in the face ...