2010 Applicant Profiles and Results

[Night0]

I used this website a lot to check on things, so I will also add my stats here for ur reference. I will try to be as detail as possible because I don't really care about this kind of privacy anymore since my application process has been over. But seriously, most ppl who post here have pretty good stats (better than mine, at least GPA wise).

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Undergrad Institution: Top 3 Engineering (Berkeley)

Major(s): Chemical Engineering (ChE)

Minor(s): Mechanical Engineering (ME)

GPA in Major: 3.89

Overall GPA: 3.78 (Upper Division GPA: 3.93)

Length of Degree: 4 years

Position in Class: between top 5% and top 15% (my guess)

Type of Student: Chinese American (Immigrant, came here at the age of 13 in 2001)

GRE Scores:

Q: 800 (94%)

V: 630 (90%)

W: 4.0 (41% or 43%), lol

Research Experience: 1 summer research as a data analyst for NASA's RHESSI (solar flares photons emission) project (basically, I just extract some data and look for patterns); another research under a Chemical Engineering professor, who also taught me 3 classes, in modeling of a mass transfer experiment since last summer.

Recommenders: a "did well in class" letter of rec from a ChE professor; another one from ME professor, whom I have taken 2 classes with, (good to great); last one from the ChE professor I did research with (and 3 classes). I also think I had a great statement of purpose. (took Kaplan GRE prep and admission consulting)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Tau Beta Pi; College of Chemistry, Melvin J. Heger Horst Undergraduate Fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: One of the leaders in ChemE car; also an officer of Chinese People Union (dunno if this applies); no internships/jobs (I really need some~)

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Immigrant (Bilingual) from a low Chinese socioeconomic family; Acquainted with fencing, boxing, Taekwondo, and Judo

Applying for [ MS ] at:

Accepted to all three masters programs, no aid (see my signature)

Choosing between Stanford MSME and MIT MEM, helpful suggestions with explanations much appreciated!~

Edited March 16, 2010 by Night0

[awri]

Undergrad Institution: Small Provate school.

Major(s): Physics and Computer Science

Minor(s): Math

GPA in Major: 3.2

Overall GPA: 3.0

Length of Degree: 4 years

Position in Class: Probably average

Type of Student: Domestic

GRE Scores:

Q: 740

V: 450

W: 4.0

Research Experience: 1 year research proj under a comp sci prof

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Nope

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Nope

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: 4 year athlete

Applying [ PhD ] at:

Mississippi State - Mech Engineering (phD) - accepted - Full RA

Clemson University - Mech Engineering - No response

University of Florida - MEch Engineering - Lost application? worse than a rejection lol

Goes to show even the little people have a place somewhere...even if its not at a top 10 school.

[Msimeth]

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Undergrad Institution: Small, well respected undergraduate.

Major(s): Electrical Engineering

Minor(s): Mathematics

GPA in Major: 3.98

Overall GPA: 3.95

Length of Degree: 3 Yr BS

Position in Class: Top 10

Type of Student: Domestic/Male/Caucasian

GRE Scores:

Q: 780

V: 660

W: 4.0

Research Experience: None

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:

Full Tuition Scholarshop

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, organization officer etc...)

Tutor

Industry Internship

Student Governement: VP

Honor Society: President

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help:

Applying for PhD at:

UW-Madison - ECE - Accepted/Jan/TA & fellowship

UMN-Twin Cities - ECE - Accepted/Feb/TA & fellowship

MIT - ECE - Rejected

Stanford - ECE - Rejected

UIUC - ECE - Accepted/March/TA

UMich-Ann Arbor - ECE - Accepted/April 4/No Funding

CMU - ECE - Waiting

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[samnicaise]

Undergrad Institution: Typical large state institution with regionally reputable engineering

Major(s): EE

Minor(s): none

GPA in Major: 4.0

Overall GPA: 3.93

Length of Degree: 5

Position in Class: Near top

Type of Student: White, American, Male

GRE Scores:

Q: 800

V: 590

W: 4.5

Research Experience: 8 semesters of part-time, on-semester, research in EE. Lots of undergraduate-specific posters and presentations. No papers.

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Goldwater Scholar, Astronaut Scholar, TBP Scholar

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Tons of on-campus leadership. 3 semesters of engineering coop at 1 large and 1 small company.

Fellowships: NSF: Y DOE: N DOD: N Hertz: Semifinalist

Applied for PhD at:

MIT EE - Accepted with internal fellowship and currently attending

Stanford MSE - Nope

Georgia Tech EE - Accepted with RA

Michigan EE - Nope

Purdue ChE - Accepted with RA

CalTech MatSc - Interview, but eventually denied

Maryland ChE - Accepted

Delaware EE - Accepted

I have a huge comment to people applying to engineering related grad school based on my experience. All along the process, I was wondering if I was applying to too many schools. I had no intention to actually visit them all, and each applications consumed an nontrivial amount of time (as well as money). All of my recommenders told me that I would have no problem getting into any school I wanted (as any supportive faculty should say). Obviously, this was not the case. Do not be afraid to apply to many schools. In many cases, there is no decent explanation to why a school admits one student over another. It is sometimes a roll of the dice (not literally, heaven forbid, but you know what I mean). Therefore, religiously research potential programs, but don't limit yourself. There are too many intelligent, hard working, talented applicants to go around.

Two other comments: Don't be afraid to be technically rigorous on any applications essay that is supposed to be technical. Obviously, make sure you aren't saying something that isn't physically impossible (as a prof to help you out), but make it a point to be an expert on that small singular part of our physical world (obviously relate it to the real world and give it some context as an intro and conclusion). Also, look for recommenders who can attest to your strengths as compared to the students also applying in competition with your application. Many times, the review committee will have not have the experience to relate to your major/school/experiences/professors/etc in order to make a good comparison. Your recommenders can provide some relative comparison which might be absent from your application.

Congrats and best of luck to the incoming grad class everywhere Our world will surely need us.

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[Pulkit Goyal]

Undergrad Institution: IIIT Allahabad, India (Among top 10 institutes in teaching in field of IT)

Major(s): IT

Overall GPA: 9.32/10

Length of Degree: 4 years

Position in Class: Top 10 in college (Top in class)

Type of Student: Domestic

Blog: http://pulkitgoyal.wordpress.com/

Research Experience: (At your school or elsewhere? What field? How much time? Any publications (Mth author out of N?) or conference talks etc...) Research internship at TU Dortmund (as a DAAD Scholar), Research internship at IIIT Hyderabad

Publications:

Fast and Enhanced Algorithm for Exemplar Based Image Inpainting: Anupam Agrawal, Pulkit Goyal and Sapan Diwakar, In The 4thPacific-Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology, PSIVT2010, Singapore (2010).

Devanagari Character Recognition towards Natural Human Computer Interaction: Pulkit Goyal, Sapan Diwakar, Anupam Agrawal, In IndiaHCI conference, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India (2010).

Transliteration among Indian Languages using WX Notation: Rohit Gupta, Pulkit Goyal, Sapan Diwakar, In KONVENS 2010, 10.Conference on Natural Language Processing, Saarbrucken, Germany (2010).

Awards/Honors/Recognitions: (Within your school or outside?)

DAAD WISE Scholar, Awarded scholarship thrice for first rank in class, Sun Campus Ambassador, OSUM Campus Representative, first prize at Young IT Professionals Awards

Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, organization officer etc...)

Industrial Intern at Elca Informatique SA, Lausanne Switzerland,

Job Offer from D.E. Shaw Software Co., Hyderebad (12 lpa)

Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help:

Member of ACM and CSI.

Applying for [ MS ] or [ PhD ] at:

MS at EPFL - Computer Science - Admitted, no funding

PhD at EPFL - Computer Science - Pending

What are my chances of getting the PhD?