Having funding influence admission?

[CHBE_M]

I have external funding  for Ph.D up to 5 years (tuitions+stipend), but I have low GPA (3.3 undergrad) and (3.5 Master's) GRE (157 Q and 147 V). In your opinion, how would admission committees  view such scanario where there is a good side and a bad side. I do, however, have good Master's research experience which impressed the POI during an interview.

 

[TakeruK]

It definitely won't hurt you. And it may depend on each program, but I can't see any good program accepting a student simply because they have external funding.

Note: even if you have full tuition and stipend funding, you may still pose some financial cost to the department due to overheads charged, unless your employer will really cover everything. In that case, your main cost will be the time and energy for someone to supervise/advise you.

As fuzzy said, most programs will make decisions entirely on merit. That said, most programs are also able to get more qualified applicants than they have space for (but it could depend on each year). Most programs will have some process where they review applications and decide which ones qualify for admission but they also have to take their ability to fund these students and therefore have to also determine which students actually get an offer (with funding). Depending on the field, there may not be very many self/externally funded students so these two steps may just be one step.

So, having external funding can change your admission decision if you are in the category of students that they would be interested/willing to admit but happen to be low enough on the ranking list that you were not competitive enough to be awarded funding. With your own external funds, as long as there are people willing to spend their time on you, you could get an admission whereas you might not be admitted without the external funds. (i.e. if the main reason you would not have been admitted was monetary rather than merit, then it could make a positive difference). 

Finally, I am not sure where you are and what field you are in, but there are also some specific PhD programs that are designed to build connections between academia and industry and having an employer willing to fund your studies would be pretty great for something like that. I know of some programs in Canada, for example, see Mitacs Accelerate: http://www.mitacs.ca/en/programs/accelerate (you may need to already have an offer to use this but programs that participate in such programs may be interested in a student like you).

[pinoysoc]

5 minutes ago, CHBE_M said:

I have external funding  for Ph.D up to 5 years (tuitions+stipend), but I have low GPA (3.3 undergrad) and (3.5 Master's) GRE (157 Q and 147 V). In your opinion, how would admission committees  view such scanario where there is a good side and a bad side. I do, however, have good Master's research experience which impressed the POI during an interview.

 

What do you mean external funding?

From what I've gathered/understood, you have an outside source that's going to fund your PhD program. From what I know, it doesn't usually have pros and cons. It will make the dispersion of university fellowships/assistantships easier to disperse since you'll be one less person to worry about. I don't think this situation warrants you an upper-hand so to say with admissions committees. Did I read your post correctly? 

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[CHBE_M]

By external fudning I mean, my employer will pay tuitions and a monthly stipend for the entire duration, so basically I will work for a professor without costing him anything except for research equipments.

[fuzzylogician]

This may depend on field, but in my field, at least, most schools I know explicitly say that external funding does not affect admissions decisions. Those are made exclusively based on merit. I'm sure it won't hurt you, though. 

[cr615]

14 hours ago, CHBE_M said:

I have external funding  for Ph.D up to 5 years (tuitions+stipend), but I have low GPA (3.3 undergrad) and (3.5 Master's) GRE (157 Q and 147 V). In your opinion, how would admission committees  view such scanario where there is a good side and a bad side. I do, however, have good Master's research experience which impressed the POI during an interview.

 

No and Yes (kinda. External funding won’t improve your individual application. Assuming you and another candidate are equally qualified, your external funding won’t put you over the edge. 

 

However there is another, more positive way to look at this. Admission is a game for many schools. For example, they will offer three (assuming they have 3 GAships or fellowships to give) people admission hoping that they will all accept. If the 3rd person goes elsewhere and tells them with plenty of time, they can move on and offer admission to a 4th candidate. By that pint , the 4th person will have already decided to go elsewhere or forego graduate school altogether. Or perhaps all three people initially adjusted accepted and the 4th person was rejected altogether.

The 4th person who received admission (whether he accepted or not) was qualified enough to receive admission to the program, but when making funding decision, the other theee were a bit more qualified. 

The fact that you have external funding might make the department say “oh, we can admit all 4 at the same, since we will only be giving away the three GAships we have”. In that sense it improves you probability of getting in, but does not make you a more competitive applicant per se.