Admission to PhD EECS/EE at Berkeley/Stan/MIT for Fall 2011

GShine_1989
Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:14:15 +0000

Nevertheless, I don’t see any reason not to give this a try as I have seen many MS holders with lower research achievements get into stanford.

Yes, Stanford is your best shot. The others don’t like those trying to “move up” and are more or less a waste of an application fee in my opinion.



one question btw: does anyone know for a fact if admission committees at stan/cal/mit ask/contact applicant’s non-recommender advisors/co-advisors for evaluation? Has it happened to anyone you know?

Absolutely. It’s considered extremely bizarre and suspicious to not have your current advisor as a letter writer. I wasn’t kidding about letters outweighing everything else.

[The official EE Graduate Admission Results 2009 Thread - The GradCafe Forums](The official EE Graduate Admission Results 2009 Thread - Engineering - The GradCafe Forums)



My current research advisor is pretty well connected there, I didn’t use him as a letter writer because when deadlines rolled around we were still just starting to work together, but I mentioned our research plans in my SOP. A professor from MIT who knows my professor contacted him basically asking for some feedback on me because they are doing admissions.

…

Anyhow, I feel a little grimy about what is happening with MIT because I filled out their application completely and had all my recommendations sent in so why should they be seeking out other recommendations for me? I would assume that they aren’t google’ing every random professor mentioned in an SOP who didn’t submit a letter and asking for feedback. There is a sort of buddy-buddy thing going on here that is pretty unfair to those out of the loop.