How to get in MIT/Stanford/Berkeley Engineering?

GShine_1989
Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:20:49 +0000

If you haven’t read this before, do so: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf

It’s specific to CS, but it’s widely regarded as one of the best grad school applications advice for elite programs (in CS, CMU matches MIT/Stanford/Berkeley).

MIT/Berkeley/Stanford are saturated by high stats applications so I would guess it goes something like this: Letters >= Research Experience > GPA >>> GRE (nearly irrelevant; mostly used to cross off internationals that do horrible in the verbal/writing sections).

Grad school advice articles tend to be dismissive of GPA, often stating something like everything above 3.5/3.6 is treated equally, but the fact is that the average GPAs for PhD-track admissions is high at these 3 schools and that speaks for itself. I do think a 3.9 vs. 3.7 matters to some degree. But in the end, letters from professors that have supervised your research are far and away what will make you truly competitive. Remember that it’s professors, not professional admissions committees that make admissions decisions at the graduate level. They trust the word of other (American) professors more than any other component of the application.

If I had to assign some sort of weighting to PhD-track admissions, I would say: letters 50%, research experience 30%, GPA 15%, and 5% for GRE/TA experience/non-research work experience/everything else. This assumes no single component of the application is far below standards and it’s only for applicants who finish their B.S. at U.S. universities. For applicants with an M.S., publications are expected. For internationals (with a B.S. or M.S.), it’s all rather screwy for a variety of reasons (in particular, the quality of their institution may be unknown and so it’s hard to contextualize the letters or GPA).

In PhD-track admissions, the more unsure about the PhD you are in your personal statement, the worse off you’ll be. They’ll specifically look for your reasons for pursuing a PhD in your statement (typically a student covers this by stating that they love teaching or that they tried research and loved it). Displaying doubt (i.e. merely hinting that you may want to do a PhD or not mentioning your intentions/reasons at all) is usually a bad, bad idea. It’s your call how you want to balance that vs. being honest. Or just simplify things by going for terminal MS programs (I don’t know about ME, but in EE only Stanford has that; MIT/Berkeley have only PhD-track admissions). You could always apply for the PhD later.