<p>I am interested in your opinion on what I should be focusing on and what I can do to prepare for grad school given my unique situation.</p>
<p>I recently completed my undergrad degree. This is after having withdrew from UC Berkeley many years ago due to years of stress and financial troubles.</p>
<p>An impetus to complete this degree was because I have been working at a job where my colleagues are often PhDs and part of my title is scientist. I specialize in computer graphics but am underqualified for my role and wish to earn it. For example, I have no papers published.</p>
<p>I have a 2.0 GPA and no professor to write recommendation letters. My only strength is the research centric nature of my current job, along with my technical projects, which certainly received the interests of various companies and steadily improved my career prospects.</p>
<p>That said, other than standardized tests, what do you think should be priorities to prepare for graduate school?</p>
<p>-take graduate level classes to improve my grades? These are often only offered at elite universities and is a catch 22 situation for me. This is not to mention the likely remoteness of a class far away from my day job in Michigan.</p>
<p>-Work for free for interested professors to aid their research? Since my day job is already research oriented, with a professor for equivalent work I would be rewarded with a recommendation letter rather than salary.</p>
<p>-Continue to focus on my computer research projects at work? Essentially, applying for graduate school I would be boasting my accomplishment like applying for any real job.</p>
<p>I would focus on the first two of the three options.</p>
<p>Grades definitely need to increase, as most graduate schools require a 3.0 average GPA. If you can show an improvement after returning to school and make it apparent you had special circumstances, they will think more favorably of you then if you don’t attempt to increase your GPA. </p>
<p>Additionally, working for academia is very different than working in industry. Many professors for graduate school like applicants to have worked in an academic environment under a different professor in order to be assured that they are capable of carrying out graduate work. </p>
<p>I would focus less on your job, as you probably will not gain much more than a marginal amount of experience than you already have.</p>
<p>Personally, working for professors for free seems the only viable option for me.</p>
<p>Other than the extreme focus in academia, what are other key differences that I would be lacking coming from a industry R&D environment?</p>
<p>Through out my undergrad years I have been caught in a vicious cycle of bad grades inducing lower confidence -> bad grades again. I only recovered after withdrawing and self studied topics I liked and getting employed in fields I liked. How can this be worded into special circumstances?</p>
<p>I guess it was stupid of me to have completed the degree in such a hurry this past semester while working full time. I got a B in an honors supervised undergrad research class, not pass in another undergrad research class, and a C in a lower division stat class.</p>
<p>However, if I have not finished the degree I would be very disadvantaged in this economic down town if I get laid off. Certainly I don’t want to cringe every time on the ‘do you have a degree’ question during interviews.</p>
<p>I doubt that any reputable university will take you with a 2.0. You need to improve your GPA. The courses you take do not have to be graduate level; you can take those in graduate school. If you can’t demonstrate good grades at the undergraduate level, you don’t belong in grad school.</p>
<p>I would try to do masters at some poor university with low selectivity and do amazing.
Also, I think the problem is that, you want to get your Phd for work, not for academia. I keep hearing that professors want those students who will do research in the future, and won’t pursue the degree for personal reasons.</p>
<p>I am confused a little. I also read from many places that GPA is not as important as research experience. Or is this only true for GPA above 3.0? </p>
<p>Considering that I have 4+ years of 2.x GPA with me (albeit mostly math courses), how many courses do you think I should ace from now on prior to applying graduate school? Perhaps one year, two semesters worth with three to four courses per semester?</p>
<p>I was hoping the nature of my R&D job can be the criteria I can be judged on considering research is an important aspect of grad school. Then again, previous poster suggested industry R&D is still different from grad school R&D; I am eager for some clarifications.</p>
<p>I get the impression that you imply research in academia is considered real research, and some professors would frown on people who pursue research in an industry setting like myself?</p>
<p>Regardless of the academia or industry, I am grateful of being in any job where I can learn a lot like I am now. </p>
<p>Perhaps selfishly, I want to ensure in the future I can be employed in similarly interesting positions. Though I am considered a computer scientist now, without a masters/PhD I am less certain of such prospects in the future.</p>
<p>Thus I feel though the reasons are personal, the intention to learn and discovery is the same wether in academia or industry.</p>
<p>salame, there’s no need to get out the sword and shield: I don’t think slashpsi (and/or NightHawk) said anything insulting. The reality is that a lot of professors are ivory-tower-bound bigots who are proud to be tragically underpaid. On the other hand, there are plenty of CS professors who recognize the integral role of industry in the field. Find them. Your fellow PhD’s might have had encouraging supervisors–have you asked them for opinions on which schools would be a good fit, or what they did to prepare for grad school admission? They probably know you better than anyone sitting in front of a computer screen here, who only know about you what you’ve provided in the disparaging comments you’ve made about yourself.</p>
<p>Also, no offense, but I don’t think your situation is terribly unique. Read through the threads and you’ll find hordes of comrades who didn’t do well in the undergrad years but love their subject and want to pursue graduate studies. I’ve had professors make speeches to the class about their not-so-great GPA’s and struggles as young students, but here they are now.</p>
<p>I am not a professor, so I cannot tell you for sure what will the one reading your application think. Take a look at the post by starbright. This was one of the opinions I was referring to:</p>
<ol>
<li>We weed out those who don’t know what they want but want a PhD for vague reasons: to avoid getting a job, to buy time, or because they think collecting more or higher degrees can’t hurt. >>>We are not funding your hobby or personal growth!<<<</li>
</ol>
<p>At our school- like a lot of top research schools in many fields- we are looking for future researchers who will publish a lot and impact our field with their discoveries.</p>
<p>So I think you just have to make sure you won’t phrase it in a way: I need this Phd to keep the job, but rather, I need this Phd so I can keep impacting the science.</p>
<p>I meant no offense to anyone. Perhaps I should have padded my question to slashpsi with explicit “this is a request for clarification based on my understanding of your comments”. Unfortunately without it we are seeing amplifying and cascading effects on the negative.</p>
<p>Many people seek advanced degrees to become involved in research jobs as scientists, or perhaps to transition from non-research or less research-centric jobs. I don’t know about other fields, but in mine it is relatively uncommon to be employed in such jobs without advanced degrees. </p>
<p>Hence I am curious of such an arrangement. If there are already examples similar to mine, I would appreciate it if they can be brought to my attention.</p>
<p>No, no. I am not trying to be negative. I just heard from several sources [again, not sure how credible] that it is favored if you plan to do academic research. Thus, saying so might help you get in, while saying that you need it for work will be considered “personal growth” and you want to avoid that to maximize your chances.</p>
<p>It might differ between departments though. i would imagine that industry oriented programs would want some business people which will donate.</p>
<p>No I never thought you are negative. My posts were taken out of context by others. It’s a simple misunderstanding. I justed wanted to know if there is indeed a consensus that industrial R&D is less credible than academic R&D in the eyes of the selection committee.</p>
<p>I read Starbright’s comments you linked and tentatively feel his/her four bad candidate types are probably not me. Ultimately, my interest in computer graphics stem from my longings for the worlds presented by science fictions and fantasy novels and wishing to realize such worlds on the computer screen. Previuosly I have been working in the computer games industry to accomplish just that but managed to transition to my current role to be more mathematically rigorous. And grad school would refine that trajectory.</p>
<p>So no, my interests in advanced degrees does not stem from noble goals typified by “use science to save lives and the world”. You insightfully pointed out that I should rephrase my goals as to ‘impact the field’. I wonder if fellow readers and potential admission committees would consider my stated goals as selfish. After all, I am wary that technologies for games and virtual reality can be considered less academic in the eyes of some people.</p>