¿What are your thoughts on my Harvard application?

YoungOldMan
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 17:57:11 +0000

Hello guys,

I am an international applicant into Harvard. I am applying to an Engineering Phd position.

Basically I have had a good research experience, but haven’t published anything yet. During my research master thesis I did surpass any results in the field of the project unfortunately there was not enough time to write a paper or a patent for the work. My recommendation letters were quite good, they were done by important people in their research areas who were also my research supervisors. My CV and SoP were also very good. Although I couldn’t really say all I wanted in the SoP due to the limited space of the document. I do have some experience working since young age, also worked on different research centers during undergrad and I also had some experience as an entrepreneur and was certified by two universities in my business plan. My master was funded through scholarships (I studied at UCL) and I have the capacity to fulfill the fees and stipend through external scholarships.

The negative side of the application, I had relatively poor grades in school. My school system in undergrad was very different. I had to chose the teachers and well I always did the courses with the most difficult ones. This resulted in a 3.5 GPA which may look very low for people who don’t know that the program that I did. My GRE were also not so good, I finished my master and decided to try to go for the PhD straight away, didn’t have much time to prepare as I had to get the other documentation too. I got a 155 in Q and V… that really looks bad compared to what I have seen posted in the internet. The other bad part is that my british grades may look quite poor, the conversion of the grades to GPA are not very beneficial, I got a bit ill during my master and that affected the grades. I stated in a section of the application. I didn’t know if I did more harm in stating that, I didn’t want to give them much details of the problems that I had but I didn’t want them to believe that I had some sort of illness that won’t let me finish a course.

I got a bit worried by that. I am very satisfied with my career so far but I really would like to go one step further. I am sure I would be a fantastic student. I was really hoping that the funding I can bring into the uni could help to get the position.

¿What are your thoughts?