

Ask HN: Is it possible to get into grad school with mediocre grades? - fooandbarify

So let's imagine that some hypothetical person is approaching the final year of his or her electrical engineering degree, and the prospect of graduate studies has recently become alluring. If that person does not have very good grades (below the guidelines for admission), is it still possible for them to get into graduate school? How?<p>Edit: Also curious about different countries. I'm in Canada - how difficult would it be to get into a program in the US or Europe and what are the pros and cons in your opinions? I realize that a lot of this information is available elsewhere but I'm eager to hear the HN version.
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_delirium
PhD or Masters? For PhD, finding some way to get the attention of a specific
professor can help a lot at some institutions. It varies, but many do a two-
tier admission system, where first they basically rubber-stamp the admission
of students who a prof has said they want to supervise, and then in a second
round the usual admissions committee admits a general pool of students who
aren't attached to a specific advisor yet.

One way to do that is to look at research group webpages; some actively say
that they're looking for PhD students in a specific area (usually because they
just got a big grant).

~~~
fooandbarify
That's very useful information - I didn't realize some institutions worked
that way. Do you have any insights with regards to getting the attention of a
specific prof?

~~~
gyardley
When I was admitted to graduate school, I read up on each target professor's
research, asked them relevant questions, met some at academic conferences, and
made sure each knew I was applying to that graduate program to work directly
with them before I sent my application in.

I also made sure I wasn't wasting my time applying to work with professors who
were going on sabbatical or not accepting new graduate students.

Of course, this was for a history Ph.D., but I suspect the same advice holds
elsewhere.

~~~
fooandbarify
Thanks, that's helpful. Did you limit your targets to professors working where
you did your undergrad or did you try to cast a wider net? If so, did it work?

~~~
gyardley
No, I targeted professors at the absolute best schools possible, because I was
considering a career in academia at the time and you can't get a tenure-track
job with a second-tier Ph.D.

I got accepted at every school I applied to, but my application itself was
pretty strong, so it's hard to say if the outreach 'worked' vs. another aspect
of the application.

------
bartonfink
I got into grad school with an unrelated bachelor's, so I know it is in fact
possible. I did it by kicking ass on the GRE, agreeing to take an entrance
exam (they stapled several final exams from their undergrad CS curriculum
together) and then being on a provisional basis for the first year. Like Randy
Pausch said, the brick walls aren't there to keep us out - they're there to
give us a chance to show how bad we want in.

~~~
fooandbarify
Wow, thanks. That's encouraging. If you don't mind me asking, how unrelated
was your bachelor's? And from what school? What sort of references did you
provide? And did you get in right after your undergrad, did you have
applicable industry experience, etc?

~~~
bartonfink
No problem - happy to help.

My bachelor's degree was in Latin, my master's was in Computer Science. I took
a bit of a dive in terms of prestige, though. I went to Wake Forest University
on a full academic scholarship for college, and went to UNC-Greensboro (an
offshoot of the UNC you've probably heard of) for grad school. Like I said,
it's a bit of a dive but I didn't exactly have the sort of application
necessary to storm the gates at a first rate institution. I just wanted
something that said "computer science" on it to stop the weird ?'s about my
Latin degree.

My references were a couple of managers from a software internship as well as
one of my favorite professors from Wake for academic chops. I didn't take any
computer science at Wake, so there weren't any relevant profs I could have
pinged.

I didn't get in right after my undergrad degree - I graduated college in '05
and didn't start grad school until '07. I had about 15 months experience as a
software developer when I applied - one year as an intern and then roughly
three months with another company. I'm not sure whether that helped sway the
admissions committee, but it did paint a sign on my back with the other
students as the guy who could always help if they had a programming or systems
?.

~~~
fooandbarify
Cool, that is also encouraging. I'd like to work for a while to gain
experience and hopefully pay off some debt but most people say it's harder to
get into grad studies when you've been out of the system for a bit. As long as
harder != impossible, I'm okay with that.

------
bmm6o
It's possible, but you need your application to stand out in another way. Do
well on the GRE's and get a strong recommendation from a prof. Then apply to
multiple programs - all you need is for one of them to admit you.

