Hear from Momina, a CS undergraduate, who made it into her top choice PHD program despite a low GPA!

[ActualAIz]

I would say that my journey towards graduate studies started a little later than most. I thought about pursuing graduate studies in my junior year, and by that time I felt that I was quite late. I also didn't have a stellar GPA (<3.4). At this point, I also did not know much about the research opportunities available at the department. It wasn't until my Junior Spring semester that I landed a health-tech project and enrolled in a directed coursework (research project) . Due to my dedication, I managed to get a leadership position in the research lab and started working on other projects as well. The projects I liked to work on all followed a similar theme-using technology for societal well-being. Around the same time I built deep connections with recommenders. I spoke to a lot of students discussing my options for grad school. I think it really worked for me that my recommenders really believed in me. At the time I was applying, I did not have any publications but I was working on very promising projects. I had been doing research for less than a year.

I decided to go for strictly PhD programs because:

• I enjoyed doing research.
• I knew that self-funding a master's degree was absolutely not an option and with my GPA, and no publications it would've been hard to land a merit scholarship.

I based my university choice on three things:

• Does the CS department have professor(s) with similar research interests as mine, and are they recruiting?
• Does someone with a similar profile as me, have chances of being accepted to this program?
• Are they offering a fee waiver? Unfortunately due to my financial circumstances, this did play a significant role in deciding whether I'd apply to a certain place or not.

I think it helped that I wrote a comprehensive SOP and found a common theme. Instead of being too vague and highly specific, I tried to go for something in the middle so it could keep options open for me. I was ultimately interviewed at three universities. Two of which waitlisted me. Since one of them was my top choice, it was a very difficult time and I had very low hope of making it. Meanwhile I was still waiting to hear from the third interview (which was also one of the top choices). I received my acceptance late March when I'd lost all hopes. This is pretty late by most standards. I was also eventually offered a semi-funded masters at my top choice, but it wasn't what I wanted to pursue so I'm going for my PhD this fall!