A conversation with an incoming grad student at Carnegie Mellon Univ.

This is a very helpful conversation I had with a Aeronautical engineering student on LinkedIn who has received admits from 10 Universities (3 being Ivy league🤯🤯)! She is currently pursuing Bachelor’s in Aeronautical Engineering with minors in Aerodynamics and has decided to pursue her Masters in Mechanical Engineering (with specialization in Robotics and control) from Carnegie Mellon University. I am writing this blog so her guidance (which she has given me) can help those interested in applying for MS and at the same time the blog will intend to answer most commonly asked questions to her. Following is a list of QnA I had with her adapted for a blog format keeping the context same. Hope it helps you!

All the admits she has received (logos have been taken from Google, I do not own copyrights for these logos)

Firstly I would like to thank her for giving her precious time to particularly tailor fit answers according to my extremely long questions and would like to congratulate her for receiving mind blowing and amazing admits! I am really grateful for her answers and I could not have asked for any more guidance. With this blog I intend to help her reduce her burden (even if little) since so many people have started asking her doubts just like mine.

1] What was your GRE score? Did you require to submit it since most Universities have removed the requirement of GRE ? And how many months did you take to prepare for it?

Answer : My GRE Score was 326. 167Q 159V 5AWA. I didn’t know about the GRE waiver before I began the entire process. I gave it twice and this is my 2nd time score. Only after giving the exam I realized many universities don’t even need the score to be submitted while others kept it optional. I prepared for around 8–9 months for the GRE and used only online resources for that. To be honest GRE is an exam that takes 2–3 months of prep only but I felt like I needed more time and prolonged it due to the ongoing COVID situation in 2020. My advice for GRE would be, please begin by completing the Magoosh verbal word list first, and then only proceed to solving text completion and other stuff. For some people, they learn words along the way but honestly that doesn’t work well in my opinion. Complete the word list and do Quant side by side. Quant section isn’t hard but there are many possibilities we often overlook and that’s what you need to learn.

2] Could you tell me all the 8 other admits you got and the 1 rejection as well? Which was your target University ? I feel demotivated because I am not able to do any onsite Internships due to COVID which is necessary for most top universities , so could you share how you tackled this same issue since you’re also from sub- branch of mechanical?

Answer : The other admits I got aside from CMU and Columbia were UPenn, Cornell, University of Washington, UC Boulder, USC, NYU, NC State and Cranfield University in UK. The uni I got rejected from was Ohio state. When I began the process I had no idea I would get all these admits, getting an admit from even one ambitious college was a dream for me so I didn’t have one single dream uni as such. I understand the inability to do onsite internships due to COVID , and honestly there’s nothing you could do about it. Try for CFD/simulation/software based internships like ANSYS/CAD/SOLIDWORKS/MATLAB etc which you could do online as well, because that’s what I did. Many research internships are available online in institutes and I’d say that’s the best bet given the current situation. I did one internship in Air India and it was about aircraft maintenance but that was before COVID. Also keep in mind, Stanford/MIT are two colleges where even after “checking” all lists you may not get an admit so keep Stanford as a dream and take a shot at it, but there are other great colleges as well such as UIUC, CMU, GTech, UCBerkley which you should totally consider! One more thing, don’t be the data driven person. Just because a person did a certain number of things and got admit from ‘X’ university doesn’t mean you’re going to get it too. Your whole application matters, and your vision matters the most. That being said, the only way to secure admission at a particular uni is to get decent academics/test scores and dedicate enough time to culminate your dream carefully. The way it’s articulated matters a lot so watch out for that as well. This being said, no uni is out of your reach provided you manifest it the right way in your application. It must be clear, concise, well articulated and is the only way you can directly speak to the admissions committee so make sure you’ve got the best SOP you can create and your dream college might just turn into a reality for you, so never lose hope.

3]How did you make sure your profile stands out amongst others? For example people have very good internships which makes their profile standout but that has become very difficult for our branch in the pandemic and now due to COVID so many students are missing out on internships and research project with professors so how did you utilize lock down period to improve your profile? I have seen everyone who gets into Stanford or any top University definitely has very good research background and I have missed my SY summer and now will be missing my TY summer as well so I feel that will be a negative point for me.

Answer : Like I said earlier there is no hard and fast rule to make a profile “stand out” so please don’t be data driven, be yourself. I don’t have any research papers and have just one internship. But I worked extremely hard in articulating my SoP. I made sure all my goals, long term and short term were laid out clearly and a well defined plan to achieve those goals through the university’s resources was something I spoke about too. I took LoRs from the professors who taught me subjects pertinent to my masters subjects so that the admission committee could assess me based on that since I switched my branch. I made sure I spoke to the university about my hopes, aspirations, specific projects I wished to create, a long term contribution to my domain’s research and even location advantages to make sure the university understood why it was THE university for me, though there is no ground rule, in my opinion, 2 internships+3 projects+ 1 research paper seems a good bet for a well rounded application, again with constraints, so don’t be data drive, just be yourself. Try to get online internships If possible and please work on your coding background. Take 3–4 relevant online courses relevant to your background if possible. In the lock down I mainly focused on studying and preparing for the GRE, and I guess it’s a boon in disguise for those preparing for competitive exams. Understand the process, know what you're getting into, shortlist universities and have a look at their curriculum/duration/course outcomes/financial requirements. Having all this knowledge is definitely of a huge advantage so if you have free time, utilize it to plan this too.

4]Since both Carnegie Mellon and Columbia are extremely expensive could you guide me about what you’re planning about funding and any scholarships that you know and you applied for?

Answer : Honestly COVID kind of destroyed my Masters plans so the whole thing got delayed by 6–7 months for me. I started the process by giving GRE in October so that itself was very late to be honest and needless to say I had to rush things up so I didn’t have any plan laid out. I took help of an advisor who told me to apply to Carnegie Mellon and Columbia so I did that, but honestly I didn’t really look into their finances and I honestly felt I had a slim chance at these two colleges so I applied in a whim. I didn’t apply scholarship, but I wish I did. Scholarships are there at the start of the year so you should definitely look out for those around that time. There wasn’t anyone there to warn me of such things so only after the event actually happened, I realized there were several facets to it so I’d say do your ground work and be ready, not like what I did. About funding my parents are in the talks, it is still in progress to be honest.

5] Any special tips for writing SoP and LoR since they are most important in the application? What did you try to focus on while writing yours?

Answer :
SOP: make sure your goals(long term and short term) are clearly defined. Everything in your SOP( your projects/publications/ internships etc) must be pertinent to the goals you wish to achieve. To give an example, I spoke about Energy Systems CFD on my application and most of the stuff on my application was about that (simulations/CFD/ANSYS) based stuff. So make sure, there is a connection and a proper clarity in what you want to do and what you’ve done. Honestly switching from Aero to mech wasn’t that big of a deal, since one is a sub branch of the other so I cannot comment about other drastic switches. Also make sure your SOP is customized to every university , talk about specific features in that Univ that attract you and makes you want to join it. It could be anything but be sure its unique to that university.

LOR: you could do the following things depending on your scenario
1) Take it from someone who has taught you subjects relevant to your masters (my switch was to mech so I avoided teachers who taught core aero subjects and took it from the thermos professor, FEM professor, etc)
2) Take it from the professor who mentored you on projects/has closely assessed you
3) Take it from the professor in whose subject you’ve had exceptional performance. These suggestions are just based on my experience; it may be different for someone else. Make sure all the teachers are willing to upload LOR for all the Univs so have them know in advance how many univs you intend to apply to.

6] My final question for you is what should I focus on the most which will increase my chance of getting into the top univs? (ex: focusing on getting 330+ in GRE , or focusing on publishing research papers, or getting a good research internship which seems very difficult due to COVID)

The Top Universities that you aim for want a holistic profile, a determined person with a clear action plan and well defined milestones you intend to complete. Just focusing on the GRE alone will not guarantee you this. You need to be upto their standard in every single aspect. I'm sure you know this already but the top unis need a GPA of 9+ and GRE of 330+ with great research background, decent internships and stellar recommendations. Letting out even one of these aspects would deter you from getting these univs. From a generalist standpoint, focus on 165+ Quant and 155+ verbal, aim your GPA for 9+ (depends on your uni) and try to be amongst top 5 of your class. Try to do some decent projects with professors if possible, build your coding skills, research on the unis and their specific concentration areas. Most of all, work hard on your SOP and make sure it is well articulated so give enough time to prepare for it. Even the univs understand that COVID has disrupted many onsite projects so try to do some online internship/project or request your professor to help you out with executing some projects, but keep in mind, you’ve gotta take the lead and make the approach for this. In my opinion, due to COVID a lot of Univs are reviewing applications holistically and not based on cutoff score so make sure you prepare all aspects of it well so that even if you have low GRE/academics, you can take advantage of this situation to apply to your dream universities.

………………………………. That’s all Folks!……………………………………