Applicants feel unprepared for PhD programs

“Hi guys! I'm an international student currently finishing my BSc in AI Engineering at a university in Türkiye, and I'm planning to apply for Fall 2027, mainly to CS/ML PhD programs in the US. My GPA is probably the weakest part of my application. Uni also isn't particularly well-known internationally, so that's another thing I'm a bit concerned about. On the research side, I've been trying to be active throughout undergrad. I have a first-author TMLR paper, a few other fi”

“I graduated with a Bachelor's in June from a school in the US. I applied for the fall 26-27 PhD cycle and got rejected everywhere (I think I aimed too high). I want to try applying again this cycle but I wonder if I was rejected because I wasn't a competitive applicant or if I just didn't have a niche enough topic of study. I have about 2 years of research experience in two labs. One of them was a neuroscience lab, and the other lab focused on genetics and precision medicine. Because”

“Hello! I’m writing this just to get some advice or to hear if people have been in the same situation. I want to apply to PhD programs this cycle but am unsure if I have a chance. For background: I’m an international student who got into a good school for a Master’s program in the US (Computer Science). My first semester I did some research with a professor and that didn’t go too well. I didn’t have a good experience with the professor and I quickly realized that I wasn’t interested in that field”

“I recently completed my M.Tech from IIT Hyderabad and am planning to apply for PhD programs in the upcoming admission cycle. My academic scores are relatively modest: 8.02/10 in my Master's and 7.82/10 in my Bachelor's. I am currently working as a Research/Project Assistant under my M.Tech advisor, continuing my research. I am also working on two research papers, which I expect to submit by the end of December. I am particularly interested in applying to Nanyang Technological University”

“I'm a final-year Materials Science & Engineering undergraduate at IIT Kanpur, applying for PhD programs in MSE. My biggest concern is my transcript,a large part of the damage comes from my first year, where I performed poorly, including an F (passed later). I also have some low grades in the introductory courses from that period. The main context is that I honestly did not know what I wanted to do during my first year. I was exploring a lot of different things and only became seriously i”

“so i am a second year CS undergrad student at a tier-2 institution in India.(3.4 gpa for first year i plan on working on it). i have been researching and looking out for how to get into a phd in US right after my bachelors. i am studying core CS ,DSA , DEV etc right now then i plan on doing ML and thats what i want my research area , something in that. what do you all think i should do to create a really good profile which can be accepted for a phd in USA? gpa, research internships, papers i sho”

“so i am a second year CS undergrad student at a tier-2 institution in India.(3.4 gpa for first year i plan on working on it). i have been researching and looking out for how to get into a phd in US right after my bachelors. i am studying core CS, DSA, dev right now then i plan on doing ML and thats what i want my research area , something in that. what do you all think i should do to create a really good profile which can be accepted for a phd in USA? gpa, research internships, papers i should p”

“so i am a second year CS undergrad student at a tier-2 institution in india.(3.4 gpa for first year i plan on working on it). i have been researching and looking out for how to get into a phd in US right after my bachelors. i am studying core cs,DSA etc rn then i plan on doing ML and thats what i want my research area , something in that. what do you all think i should do to create a really good profile which can be accepted for a phd in USA? gpa, research internships, papers i should publish, s”

“Hey guys, i’m an international student from India, and I have done my bachelor’s in the field of computer science &AI from a tier 2 university with a GPA of 3.0/4.0,,, yea its too low;( i regret it now, I have one published research paper in AI/ML(Computer Vision and Deep Learning) and roughly 2.5 years of work experience as an ML engineer. Starting in January 2027, I will begin my master’s in computer science in the UK at a decent university (university of Leicester). After my Masters I tru”

“I'm an international student planning to apply for funded U.S. PhD programs for Fall 2027, mainly in ChemE, Materials, and related computational/AI-for-science areas. Brief background: - B.S. from a Chinese 211 university, GPA: 2.75/5.0 (official scale) - Clear upward trend in the last two years - Thesis-based M.S. in Chemical Engineering at a U.S. R1 university, GPA: ~3.87/4.0 - ~4 years of research experience - Currently an RA - No publications yet; one first-author manuscript in preparati”

“I have recently graduated with a 4-year bachelor of engineering degree in Computer Science from an engineering college in India (not a very prestigious one but not too bad). 9.2/10 cgpa, 328/340 GRE (168 quant), 8.5 IELTS I will be getting some research experience now since I've been selected as a predoc fellow (for 1 year) at a good comp bio lab the Indian Institute of Science. I'm part of an industry funded collaboration with a major bioinformatics company. I want to target US/UK unis,”

“As my title, I'm looking to apply for a PhD in a different major from undergrad. My undergrad degree is in Computer Engineering, and the CE program in my school is more designed toward CS courses than ECE. I'm a research assistant on physical assistive robotics design, which is also the research I'm most drawn to and want to pursue for a PhD. However, most faculty who work on this area are in Mechanical Engineering. Should I apply? I afraid that my background might put me in a disadv”

“I am going to be applying to CS PhD programs in ML (robust generalization and safety) in the upcoming cycle. I am graduating from a top 20 university with a 4.0 GPA (I'm graduating on an accelerated timeline of 3 years instead of 4) I also have 1 first author publication (accepted at EMNLP main conference and ICML workshop) and another 1 3rd author publication (accepted at ICML main conference). I have 3 other papers in the pipeline (1 1st author submitted to ICLR main conference, 1 1st auth”

“Hello hello I’m considering going into a PhD program in the fall of ‘27. I have a B.S. in mechanical engineering, planning to go into engineering or mathematics educations. My problem is I have a 3.0 gpa from undergrad. I’ve been in the industry for a year now (construction). Is that possible? Should I look into doing a masters program before? Since it’s still soon after graduating I’m sure I can get some good references. I did some research in college but I’m not published or anything. su”

“Hello everyone!! I am a senior Computer Engineering student in the US. I was wondering the feasibility of getting into top PhD programs where my GPA is low but I have strong research experience. Apart from SoP and LoR, which I believe that will (hopefully) be compelling, here is my overall profile: I go to a lesser-known public state school 3.175 cumulative GPA (I hope to get it over a 3.2 by the time I graduate) I have one first-author paper published in an IEEE journal A co-authored presentati”

“Hi all! So here's the situation. I'm studying Electrical and Computer engineering in Greece (integrated master's program). Entering my final year I've been thinking more and more about the possibility of applying for graduate programs. More on why later. I had a really rough first 3 years due to psychological reasons. Although I'm much better now, my GPA suffered and I entered the 4th year with 6.0/10 GPA. Since then I've maintained 9.7/10 on all courses and I'm curre”

Please do answer submitted by /u/juliuscaesar42nd [link] [comments]

“I am a phd student in my third year at an IIT (India). Due to the inadequate facilities required for my research and misalignment of the research area along with the lack of proper guide supervision i plan to drop my phd from the current institute and want to reapply in a few universities in the EU. Has anyone gone through the same situation before? (Note:- I have co-authored a publication with my current supervisor in an Q1 journal. Can I add this information while applying i am a bit confused”

“I am a phd student in my third year at an IIT (India). Due to the inadequate facilities required for my research and misalignment of the research area along with the lack of proper guide supervision i plan to drop my phd from the current institute and want to reapply in a few universities in the EU. Has anyone gone through the same situation before? (Note:- I have co-authored a publication with my current supervisor in an Q1 journal. Can I add this information while applying i am a bit confused”

“Hey folks, I’m planning to apply for PhD programs in the US. Here’s my profile: EEE, CGPA: 3.1 GRE: 331 (166V, 165Q, 4.0 AWA) IELTS: 7.5 2 publications (under review) 2+ years of work experience Interests: RF, optics, microwave What university ranking/range should I realistically target with this profile? submitted by /u/czsz [link] [comments]”

“Hello, I am a 3rd year undergrad student from India, majoring in Mathematics and minor in DS/AI from IIT Dharwad. My CGPA is 8.12 as of now. Sem 1: 8.54 Sem 2: 8.45 Sem 3: 8.52 Sem 4: 7.00 ( yes I did fuck up last semester) I am a self taught software developer and have done quite a bit of work in it. Including live working webapps for my college officially, and for a NGO too. (I also have my resumè attachted) I also have a little entrepreneurial experience, as I belong to a business family, rec”

“Hi everyone, I'll be starting my PhD in Environmental Engineering in January next year. My research will involve wastewater-related topics, including microbial analysis. However, the closer I get to starting, the more I realize that I don't feel very confident about my fundamentals. During my master's degree, I worked on topics that were somewhat related to what I'll be doing now. Still, if I'm being honest, I don't think my understanding became as strong as it should hav”

“I am in my final year for chemical engineering, planning to apply for PhD programs in US by Dec 2026. I currently have: 2.68 gpa 1 first author publication planned by December (RoL from this PI) 1 research/project internship for 5 months (RoL from my internship supervisor) I know that I have a really low gpa. I was a bad student back in my year 1 and 2, but I know what I really want to research on and trying to make up for my year 1 and 2 by publishing a paper. I am also thinking of applying for”

“Hi Everyone, I am applying to PhD programs for Fall 2027, preferably CS/ML labs also for programs where I can work on research areas like computational sustainability or AI for Agriculture. Here’s my background: Education : Bachelor’s in Computer engineering from India with 8.07/10 CGPA (I know its not great) Research/Work Experience: About 6 years in AI/ML at couple of big MNCs, specifically in their research and innovation teams. It was a mix of product and academia style research. Been workin”