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I'm considering to apply for a PhD. My situation is roughly this:

  • GPA in my BSc is about 2/4.
  • GPA in my MSc will be about 3.6/4

I have two peer-reviewed conference papers with proceedings and two peer-reviewed journal publications. I'm a first author in two of them. I could probably have two good recommendation letters. Third would be related to teaching, not research.

Would I have any chance to get admitted to top universities? I feel that the BSc GPA is a problem. And I'm now in a small university no one has never heard of. On the other hand, my MSc grades are good, and as different from my BSc grades as "night and day." Will schools likely give more weight to my MSc or BSc grades?

Tom Au
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thinking
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    What is your area? – user774025 Sep 22 '13 at 09:28
  • It may also be a duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3499/how-essential-is-your-gpa-for-admissions-to-phd-programs-to-us-universities-in-t and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8380/importance-of-gpa-and-gre-scores-for-grad-school-admissions – StrongBad Sep 22 '13 at 12:45
  • Give that he mentions peer-reviewed conferences, I assume @thinking is a computer scientist. But what kind of computer scientist? Are the papers at conferences and journals everyone (in CS) has heard of? – JeffE Sep 23 '13 at 03:14
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    @StrongBad: IMHO, this is NOT a duplicate because of slight wrinkle. Here (and not in the other case), the OP has MUCH better grades in the Master's Program, than in the Bachelor's program. I would like to base an answer on the "progression" rather than the "blended" average, and was wondering if the question can be re-opened. – Tom Au Jun 14 '14 at 01:26
  • @TomAu it doesn't seem different enough to me to reopen, you could raise it on chat/meta to see if you can get some support to reopen it. – StrongBad Jun 14 '14 at 04:26
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    @StrongBad: I tried to improve the question by stating my main point, that the MSc grades were in a "different world" than the BSc grades. There are several other questions along the lines of "can an EARLY bad grade be overcome by my RECENT record?" That's different from the other question, "My transcripts suck. There's no way to dress it up." – Tom Au Jun 14 '14 at 18:27
  • I think you need to retitle the question: asking if a great master's degree performance makes up for the poor bachelor's performance is a different question than what was asked here. – aeismail Jun 14 '14 at 20:23
  • @aeismail: I would say that my version was "more explicit/emphatic," rather than different. It could probably use further work but I'm uncomfortable doing more, for fear of ruining the fabric of the original question. Would you or someone else like to take a try? – Tom Au Jun 14 '14 at 21:02

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