| Really nice to see a fellow Chilean (I was born in Santiago but raised in NY) going for a PhD in CS. I got a PhD from a public university that's probably considered tier-2 in 2018. I got rejected from every other university I applied to for the PhD program for but I learned a lot about how academia works in the process. There's another post in this thread about making the jump across tiers into the elite university tier. They are right on the money when they say how hard it is and how much of it depends on who you know in the department you're applying to or who your references know in that department. Being from a different country puts you at a severe disadvantage in the networking aspect of the application. If you really want to attend a top tier institution for your PhD, the most sensible path would be to get into a Master's program at a school where you have a few advisors you'd like to work under. Once you're in the Master's program, you can do your best to impress them and convince them to take you on as a PhD candidate. Otherwise it's really really difficult to convince them to take a chance on you without knowing you personally. Anecdotally, even at my tier-2 university it was an anomaly for a "stranger" to be accepted straight into the PhD track. The professors would almost never take a chance on anyone they didn't personally know or didn't have good personal references about. I can't imagine how it would be a tier-1. Tl;Dr: Unless you make a big name for yourself in a specific area, it's nearly impossible to get into the elite universities without connections. If you're hell bent on doing your PhD at a tier-1, go into the same university's Master's program and build a personal relationship with whomever you want your advisor to be. |