Weak SoP, didn't talk about myself enough. One LoR from my thesis and internship supervisor. Another letter from a fairly known professor with whom I did extra curricular stuff. A third letter was also sent.

B.Sc with 1.3 GPA ("ausgezeichnet"), 4 teaching jobs at Uni, no publications. Was rejected from both direct doctorate and M.Sc.

1.8 from TU9 (Germany)

Graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from a Greek University, 8+/10. I cannot be certain about my LoRs, but had a decent SoP and some research experience (no papers). Also no GRE.

Top 1% at my TU9 university, I was 99% sure that I was going to get in. I previously had published a paper on computer vision, had strong LORs from my research and also an SWE internship at a global firm.

Old IIT (EE), 5 research-based internships, multiple projects, 1 A* conference workshop published paper, 2 in review at A* conference/journals, 1 good LoR, 1 strong LoR

Had an LoR from a respected Professor at ETH Zurich so was likely to get in

Applied to direct doctorate. Got rejected for both direct doctorate and MSc program.

Applied for direct PhD, accepted to Masters. Will most likely decline since I have PhD offers from US

Top 2% at Technical University of Munich (CS Bachelor). Relatively good recomendations. Two papers at NeurIPS. What the fuck is going on at ETH this year?

Got rejection letter through portal. Kinda surprised since I had 1 very strong LoR and 2 good ones, and what I believed to be a strong letter of purpose.

Rejected, got email to check the portal