how to convert java string to Date object

You basically effectively converted your date in a string format to a date object. If you print it out at that point, you will get the standard date formatting output. In order to format it after that, you then need to convert it back to a date object with a specified format (already specified previously)

String startDateString = "06/27/2007";
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); 
Date startDate;
try {
    startDate = df.parse(startDateString);
    String newDateString = df.format(startDate);
    System.out.println(newDateString);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}