Academic Conferences

[Ancalagon The Black]

Here's a niggling thought. What kind of conferences are thought of as being good? Do they need to be stamped with the authority and blessings of IEEE (in my field) Or should they have to be really elite like the Indian Science Congress 2008 (baulk not at the name, you will find the who's who of every science department congregating there and I mean not just Indians)

For instance UMD asks international students to list only international conferences that they might have to participate in. Does that mean that all non international conferences are bad?

What do you guys think? I mean, with respect to academic journals we know that they have definite pecking orders like Nature, Science, Econometrica, Management Science, Journal of Management Information Systems etc.

What about conferences? I don't know much about other fields but on seeing this question being asked at almost every application, I thought that I might as well satiate my curiosity.

[CalmLogic]

An international conference with a relatively low acceptance rate may be considered good. Many good conferences seem to have acceptance rates below 35 percent. In my opinion, an excellent (not just good) conference would have an acceptance rate below 25 percent. One example in database conferences of an excellent conference would be SIGMOD, which has an acceptance rate of about 16 percent. Of course, being published at any international conference -- or even a national conference -- is much, much better than nothing.

[Ancalagon The Black]

Good point, but just how do you find out the acceptance rates? Is it permissible to mention this on the resume?

[CalmLogic]

For a list of acceptance rates, I would do a Google search to find web pages that provide a listing, e.g.:

http://www.cisuc.uc.pt/files/conf_accep_rates.pdf
Graphics/vision publications acceptance rates statistics
Networking Conferences Statistics
Software Engineering Conferences (Statistics)
Acceptance rates major database conferences

Faculty who publish in one's research area sometimes, but not usually, list the acceptance rate of each conference in their listing of publications, e.g.:

Ronald Parr's CV
Mohamed F Mokbel
Seon Ho Kim: Publications
Dr. Shengquan Wang's Publication

Also, at least a few conferences seem to list their acceptance rates on their website, but those may be in the minority. Of course, each individual conference would provide that info upon request.

[Ancalagon The Black]

Ok, here's what I did, I went through the conference proceedings of all my conferences and they range from 16.8 (IEEM 2007) to 26.3 (CITICOMS)

So maybe I will put them on my resume?

[CalmLogic]

Of course That is excellent. (I would put down anything, even a conference that accepts the majority of submissions, especially since students are in a different league than professors, with professors having research assistants and research labs that they control.)

[Ancalagon The Black]

Good point CalmLogic. How about another twist in the tale. Often, I have been the only undergraduate student and indeed, on a couple of ocassions, the only student presenting in a professional conference. Is this worth mentioning? I asked my letter of reference writers to mention this though !!

[CalmLogic]

Of course, this is not a time to be humble Since you probably won't know for sure what your recommenders are writing, I would mention it in my application, at least as a side note when making another point.

[Ancalagon The Black]

Actually I know what my letter of reference writers have written because they have shown it to me... ...

I am taking your idea and mentioning this as an aside in my statement of purpose. I am also going to fill up the additional information section by giving relevant links, grading information etc.