Calling all CS grad school applicants

[MDK]

For the people that are auto-saying Berkeley, do you have a specific reason other than national ranking?

I guess you have answered yourself with your words:

I'd say to seriously consider them because their AI group is very good

If you check their website, you can see that they are working o two mega projects in the field of machine learning:
- Effective Bayesian Transfer Learning:
Research Projects | EECS at UC Berkeley
-Statistical Machine Learning:
Research Projects | EECS at UC Berkeley

Further more, not only the AI group is working on Machine Learning related projects, but also RAD Lab ( which happened to be sponsored by Microsoft, Google, Sun, Oracle, IBM and most of the top tier companies) is applying statistical machine learning techniques in their research.

If I was obsessed with the national ranking I would have suggested Cornell because of the Ivy Tag, But when you know that Stuart Russel and Michael Jordan are both faculty members at Berkeley and they are world class researchers in Machine Learning, you can't but to endorse Berkeley.

[Modeler]

Thanks for your reply MDK. I'd say the Ivy tag has less meaning to other people in CS but more meaning to people outside of CS; however, I do know that the Ivy league has warped admit rates because people like me apply to places like Penn with the thinking, hey, they're not quite as highly ranked in CS but the name will still impress a lot of people that I talk to on a daily basis. All this said, Berkeley is higher ranked by US News (tied for first with Cornell sitting at the first spot that is not tied for first), and I just wondered if people had seriously considered their suggestion because they just said Berkeley without giving their reasons why. In general I feel that ranking is too often used to discern among programs of similar quality, but as your response shows, it may be that Berkeley is demonstrably better in this case.

Machine learning @ Cornell can be found here: Machine Learning at Cornell University's Computer Science Department

Some machine learning @ Berkeley can be found here:
Berkeley Statistical Machine Learning

and here:
RAD Lab - RAD Lab

Hope this helps!

[wild runner]

Antztein, many thanks for such a valuable reply! Now I'm much more into Duke than UW-M. Still waiting for Cornell, though...

[poll321]

I would recommend Duong_Qua to go for Berkeley.
- Rank higher, better reputation than Cornell in EECS and also in ML
- Better finanacial aid, as you said 4 years fellowship
- Google and silicon valley next door
- Sunny weather, I've lived in NY for couple of years, and seriously if you want to live in miserable snows of a super small city, then go to Cornell
- Lots of coffee stores at Berkeley (this is very important)

[antztein]

I have also heard that Cornell University has the maximum number of suicides.
A lot of students at Cornell suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression.

[Modeler]

^^ the close proximity of gorges doesn't help. There was a time when Stanford had high suicide rates despite their awesome weather, so I find climate to be a dubious culprit.

[fangsout]

I only applied to state schools in the southeast US in order to stay close to family.

Accepted:
Tennessee
Clemson
Georgia
Alabama
Louisiana State
Florida State
South Florida

Pending:
Auburn
Florida

These are all for MS in CS. I'm interested in Software Engineering and Databases. Anyone have any insight or knowledge about these schools? I am in Florida currently.

My Profile:
gpa 2.9 (3.7 CS GPA)
Q: 760
V: 550
Anl.Writing: 5.5
9 months research experience with one paper

[mnajem]

Hello,

I just want to know you guy's opinion on UMass (Univ of Massachusetts Amherst).

I plan to do phd in Computer Security domain. Perhaps on honeypot and intrusion detection.


-grad both bachelor and master from Malaysia.

[MDK]

UMass is a great place to your PhD in. It's a highly reputed university with excellent faculty. But it's very tough to get in.

[mnajem]

Sorry MDK since I'm new here. How about you.. did you already got a placement anywhere..?

I just stumbled here to find whether there is/are Malaysian(s) doing Phd in Purdue. I considering to apply for CERIAS@Purdue as well but since I've to pay USD55(which equal to triple to my country's currency), I opt to find some other good place .. He he he..

Another good university which I considering(still contacting few key persons there) is Manheim University, Germany. But just wondering how non-germany speaking will survive in Germany. I speak Malay, and English .

But the research area which I seek for is notably there..
University of Mannheim - German Honeynet Project - Honeynet research at the Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems