Mutou

Take the UCLA offer if you plan to be a professor when you graduate. You wouldn't believe how hung up academics are on the name and ranking of the school you went to. Always (*always*) go to the highest ranked school you get into. People tell you other things, but don't believe it. I made that mistake with my MS degree and it was hell getting into a good Ph.D program, despite perfect grades, GRE/CSGRE scores, and a very good publication record (7 publications and conference presentations at international conferences like SIAM). Schools tell me they look for people "who went to strong programs", i.e. highly ranked programs. They recruit faculty the same way. Read this http://www.cra.org/reports/r&rfaculty.pdf and you'll see that people from tier 1 schools get higher pay, more offers, and a much easier time finding a faculty job, irregardless of their research. (You have to look at the numbers closely, don't read what the departments say, read what they do.) I'll also be at UCLA this fall!

Hi guys, I have a friend who is asking my advice regarding graduate school. He's determined to get into a top 10 or top 20 CS graduate program. However, his grades were not very good as a undergrad or a MS student, and he had to take some of the core CS courses multiple times to pass them. He also has low general and subject area GRE scores, and poor recommendations (as you would expect from his performance in his CS courses). He has little or no research experience. I really think his situation is hopeless. If it were one of these things, he could fix the problems or make up for it, but his academic record as a whole is pretty bad. If he were lucky, he might get into a top 50 program, but even that might be lucky. He applied to one round of graduate schools this year, and refused to apply to anything under 20. He was rejected from all of them. I'm his friend, and I'd like to help him, but I think academic life is not for him. He doesn't have the motivation or the ability, and I've never seen any interest on his part in research. I don't have any clue why he wants to become a professor. What do you guys think I should suggest to him? Should I be nice and let him waste more years trying to get into schools he won't get into, or should I just be truthful with him and let him stop his futile efforts and find a job? Thank you for your help. Mutou

This is the same in computer science. Contrary to what some of the posters seem to think, professors are very aware of what schools are considered "strong" in other countries. Check most of the top 20 CS departments and you'll see that most of the Indian and Chinese students are from 1-2 top schools in India or China. The oddities and outliers, people who got admitted even though they went to poor undergraduate universities, are mostly people who either have a recommender with a strong connection to someone in the graduate universities department, themselves have a strong connection to a faculty member there through a summer program or some other direct contact, or were just lucky and published some paper that caught a professor's eye because it was close to his research.

Anyone have the new CS rankings, or a link to a page that has them?

LOL. Megadeth clearly needs to get a woman and get laid. If anyone is curious, 760Q is not enough to get into a top 10 or 20 CS school. The best school I got into was UCLA, mainly because one of my recommenders went to UCLA and his advisor was on the admissions committee. Other than that I got rejects from all schools above 20 and several admits from schools in the 20-50 range. I talked with a few of admissions people, and it seems like you need 790-800Q to fall in the top 10-20% of applicants that they consider for admissions, or else have something that gets you attention, like publications in the area of one of the admissions committee members. My suggestion to anyone in my situationin the future is to retake. Mutou

Has to be a "does this guy speak decent english" interview. They do that sometimes for international students, especially if they are thinking about having you teach. UT Austin has very strict policies for teaching assistants who aren't native English speakers. To have any student contact you have to pass some exam.

They're going to ask for a final transcript showing that you recieved your BA/BS degree. Absolutely and without fail. The admissions office at any decent school is very meticulous about that kind of thing. Your experience with your high school diploma is unusual, but a high school diploma is not nearly as important to a university as a BS/BS degree is to a grad school. You can apply and get admitted, and you might even be able to start the semester. Before the end of the first semester you'll get mail from the registrar's office asking for a final transcript showing proof of diploma and when you can't provide it, they'll boot you. They'll also make you pay back any fellowship or tuition reimbursement that the department has paid for you. People try this all the time because they don't want to take some course the degree requires, or there is some class that they just can't pass, or they apply then fail or withdraw from an essential class in the last semester. (Not saying this is your situation, just saying it happens.) You can try it, but you're wasting your application money, time, and possibly going to end up liable for tuition for that first semester. (Yes, I'm in grad school now, and I've been a part time grad student in 2 different grad programs. They always want proof of an undergraduate degree. It's a big check box on the form that they do for each student the registrar's office processes. It even shows up on your grad school transcript. "BS degree in XXX granted on XXX by XXX")

I'm in CS, so the high verbal means nothing. The average quantitative for top 10 schools is 790-800, so my score is actually kinda low. 760 is only 83% tile, which probably isn't enough to get into a place like Stanford. I'm just hoping the rest of my application is good enough to overcome the low quantitative.

I don't think publications are required, but they are very helpful. I'm not sure what your degree is in Simba, but for most programs top 10 schools consider an MS degree to be a "professional" degree. As such, they generally don't offer any kind of support to MS students (research/teaching assistantships or fellowships), at least in computer science. If you have the money to pay for it (probably 30-40k a year) and have reasonable scores and grades, you can probably get into a MS program almost anywhere. (Or that's my opinion!) Mutou

Hi guys, I'm applying to CS programs for the fall and I'm hoping to get into a top 10 school. I'm a little disappointed in my quantitative and analytical writing scores (760Q 4.5 AWA). Do you guys think that these scores are low enough to keep me out of a good school? My other statistics are 4.0 GPA in my MS program at fairly low ranked CS department (Florida State University), 1 paper published, 4 conference presentations, and hopefully solid recommendations. My BS was in math and I have A's in all my math courses (which makes me even more unhappy with my quantitative score). I've taken all the core CS courses, theory, algorithms, operating systems, architecture, etc etc. I took the December CS GRE, so I don't know those scores yet. What do you guys think? Do I need to retake to get into one of these very competative schools? I've read in other places that you really need 800Q and at least 5.5 AWA to be competative. Thanks in advance, Mutou

Please delete this. It was in the wrong forum. Sorry! Mutou