Modeler

With regards to Princeton, when I was investigating them it seems they dramatically favor international students from IITs, Tsinghua University, and Sharif University of Technology, since these universities together account for the majority of their grad students who have posted profiles. So if you go to one of these universities, you're in luck, otherwise it may be prudent to look elsewhere and save your application fee.

"If Berkeley is your preferred choice for graduate study, and you believe that you have superior qualifications, then we encourage you to apply. However, you should be aware that admissions are very competitive. Most successful applicants last year had GPAs above 3.7 and GRE quantitative scores above 90%. Many successful Computer Science applicants took the GRE Computer Science Subject test and scored above 90%. For Fall 2006 we had approximately 2500 applicants for about 75 slots." I believe this is for MS and PhD considered together. "Applicants need to be aware that this is a small department admitting about 8 new Ph.D. students, and from 5 to 15 new masters students each fall." This is from Yale. No way that their masters accept rate is 50%. I'm fairly certain Stanford is less than 10% because I was told that they had 1500 applicants this year. (I was rejected) For 2006-2007, the acceptance rate for Harvard's engineering school, where the CS department is housed, was 13.4%. I presume CS has a similar acceptance rate.

I really thought I had a handle on the application process because through undergrad and then transferring, my record of acceptances had been impressive; however, with all the rejections I received this year, including from all of my safety schools, it becomes clear that this is a whole 'nother ballgame. With this in mind, I felt I should share the things I learned to help out future applicants. Feel free to contribute your own insights. This is a little disorganized because right now its my thoughts as I think of them. What may have been my most dramatic misconception was that US News rank correlated in anyway with selectivity. Based upon US News rank, as well as guidelines published by the universities, this is how I thought my programs shook out (Harvard is excluded from these discussions because Systems Bio (the program I applied there for) is different enough that the lessons may not be the same). Reach: Stanford CMU (COS Program) Cornell Solid: Michigan Maryland (Scientific Computation) Penn Brown Safety: Duke (Duke has since raised in the standings so this now looks foolish) NYU Northwestern At some point I link the post with my profile so these make more sense. With my improved knowledge, this is now how I feel these looked for me (me personally, not generally): Reach: Stanford Cornell Brown Penn Duke Solid: CMU (COS Program) Michigan Maryland NYU Northwestern The major reason for this reorganization is that in general, the schools that were great matches for my background and interests showed dramatically more interest in me. For comparison, here are my results: Accepted: Michigan, Maryland Wait-listed: CMU*, Cornell** Rejected: Stanford, Penn, Brown, Duke, NYU**, Northwestern*** *Officially wait-listed, still no word, was told wait-list had only three people on it, but the program is small, maybe like 12 new students a year **Unofficially wait-listed, by which I mean I still haven't heard anything from Cornell, and NYU notified me after the deadline despite others receiving their notification weeks earlier. ***Was offered a spot by a professor in a lab that was unrelated to my interests, told him so and a month later was officially rejected. So this is kind of a win. Comments on each school: Stanford - Really chasing a dream here. Too many stellar applicants to seriously be considered CMU (COS) - I had conducted research in modeling social interactions and I feel this is why they maintained interest despite me not making their posted standards of "we expect all applicants(!) to have a GPA of at least 3.85 [mine was 3.7] and above a 750 on each section of the GRE [Me: V 710 Q 800]" Cornell - still no word but I mentioned wanting to improve the state of public understanding of CS, and given that Cornell has some reputation for favoring good prospective teachers maybe this is what kept me in the game Penn - Thought I had a good shot based on historic standards of GRE and GPA. I think what really hurt me here and other private schools is that I come from a state school without a reputation for CS. Brown - I feel places like Brown, JHU, and others (Notre Dame springs to mind as a more extreme case) are more selective than their ranking would indicate because they have small programs with big brand name recognition. Its almost not worth applying to a place like these without outstanding reasons because on average you won't get good value out of your application fee. Duke - I could not believe this rejection. I've loved Duke all my life and they accept roughly 30% of American applicants. May have been hurt by my school here as well. Last year their stats indicate only 23 American applicants were not accepted. This stung. Maryland - they couldn't find my GRE for a long time, but once they found it they accepted me within a week...hmm. I think my background was really good for scientific computation (Numerical Analysis I + II, Dif EQ, Linear Algebra) and it didn't hurt that I got basically 100% in Numerical Analysis and had that professor write a rec for this program. Also I want to point out that Maryland and Michigan, my two outright accepts, responded within the first month. The state schools seemed to really love me. More on this later. NYU - my base stats were significantly better than their average. I just don't think I was a good match here. Hence the late rejection. Northwestern - this case shows how little your SOP is read some places. My only offer came from an embedded systems prof, despite no serious interest or background in the area. And finally, Michigan - This is where I'll be attending. In addition to being a top 15 school, I was offered a big fellowship so this was a no-brainer. I almost didn't apply here based on climate! As detailed elsewhere, I visited after I was accepted. If not for my visit, I would not have the fellowship because I didn't know that I was supposed to request a nomination, or even that it existed. Coincidentally, all the professors I met with are associated with the program that the fellowship is attached to, and they nominated me for it after meeting me and discussing my interests. I was extraordinarily lucky, but it just goes to show how important visits and interviews can be. I also learned from this visit how my application was considered. I was told that some parts of my additional statement were viewed negatively. In undergrad and transfer applications I found success by discussing obstacles I had overcome, specifically having an engagement fall apart and being diagnosed with ADD. For graduate school applications, so long as you have eventually turn it around, it may not be worth mentioning why your early grades were not great. After being told this, I asked why they liked me, and I was told pretty directly that it was my GRE score. This, and the eagerness of Maryland to accept me after they found my GRE, contributes to me believing that generally big public programs may place more weight on your GRE. If I were to do it over again with the knowledge I have now, I would have attended Penn out of high school, but otherwise taken the subject GRE (may have helped me a lot, just didn't have the time to study) and published papers instead of just talking about potential papers. I also would have look more seriously at big public programs because they have more slots to award and some of them are even better ranked than the private schools I applied to out of brand name recognition.

Every person I've talked to who has been there said that the Georgia Tech campus is extremely unsafe. Granted, I've only talked to three people who've been there, but I'm surprised this isn't brought up more often. I met a guy who interned there last summer and he said he didn't feel safe going out at night with fewer than 10 people! :eek:

I feel that its extremely likely that I've already been rejected at Cornell, so why drag it out? Now that I think about it, I read on gradcafe that results were supposed to be out 3 weeks ago for Cornell. I don't want to email for my result because then I'd have to reveal that I should have withdrawn my application because I've decided for certain where I'm going, but man, I've paid my fee, tell me my result. Are you still considering the places you're waiting on?

Just throwing my 2 cents in, I really liked Michigan when I visited and will be attending.

What programs have been delinquent for you? I still have heard nothing from Cornell and NYU regarding their Computer Science PhD programs. At Carnegie Mellon I was told I would know for sure about my wait-list status by April 10th, but still no word from them. Luckily I already have a good offer, otherwise this behavior would be completely intolerable. What about you guys? Who's left you out to dry?

You can find out a bunch of information about American cities, including cost of living, by searching on Sperling's BestPlaces

Hmm, thats a tough problem to solve, but I can tell you some good states to look at. Here's a preliminary list, off the top of my head list: Massachusetts: MIT Harvard Boston College Boston University University of Massachusetts - Amherst Northeastern California (though you should check the distances because I know California is spread out): Stanford UCB UCLA UCSD CalTech USC UC-Irvine UC-Davis UC-Santa Barbera North Carolina (all pretty close to each other): Duke UNC NC-State New York (some of these are further away than others): Cornell Columbia NYU SUNY-Stony Brook RPI University of Rochester In particular, there a few cities that give you several good options right near each other, like in Boston you have Harvard, MIT, and BU all pretty close, Duke and UNC are right near each other, NYU and Columbia I believe are both in New York city, and Northwestern and Chicago are about 20 miles apart.

Also, I think most top programs will guarantee aid. At least that has been my experience.

If you score as impressively on the subject exam as you claim you should that would go a long way. Hopefully as a helpful comparison, consider my experience. I was accepted with huge fellowship at Michigan and wait-listed at Carnegie Mellon despite: coming straight from undergrad not taking the subject GRE having only one summer research project that still has yet to yield a paper undergrad GPA of 3.7 from a US university ranked about 30th nationally with no reputation for CS Now granted, I'm an American student so I know that plays a factor in admissions, but if you really score 90 percentile on the subject I think that more than makes up the difference and otherwise our situations are pretty similar. So have hope! I think I did well in part because of good LORs so work hard at those professor relationships. I'd say that if you can get any significant research accomplished, and score as high as you expect, you should certainly apply to top 10 schools. I also know from my visit to Michigan that they put a lot of value on test results, and I feel its probably similar at other public universities in the US since I had much better results at public schools than private (GRE general: V 710 Q 800 AWA 6).

I only have two reviews posted instead of three. Perhaps this has something to do with my applying interdisciplinary. One reviewer gave me excellent in both, the other gave me very good in both. 70th percentile, not even honorable mention. The frustrating thing is that all the comments on the review that gave me very goods were positive, so how do I know what to improve? "The candidate's summer REU experience and outcome demonstrated his potential, ability to work independently on original work, and that he is a motivated self-starter" "The candidates background makes him uniquely suited to participate in interdisciplinary research" These comments and yet only very good, not excellent. My research adviser doesn't know why I'm sweating this since I have a good aid offer anyway, but seriously I'd rather not see the sheet than to see something mysterious like this.

For anyone who hasn't checked the website today, all results for the NSF GRFP have been posted. No good news for me :(

From my personal research on the matter (attending in fall), in Ann Arbor right now, renting is for suckers. In may I'm going condo hunting because they have postings right now for 600+ sq foot condos that with a 30 year mortgage would have a monthly mortgage payment less than half of what it costs to rent a 400 sq foot apartment. With Pfizer leaving town and the housing market sagging, its a great time to buy in Ann Arbor.

Thanks MDK! Apparently my lucky number is 13 because both of the places I was accepted at are currently ranked 13 (UMD and UMich) and my unlucky number is 20 as three of the places I was rejected at are now tied for 20 (Brown, Penn, Duke). I don't suppose there were new specialty rankings for this year?