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?

This is where I was housed this last summer when I did my math REU there. Its across the street from campus but the campus is pretty big. I was able to walk to my building, but obviously there are some buildings that are farther away. As far as quality of housing, its better than anything my school has to offer at least. I stayed in a double suite of sorts. Each person had their own room but shared a huge common room and bathroom inside of the suite. When I was there it was furnished with beds, a couch, a huge wooden entertainment center thing, a microwave, and a fridge, though I don't know if this is standard. They have a sweet pool, a movie theater in the building, a weight/exercise center, and more mundane entertainment things like a pool table, ping pong table, foosball table, and piano. The complex has its own parking garage which was nice. Its pretty much a brand new building and was like being put up in a hotel for the summer. The building is relatively near the street with all the bars, and even during the summer it did get pretty busy! However, its also right near a bunch of cool places to eat.

I don't know much about the department, but I'm a big fan of Urbana-Champaign as a college town. Good food!

In addition to the earlier link I gave to Sperling's Best Cities, you can also use this link: Cost of Living - Cost of Living Calculator from CNNMoney to compare cost of livings between cities. For example, comparing Boston to New York, 19k in Boston has equivalent buying power to 29k in New York. Interestingly the main difference seems to be that housing in NY is 150+% more expensive! More than twice as much!

Hello everyone, Is anyone in here joining STIET (Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions) at Michigan in the fall? I'm going to be involved from the computer science side of things and was wondering if any TM Econ users would be there too. BTW, some of you may recall me asking about Econ PhD programs last fall; I've landed in basically the best situation because I get to do Game Theory and CS without having to take Macro!

Accounting for a cost of living index of 127.6, 19k in Boston has a buying power of about 15k; however, since its for 8 months, presuming you can find some way to support yourself during the other 4 months, that you would be more per month buying power than the 24k that NYU offered Duong_Qua, since in another thread I believe he said the 24k is for 9 months. When in doubt though, ask a current student how far their money goes.

^^ 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. :p

It depends dramatically on where the school is. NYU has to offer a lot of money because cost of living in New York city is 50-60% higher than the national average. When you adjust for CoL, an NYU stipend of 24k has a buying power of about 16k. Also, is the 19k for 9 months or for the year? If its for 9 months, and its from a university with a moderate cost of living, then it could be a very nice stipend. You can find CoL estimates at: Sperling's BestPlaces

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!:tup:

Well, I don't think you can really go wrong with either, and its a personal decision so I just wanted to speak out for another option since the difference in quality of education and reputation is nearly negligible between the two. So many people are rank obsessed to the point where Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, or CMU will always be suggested as the best places to go. I could hear next week that CMU has accepted me off their wait-list or that Cornell has accepted me, but I'm already committing to Michigan because they've shown many times over that they really want me there and because I know 3-6 (if you count School of Information as well) professors I could work with there in my niche specialty (computational microeconomics and related stuff). So basically, I'm just saying you have several outstanding options that are worthy of your attention. Also, I've found it helpful to ask professors at your prospective places, "Why should I go to your school instead school X." They're usually pretty honest about accessing their own strengths and weaknesses. I also wanted to throw out to you and anyone else considering Georgia Tech, I've heard terrible things about safety on campus, from professors and students who have been there. From multiple sources I've heard that there are no school sponsored activities on campus after 5 pm because its too dangerous!

For the people that are auto-saying Berkeley, do you have a specific reason other than national ranking? Is the tuition waiver for Cornell a full or partial waiver? It seems weird that they would partial waiver tuition but give you such a large stipend. If it were/is a full waiver, I'd say to seriously consider them because their AI group is very good. Also, I know from another thread that Cornell accepted you waaaay early, and has only just now finished sending out all their acceptances, so it would seem to me that they really want you and it never hurts to feel wanted. Edit: is the stipend for Cornell renewable? If not, then obviously Berkeley on the grounds of being fully funded. Edit again: 4 years of fellowship from Berkeley? Really?! Not like, one year fellowship and 4 total years guaranteed funding?