ranji

Congrats Ritwik! Late admit man.

Dude - checked up. Congratulations! But I don't think a change in decision is necessary. Also you haven't replied to the email I sent you y'day? Isn't an email better than an Orkut scrap? :)

Hey mrk4gre - Thanks a bunch. e-lusion - yup, it's the same program that your're referring to. I'll go to Georgia Tech since I'm interested in Computer Engineering. Not informatics. I applied to the program since I interned in Trento and my advisor is one of the directors of the program. He asked me to apply and so I did. I would have considered going there only if I didn't get into any of the US schools and wanted to explore more of Europe :)

Oh! guys... Finally - In at Georgia Tech! Wooo hoooo !! It took as long as it possibly could for me to land up with a 'top 10' admit! Not complaining. So my final tally. Rejects: Berkeley Stanford UIUC UCSD UT Austin Purude U Mich, Ann Arbor UMN UC Davis TAMU Waitlisted: European Masters in Informatics (EuMI) ! - Anyone heard of this program? Admits: Georgia Tech UCSB Indiana, Bloomington USC

Looks like I'm also headed to Atlanta this Fall... FINALLY!

I think UMN has a more comprehensive program that Irvine. So I'll put UMN over Irvine.

Hey Anupama - thought I'll add my two cents here. Firstly, you gpa is very good! So that will not hinder you from applying for a PhD in CS. The other point is that your GPA is not the only criteria on which your application will be evaluated. For those interested in doing a PhD your research potential is just as imporatant if not more. Do tell us which university you're from and try to be more specific about your interests. Frankly, you're not going to get far if you're going to state that you want to do a lot of programming in your PhD :)

When applying for a PhD, especially to any of the top 10 schools, I've heard that your 'recommendation letters' is the make or break factor because as the Grad Sec had mentioned in her email to csdphdwannabe, most of the students who get admitted to these schools have near perfect scores. The students from lesser knows universities or those with below average scores who get admitted are merely exceptions! Even in these cases, they most probably have a some very significant research experience/publications and recommendations from very renowned faculty or faculty who have personal relations with the facutly at the university the student gets admitted to. But with MS admissions it's a totally different ball game :)

I got a nice email from a grad sec of one of the schools I had applied to. I had written to hear asking for a possible reason for my rejection, since I knew students who got in there who, atleat, at first glance didn't seem too much better than me :)Just thought I'll share it with everyone at TM! Hi ***, Thank you for your patience. I finally have a chance to sit down with your file and respond to your April 8th message. I'm sorry that I didn't email the decision to you. I was informed of a policy that I hadn't known before about the official admissions process. It makes my sending email of decisions more awkward, especially when I am given hundreds of files back at once by the committee. It's difficult to explain the problem the process causes me, but I was unable to send email of deny decisions. I was advised that applicants should be accustomed to checking the online status anyway (and they would see the decision there), and the main admissions office (GIAC) does mail an official letter by post, also. We do not provide evaluations for applicants. We receive far too many applications to give detailed evaluations in return. I don't make the decisions. I process the paperwork. When an applicant asks for an explanation for the denial decision, I can only compare their credentials against those listed in our Bulletin. Sometimes, that provides some possible explanations, but sometimes it doesn't help much. In your case, it doesn't help much because you do have high scores and a good GPA. My experience has been that applicants believe there is a "specific" reason for the denial. While an applicant may have high test scores and good GPA, often there is something less specific that is missing. A "spark" that the committee saw in one applicant's materials that wasn't in another's. It is not something easily defined, nor easily resolved. I understand your desire to know. Unfortunately, there very rarely is a specific reason for a denial. It is a decision based from an overall impression of an application when compared to the others, not just scores and GPA. I am not aware of anything being particularly "wrong" with your qualifications. We do deny many good applicants simply because there are too many for us to admit them all. Sincerely, **** Grad Admissions Secretary U***

After like waiting forever this is what I get!!! I'm truly confused now. What do I do, accept another offer and switch later if I get through at Tech? *** Dear Ranjith, I want to thank you for your interest in the M.S. Program at the College of Computing and for giving us the opportunity to consider your application to this Program. After careful consideration, the College admissions committee has placed you on our Acceptance Waiting List. Due to the large number of qualified applicants competing for a limited number of openings this year, we are unable to make you an immediate offer of admission. We do feel that your application is strong and that you should be accepted into our program if it is at all possible. Therefore, we will delay our final decision until May 15th. We hope that we will be able to extend an offer to you at that time. Once again, thank you for your interest in the College of Computing. Sincerely, ... ***

Utah is a very good school Centurion! Not much to choose between UMN and Utah. You should see which schools' program matches your interestes better. Did you write to UMN and find out about your decisiosn? If yes, when?

Thanks Dhruv! I sure am trying to look at only the positives :)

The students there do know that the USC Masters program is not popular for a top 20 school! I remember a doctoral student at USC who wrote to a TMian, who inturn forwarded it to me, about how the CS courses are generally diluted due to the quality of the students and the size of the class. In his opinion, most students generally just learn programming and that's it! But still, there's no doubting the fact that they have a very good department, with excellent faculty who do top class research. :)

Congrats man.Atleast with you the saying "When it rains, it pours!" is true!

Hey JO - I'm not sure how I can console you. But I really really sympathise with you man. I've been through pretty much all that you've been through. Only difference being that I didn't have you're wonderful credentials. There's not much anyone can say at this moment which can be soothing. But try not to analyse the why's and why not's. It will really get you nowhere. There really can be no rational reason why you were rejected at all the top schools. There are so many other factors that come into play in this admissions process which makes it very very unpredictable. If you look at a cross section of the TMians you'll notice that there are some exceptional students who didn't make it to their top choice univs, whereas applicants with 'seemingly' lesser credentials have been admitted to the same universities. There have been cases where students admitted with funding from Stanford have been rejected at other schools! Ok.. I wont go on about it... let's try to look ahead and be positive. One suggestion I have is to try and make the best of what you have. Like you said, sitting out another year might really not get you anywhere. Morever you want to do a PhD, so it doesn't make sense to take a few years off to improve your credentials, which you could have done if you wanted to do a Masters. So I suggest that you take up the TAMU offer. Then ask all the top universities you had applied to to reconsider your application for the Spring 2006 term or for Fall 2006. Most universities keep the files on their records for a year and will reconsider the applications if you request them to do so. In general, students once rejected have a small chance of being accepted again, but you can give it a try. If you make it through anywhere, you can transfer. I was rejected by IUB last year. I had asked them to reconsider my file again this year and I've been admitted. Another university I had applied to this year rejected me initially. I asked one of my friends studying to find out the reason for the rejection. I was told that I had not shown proof of availability to fund myelf. In their experience students who don't show proof of funding 'generally' don't accept the offer. So that might have been a reason in my application being rejected!! I sent in the documents and asked them to reconsider it and I was admitted!!! So things as silly as this can happen. The moral of the story is not to take any reject (defeat) lying down! Imagine being given such a reason after sitting out a year and going through the whole process again!! Also, TAMU might not be the best of places for CS research, but definitely it's not that bad man. In the end graduate school is all about what you do. So if you have the motivation and the drive, you can surely go anywhere you want to. If you take up the TAMU offer, you'll get an opportuity to do courses and reserach which you can cite when you ask for you application to be reconsidered. It is definitely better than sitting here and working at a reserach institute or something. If you're at TAMU you can even go to the universities you're interested in, meet the professors personally and find out what went wrong. That might go a long way in helping you get an admit. We have come across a case of a TMian who was initially rejected by (I think) Stanford or UCLA. He wrote to the committee and convinced them why he should be admitted and he was offered a position! To finish this off, I personally feel acceptig the TAMU offer is a better option than sitting here and applying again. That way you keep all your options open. You can apply to more schools, ask for your application to be reconsidered at other school, do graduate level courses and earn credits which you can transfer to another university as well as get involved in research. In the worst case, if that place is really as bad as it's made out to be, you can leave with a Masters degree. On the brigter side, you never know what's in store. You just might end up finding a superb advisor at TAMU :) I also think you should write to USC and find out what are the chances you'll be funded. I'm surprised USC has admited you to their PhD program without aid. Make no mistake, USC is a very very good and reputed school! So you should try to go there if you can. This is getting too long... so I'll end here. Good luck. I'll end with one small piece of advice - You have to be pro-active and agressive man. Don't get too philosophical. Buck up and get ready to fight it out! It's a brawl :)