Magog

After countless talks with current and prospective graduate students, I've got the perception that if you can obtain a Phd fellowship from your country or another source this will have a very positive effect on the admission process, won't it? I mean, in some cases it can make the difference between being accepted or not, and some faculty will be very enthusiastic to talk to you, if they know you don't need their support for 5 or 6 years... Is that true? Could you please share your own experiences on this topic? Edward

Please, can you tell me if Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and Rutgers have minimum cut off GPA? As far as I know, Utah has a minimum cut off GPA of 3.0, for example. Anyone knows about other universities? Is this a rule? If someone does poorly during the undergraduate, but does GREAT during M.Sc., he/she will have a better chance during the PhD application process?

Vipul, I need to review everything on graphs and computer networks. I am wondering if Cormen's book is enough to review graphs as well as Tanenbaum on networks?:hmm:

I am in a situation similar to Minnies (not very good GPA, extensive job experience, just started to work for CS GRE, etc.). A former classmate of mine was accepted at Cornell in 2003, but I am targeting univs. like Stony Brook and Rutgers. I would like to know if these schools have a minimum cutoff GPA? My GPA is around 74% and is from a good university in Brazil. I am currently doing a M.Sc. in my country, trying to improve my grades, but I don't know how effective is this strategy. A good CS GRE and good M.Sc. grade can be of any help in the PhD admission process? Besides that, do you recommend trying to solve textbooks exercises first or the past GRE exams?

What are the "top bracket of mid range universities"? Could you give examples (a list) of such universities, please? I will certainly apply to Stanford and Princeton, for example, but I would be quite happy if I was accepted at Rutgers, UNC Chapell Hill or SUNY - Stony Brook, on the other hand. Are any of these universities in the mid range? BTW, I have put a 3.2 undegraduate GPA, but I live in another country and my grading system is VERY different from the North American one. In fact, 3.2 was what I've got after trying to convert it to a "GPA-like" grading system...

Well, I didn't take the GREs/TOELF this year because I have been pretty busy working on my M.Sc. dissertation. I plan to apply for a PhD abroad. 1) My undergraduate GPA is not outstanding, so it should be at most 3.2 or something like that. 2) I have already published three papers about my research work. One in an international workshop, another one in an international symposium (IEEE) and the last one in a "electronic journal". This work has been conducted in a pretty famous genetic engeneering/bioinformatics lab in my country. If everything goes well, I should have more two or three papers published in international conferences and symposiums next year. 3) I can get pretty good recommendation letters from my advisor, another professor that advised me during my undergraduate dissertation and scientists working in the lab cited above. 4) I have +5 years of experience as a software analyst/computer programmer in important government institutions in my country. I still work part time there. 5) I have 1.5 years of experience as a lecturer in a local college. I gave introductory lectures about computer programming in C, Pascal. 6) I have started to write a SOP, but will revise it soon. 7) My M.Sc. GPA is good. What do you think? If I get a good grade on GRE and TOEFL, what univs. do you recommend?

Hi folks, Please, Anyone can tell me about the status of John Hopkins University when it comes to CS? It is a nice university to pursue graduate studies (PhD level)? And what about the competition? Is it hard to enter this university? Anyone who was accepted would like to post the credentials (GRE, GPA scores and research experience)? Thanks in advance

Hello, Please, anybody has information about how good is the graphics program at John Hopkins University? And what about Waterloo and Toronto (Canada)? What universities do you recommend when it comes to CG besides the top ten univ., of course? Magog

Top universities have a cutoff GPA? Or they can accept students with a 3.0 GPA, but with many papers published? And what about a student that had a 3.0 undergraduate GPA and a 4.0 MSc. GPA? The great score in a MSc. course can improve his chances of being accepted or the undergraduate score will still have a heavy weight? Please, anybody can post the link where we can see the average GRE scores of the universities?

What are the data structures usually that usually appear in the GRE?

I am a bit confused, too. Are the authors considering ONLY the delete procedure, i.e., without the search procedure performed before? If so, it really makes sense to say that it takes only O(1) on a doubly linked list and O(n/m) on a single linked list. :hmm: It seems that during the delete procedure there's already a pointer to the node of the element x. Maybe he has realized that when I want to delete a element I need to SEARCH the element and DELETE it (two operations, in fact). Therefore, after I have found the element (that takes O(n/m)), it will take only O(1) to have it DELETED if my list is doubly linked, because it's just a matter of pointer rearrangement. In other words, they are considering just the cost of the second operation. Is this correct?

Right now my tentative list is Princeton, Stanford, SUNY Stony Brook, Rutgers, Rice, UBC (Canada), Toronto (Canada), Utah and Washington. I am looking for a graphics oriented course, so send me any suggestion, please? A friend of mine who is doing a Phd at Cornell said that my list is a bit ambitious, so I will probably change it or even add more institutions. I didn't take the GREs yet, because I am still a first year MSc. student. But I hope to do the General GRE and TOEFL late this year.

Hello, I am hoping to get a good CS GRE score as well as TOEFL and General GRE. I have been asking some questions here and there, but I am still having trouble to find a good answer: Can an excellent score during the CS MSc. program have a positive impact over a low undergraduate CS GPA for PhD admission? Can a person with a 3.2 undergraduate GPA and a 4.0 MSc. GPA be accepted at universities like UC Irvine, SUNY at Stony Brook, Rutgers and UNC, for example? I would like to know what is the real value of a undergraduate GPA when the applicant holds a MSc. degree... Please, anyone can help me to answer the above questions?

I have to say: the CS GRE is difficult even to people that hold a BS in computer science. Can you take some comp. science courses in your former university? You could take them to get in touch with the subjects. They seem to pay attention if you have good grades on related disciplines like math and physics, too. Another option is try to find MSc. programs that don't require CS GRE at all. I don't know for sure, but I think many of them don't require it. It's a big plus if you have a good CS GRE score to show, but it's not mandatory.

I would like to apply to Stanford, Duke and Princeton, too. Unfortunately, I am almost giving up, because I have a similar GPA and the acceptance seems to be very difficult without perfect grades.... :( As far as I know, there are two things that can decide your acceptance in the institutions cited above: 1) Papers published in WELL KNOW conferences are a great plus. If you have a bunch of papers published in good conferences your chances of being accepted will REALLY improve. They don't want just good students. They want good researchers. 2) If the professor who wrote your letter of recommendation is a GREAT scientist in his/her field then your chances of being accepted will really improve. Professional experience is a plus, too. Some universities (Princeton) seem to like it, if it's in your area of interest, but the above are more important. :hmm: I doing a MSc. in my country and getting good grades, but I don't have 1) nor 2), so my chances are not good, I guess. :( Anybody agrees with this? Professional experience could replace a "not-so-good" GPA? Magog

There's a computer graphics professor at Princeton, Thomas Funkhouser, that has a biological sciences background, too. Computational Biology is a GREAT area of research nowadays. I highly recommend it, because it aggregates virtually every field in computer science (algorithms, systems, graphics, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.). If you decide to work on computational biology there's an MSc. program in computational biology at Rice computer science department that seems to be good. Many other universities (Washington? UCSD?) have computational biology programs... It seems to be harder and harder to do graduate studies in computer science, but you should try.

Everybody talks about how strenght your SOP (Statement of Purposes) should be, but what is a good example of statement of purposes for computer science, for example? Anyone out there, has one example of SOP or at least the main guidelines that you should follow while writing this letter? What characterizes a good SOP and a bad SOP?

I've just downloaded this test and began to answer it. Wow ! Quite hard, isn't it? Where can we download other tests?

Yesterday, I computed my undergraduate GPA. Despite earning high grades in my current MSc. course (A+), my undergraduate GPA is well between 2.6 and 3.0.... Please, can anyone tell me if this will definitely keep out of ANY university in USA ??? Will my MSc. GPA and CS GRE help me to get accepted??? After this bad news, I am seriously pondering about give up the plans of doing a PhD... Edward

My undergraduate GPA was not good. Unfortunately, I think this could keep me out of a graduate program in a top university. :( The main reason was that I had to work during my undergraduate course to support my family. :( In general it was not bad, but it's far from perfect. I trying to reverse this situation now. I am doing a MSc. program in my former university and getting as high grades as possible. I will soon start to work hard for GRE CS. If I score high on those tests and get a perfect score during my MSc. this could help me? I would be happy if I got accepted at Rutgers or SUNY at Stony Brook, for instance. Please, I see everybody talking about GPA, but I don't see people talking about transcripts. Nobody looks transcripts? Magog

Please, I know that everybody talks about scores in this forum, but I have a doubt: my work experience can boost my chances of being accepted in a top ten graduate program? Soon, I will apply to a PhD in Computer Science. I have +5 years of experience in the Information Technology industry as well as one and a half years of experience as a lecturer in a local community college. This can make the difference to get accepted in graduate programs like Stanford or Princeton, or they just don't pay attention to this kind of experience ???? Thanks, Magog

Hello everybody, I am a first year MSc. student in Brazil and I would like to apply to PhD abroad, but I haven't done the GRE CS, GRE General and TOEFL yet :( I am starting to study to this exams now, although I don't know if I will have enough time to be well prepared. My first question is if there is enough time to study, so that I can have a really high grade? Early this year, I did some TOEFL mock exams without prior study and I was able to get a score between 213 and 230. And more, I glanced over some questions in the math section of GRE and they don't look so hard despite requiring study and practice. Nevertheless, the verbal section is as scary as hell, in my opinion.:yuck: The GRE CS is my main concern though, and I was even pondering about postpone my application process to next year, so I can have much time to study to GRE CS. What do you thing about this? Do you recommend to do GRE general and TOEFL this year and delay GRE CS to next year? Finally, I friend of mine that is doing a PhD at Cornell said that my list of universities is a bit ambicious, therefore I should try to select more safe universities. My (tentative) list is: 01. Stanford University 02. Princeton University 03. SUNY at Stony Brook 04. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 05. Rutgers University 06. Rice University 07. University of California at Davis 08. Cornell University 09. University of California at Irvine 10. University of Utah 11. British Columbia University (Canada) 12. Toronto University (Canada) 13. Duke University This is more or less in my order of preference :D Please, what do you think. It is really ambitious? I am looking for universities with good Computer Graphics or Algorithms programs. Any suggestion of updates on this list? Magog