redbullguy

I thought you could only request 4 at a time. Then call back to add 4 more.

edit: deleted post.

The information was there for all schools except a few which apparently refused to provide stats for their admitted pool of students

I didn't mean to mock anyone's background. Apologies if it came off like that. My comment was aimed at the universities. If they just did their real job of admitting the smartest kids they can find, I'm pretty sure diversity would take care of itself. All this rambling about building diverse campuses just seems like an exercise in political correctness to me.

Yeah - the turban thing wasn't serious. Just a way of saying they're made fun of just because they dont act and look exactly like everyone else.

Am I the only one who finds all this diversity hysteria annoying?

US News (usnews.com) - the guys who do those rankings make their full statistics available for a fee - about $20 for the year I think. Its probably worth it as a starting point in sifting through schools to see which ones you want to take a closer look at. But I don't recommend basing your decisions solely, or even in large part, on these stats.

I got into Stanford with no publications... so I don't know if its a huge deal for masters level admissions. I had on the other hand taken a ton of graduate level classes and a lot of advanced math.

I had paid for the full US News stats when I had applied. Most schools listed their average AWA in the 4-5 range.

Good to hear you're doing well. I hope things work out for you. The impression I get from these few months on campus is that there is always money available somewhere. But its usually controlled by the person who got the research grant. Univ funds are more scarce. And TA funds (while provided by the U) are again controlled by the Prof who's teaching. So you usually have to hunt out specific individuals. Since this guy seems so keen on getting you there... maybe you can visit and ask him to arrange for you to meet with research groups with similar interests and/or professors in the same field who you might be able to TA for. People are rarely willing to committ grant money they worked hard for to people they haven't met, or at least corresponded with in detail. Just my 2c As far as my life goes - I'm good. Just started at Stanford this fall. Was all stoked about 'proving myself' when I got here, so I took on a huge workload and got owned. Anyway, winter break just started... so recovery is underway.

I know its just a joke. Just saying this is not the place. I know at least two Sikhs who read this board, and although I'm sure they've heard them all before, it can't be pleasant to read them here. I have a huge repertoire of race/religion based jokes that I tell whenever I go to a bar and get faded. But I don't tell them at my department mixers. You feel its ok to post these jokes in a public forum because you're in India right now and hell... everyone tells them. But you wouldnt post Holocaust-Jew jokes here... I don't see why Sikh jokes are any different.

Australia is finished when Warne retires. Finished.

So this is how you guys have such massive post counts

The thing about Ayn Rand is if you're in a certain frame of mind, everything makes so much sense and you think its great stuff. Then you go out and live a little bit and suddenly her ideas seem a lot more disconnected from reality and frankly, a little hysterical. Worth a read though. Make you think if nothing else. PS: Currently reading Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre. hilarious. everyone should read this right now

Sardars are Sikhs. Ridiculed all over India and elsewhere in the world for no good reason other than the fact they wear turbans. Most jokes focus on their supposed stupidity, although some of the more creative ones like to explore their aggressiveness. I'm normally a big fan of political incorrectness, especially in jokes. But posting this crap in a public forum is poor form.

This thread is really poor taste.

that sucks.

I wrote them by hand... and badly too. Didnt seem to matter. The only people who see the envelopes (at least at my school) are bored work-study undergrads who do the grunt work before firing off the file to the people who read the contents.

Ask to defer the admission for a year. Talk to your professor and see if he can hook you up with a research group, or maybe TAing opportunities. Also, I know the hard sciences have a ton of outside fellowships (NSF etc). Maybe you can look into those. And "aid" is misspelled ("aide") in the first paragraph. heh edit: whoops, didnt notice there was a second page to this thread. guess my opinions are irrelevant now

If your recommendors went to stanford, I can guarantee you that you'll get in.

Verbal scores dont count for anything. Unless you get something like 200, in which case you have bigger problems... Average quant scores make you look.. well.. average. verbal scores arent going to fix that.

Looks like you'll be as competitive as anyone. But there's no such thing as a sure admit Edit: there is such a thing as a sure admit if you have strong links to a prof there or are recommended by someone with strong links to the school

CS and financial engg are the same thing. You sit a desk coding like a monkey and never get laid. Seriously, its about 'engineering' stuff like hedging strategies etc, creating models, running simulations.... so on and so forth.

The most important factor (imo of course) will be your recommendations. Find a Columbia alum on your faculty :)

What people (i.e. my friends) do is send the transcript as it stands in December and then send another one with the Fall grades over winter break. A lot of schools don't really look at applications over this period (Profs on vacation etc.) and are just doing stuff like filing your papers and so on and so forth. They're generally happy to include any new info at this stage even if its past the official deadline. I added a few things (awards etc) after the official deadline, and didn't have any problems.