SANDIEGO
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Posts posted by SANDIEGO
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I second Cambridge. Georgia Tech is probably a top 10 in the states, UBC and McGill are both top 5-10 in Canada, but you're looking at Cambridge which is arguably a top 5-10 in the world. Not to say that you should be basing your decisions on reputation alone, but the gap here is significant.
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Chinese professors tend towards Chinese students probably because there's some inherent cultural understanding, communication in native tongue, etc. It just removes (or mitigates to some extent) a few of the unknown variables that come with accepting grad students. Internationals seem to tend to cluster around certain locales in the U.S. where there are good schools/jobs (e.g. California as a whole, NYC).
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Yes, it can help substantially. You'll be bringing industry skills that others won't have and experience with working under pressure with deadlines. Depending on the specific industry experience you have, it can be anything from a tiny boost to being equivalent to research experience.
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Stanford doesn't fund but students can find RAships, Princeton provides funding through TAships, other schools will make rare exceptions for individuals (e.g. fellowships). Typically funding for masters is extraordinarily rare.
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It means you were insufficient for entry into the PhD program (relative to other applicants who made it in) but someone they would accept into their masters program (whose threshold for acceptance is higher). Some schools explicitly separate their PhD and masters streams for explicitly this reason, they don't want the masters program perceived as some watered down version for people who couldn't get into the PhD program (so you only apply to PhD or masters directly, not both, and there is no cross-over). Schools who don't fund their masters students typically want their masters programs full, since self-funded students means cheap(er) labor.
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a dream professor? lol
i have found that most anyone can find graduate school interesting if they are committed to research. i have seen people even hate their 'dream professors' and 'dream programs'. i don't think that ubc has more cachet as a general rule and this person needn't be made to feel poorly should he or she decide not to attend.
Actually there is a HUGE difference in "cachet", or even global recognition. UBC is well known here in the states while Western is virtually unheard of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Western_Ontario#Reputation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_British_Columbia#Reputation
Given that this is the school that the OP wants to attend, feels that their fit is better with, has some degree of funding, AND has a leg up in reputation, I think it's preposterous advice.
You can always quote people who end up hating their "dream school" or "dream professor", but this would be like taking the anecdotes from people who dropped out of school and were successful. By and large, your instinct and gut will be correct in deciding on a school. Obviously, you might end up hating it, but it's a risk regardless of what school you take, and you're mitigating it to some degree by taking the choice you feel is the better one at this point in time based on the research you've done.
Good luck, hope this helps with your decision.
- selecttext and bedmas
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16 is brutal for vancouver. are your tuition and fees at least covered? tuition at ubc with fees will be around 5000-6000. it sounds like you will have to take out a loan. does your great package at western include tuition support? if not, you will be paying ~8000-9000 out of that stipend.
Remember that it is only a masters and the institution you attend will be far less important than the quality and number of publications that you produce. if western works out financially so that you don't have to take out loans, I would go there instead.
I disagree completely. UBC > Western in both reputation and fit in this case. You will end up doing better work at UBC in any case since that's where you want to attend and has your dream professor (i.e. you have a higher likelihood of producing higher quality publications). The reputation will also come into play regardless of what you decide to do next (i.e. apply for PhD programs). You will find funding if you are committed to doing so, TAships and RAships are there if you are willing to put in the up front work of asking around and following up on leads. Like I said, only pick the other option if going to UBC kneecaps you so hard that you have to be miserable for the next few years of your life (which I doubt is the case).
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Hi fwoomp,
CMU is great! I would take it over UIUC, Georgia Tech and John Hopkins. Most masters programs in CS are considered terminal programs, even ones with research components. If you end up getting accepted to Stanford, you'll find that their MS is course based as well, unless you find an RAship on your own time.
If you want to leave the option of a PhD open, it'll be in your best interest to get some research experience. It doesn't have to be in the form of a thesis, get involved with a professor, ask about RAships, do some work over the summer etc.
- ssk2 and psycho_killer
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16,000 isn't absolutely awful.. except Vancouver is incredibly expensive. I think you could save some money if you were willing to live in less expensive locales (Burnaby?) and use public transportation (I'm not sure what the cost of student housing there is). But on the upside, Vancouver is mostly an incredible city to experience, even if you don't have a lot to spend (Stanley Park, Grouse Mountain, Whistler, etc.). I would pick UBC for reputation/professor/city, and I'd pick Western if I was in some kind of a desperate financial situation. Can you ask your parents for help if the scholarship falls through?
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So, this essay is bad, but would definitely not get anything as low as a 2. Take a look at the percentiles for analytical writing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations#Analytical_writing_section
Analytical Writing score Writing % Below 6 99 5.5 96 5 92 4.5 73 4 49 3.5 30 3 11 2.5 6 2 1 1.5 1 1 1 0.51
There is simply no way this essay is in the bottom 1% of the essay submitted. A score of 3-3.5 is much more likely. This isn't to say that the points that AnthonyGose rose are invalid, they're good, but the grade itself is not going to be a 1-1.5.
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This is Computer Science, not Mechanical Engineering. So yeah, duh.
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Personally I would go with funding. I also turned down name brand (Stanford) in favor of funding. I don't regret doing so. It also looks good on a cv/sounds great when you can tell people you paid nothing for your masters.
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I second the above thoughts on doing some explaining about the grades, but in a careful way as to not show weaknesses that might carry over into your graduate career.
You can do much better with preparation and therefore your scores aren't an accurate indicator of your possible performance to those schools. I recommend a re-take, of course contingent on you actually preparing this time around.
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Also in the long scheme of things, for any given school you're just one puny grad student. Should you fail to be a good fit then your professor may feel bad and have wasted some time and money, but you may have invested years of your life in something with no return. And so it's doubly important to make sure there's both the fit and the motivation to attend the school.
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You all make me laugh. I took the time to register this account, because I thought that I was looking at a thread of disasters. In-fact, almost all of you have decent GPA's. I dont think I saw anyone with below a 2.6....That's pretty good.
This isn't a here's my story, it's better than yours. Rather it's a true disaster which cannot be fixed in any way.
I finished my undergrad with a 2.41 in business. I was studying accounting, but if your GPA falls below 2.5 at the University of Colorado then you lose your emphasis. Mine was accounting. I read everywhere that with a 2.4 I can eliminate 98% of grad schools in the U.S.
In my entire college tenure, my best semester was a 3.29 and my worst was a 1.6
Between those two extremes I fit everywhere probably averaging around a constant 2.5 the entire time. But my backstory is what helped (which I don't encourage you to do). I was in Iraq where I was severely injured to the point where I now have seizures on a weekly basis. I'm a disabled veteran, and I found out that this doesn't play into anything when applying to grad school. Since I had saved money, I decided to take my 2.4 gpa and apply to every top school that I could think of. I don't have good grades, my professors won't write me letters of recommendations because of my grades and my work experience is non-relevant to accounting. Basically I have no help getting into grad school.
However, I was wrong. I spent two days creating applications, paying fee's and writing countless essays as to why I would be a good fit. I then picked the six schools that I *knew* wouldn't accept me because of my bad grades and applied to them. I spent over $1000 in application fee's and other items. My top six schools that I applied to for a masters in accounting: Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Wisconsin,California and Harvard. Then I completed five applications to schools that I thought I had a moderate chance of getting into: Texas A&M, Texas, Ohio State University, Nebraska, and Auburn. After finishing those applications, I tried some other one's that I thought would be sympathetic to my veteran status and applied to five more: North Dakota, Western Michigan, University of Utah, and Boise State University.
I didn't think anything of these. At worst, I thought that I may have just submitted 16 applications which would end up in the trash can followed by a degrading rejection email that is sent to the auto rejected students.
However here is my current problem:
On my desk I currently have acceptance letters to every single school except Utah because of an application error which is supposed to be resolved soon. The first thought that came to my mind was "wow, I got into Stanford". The first idea was to immediately call/email all of the admissions staff to see what kind of marijuanna they were smoking because my acceptance likely ended the dream of a better qualified student at that particular school. To keep things short, I summed up the responses from all of the universities by displaying what Michigan wrote back. I did this because it generally follows what Stanford, Cornell and just about every other school said. Texas A&M said that my veteran status improved my rankings consideribly. But anyways:
Michigan: "Your undergraduate grades were horrible, and frankly I cannot believe that you are applying knowing that the GPA floor is 3.3 for minimal consideration to the accounting program. After looking through your packet, I saw nothing which indicated that you would have the ability to complete a graduate level degree. Furthermore, after our interview it became very clear to me that you have no relevant experience in accounting outside of academia. I left the interview perplexed because nothing statistically showed my staff or myself that you belong at Michigan. However, I did enjoy reading your essay and listening to your thoughts on the Enron T scandal. For having such a low GPA, I am interested in how you learned so much. While I am grateful for your service and terribly sorry for your injury I cannot simply put that in front of your academic performance. You got into Michigan because you can communicate well. It's not too often that a student will present themselves as a problem solver and a situational thinker yet not be able to test well. I think you will bring something profound to our program and that is the ability to hear and speak."
So just so all of you know, having a 2.4 doesn't help but if you can overcome with something else then you can definitely go places.
This is remarkable and inspiring. Thank you for sharing.
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The professors had a meeting about the applications and the decisions were made then. There's just no way that a grad coordinator even has the power alone to admit you without the blessing of at least one POI. Asking for advice on what they thought were the weaknesses in your application so you can do better next time is one thing, but asking for them to re-consider a decision they've already made.. is probably not professional. Good luck if you go ahead and do it anyway
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Definitely retake! Quant should be 90+ and verbal is low.
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It definitely depends on the field. But from a computer science standpoint I think that NOT having a URL/website might even be a little weird. And so many computer science research projects and academic projects include visual elements (graphics, HCI are examples) that it's difficult to really see the work without a computer.
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Hi,
Any professor wanting to take on a student for 5 years of funding in his/her lab would want to make sure the student is an excellent fit. Therefore it makes sense that they would carefully investigate potential hires, and that means going through any and all information given in the application including websites. If they haven't visited your website and/or have only given it a cursory glance, it is most likely that they are not (yet) seriously considering you as a candidate.
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I'd say the fact you had an interview and that the prof contacted you after being waitlisted are good indicators that you're high up on the waitlist. Best of luck!
Profile Evaluation for MS in Canada
in Computer Science
Posted
That's a pretty good profile for MS in Canada IMO, I'd say you have a decent shot for the listed universities. Those are all among the best CS schools in Canada, so I hope you have a few backup universities as well..