Haggis

well, it would appear I'm in after all. Do you guys know anything about funding? judging by the course website the TA/RA situation is pretty grim. Not sure I can afford this masters. (I had originally applied for the PhD)

Edit: So I've now received what appears to be both an acceptance and a rejection for this program. hah. I'll let you know what happens when the quantum state collapses

I've lost hope a long time ago for Berkeley. I just wanna see the rejection letter at this point. Dunno what's taking them so long this year.

Hey mbc, You might wanna wait for the oppinion of someone who has actually done an MPhil/DPhil at one of those places, but here's what I've heard from various more or less reliable sources. Anyone else, please feel free to correct me. Most of the MPhil's won't be the same as the masters you get on your way to the PhD in the US. They are actually separate degrees and will usually have a strong taught component in addition to the research. There are exceptions (there's a 100% research masters at Edinburgh), but afaik those are pretty rare. Secondly, it might be tough to get funding for an Mphil. Funding is definitely not guaranteed and unless you can get something like a Gates scholarship there's a good chance you'll have to cover at least part of the cost yourself. Now, the DPhil (and btw, you don't necessarily need to get an MPhil first, though it might help). Here funding should be easier, but again not automatic or assured. Cambridge has a bit of a reputation of telling marginal accepts "sure, you can come over, but we can't guarantee funding". It's true the median time for a DPhil is < 3.5 years. Theoretically you should be done in 3 years, with a maximum extra year of buffer mostly used to finish writing up. As an extra motivation, if you do get funding it tends to run out after 3.5 years, so if you really wanna take the full 4 the last 6 months are on your dime (which might explain the median finish time). The cost of the shorter duration is less flexibility. You're pretty much expected to figure out what you're working on when you apply, get accepted by the prof you're gonna work with, go there and start working. People do switch their research focus sometimes, but it definitely shouldn't change by a large degree and probably not more than once. Other than that, it seems pretty similar regarding work-load, publishing etc. Btw. I'm pretty much the opposite of your situation. Finishing my undergrad at Edinburgh, probably gonna do an MPhil at Cambridge and would like to go to the US for a PhD.

Yeah, I got a conditional offer. (have to get a first, if you're familiar with the british degree types) Here's the timeline in case anyone checks this thread next year. Last reference sent: 12 December Contacted about interview: 20 February Interview: 25 February Accepted by department and moved to BOGS: 28 February (degree committe approval seems to have happened simultaneously with department approval) Official offer: 1st March They moved really fast after that interview. Guess the fumbling didn't hurt me too much.

Yeah, I expect the PhD interview would be tougher. You don't have to stick to your planned project at all, it's just used to give them a sense of your interests/knowledge and to find a potential supervisor for you(who will probably interview you). As I understand it, the first quarter at Cambridge is when you actually have to commit to a supervisor and a project and the 2nd and 3rd quarters are when most of the research work gets done. And thanks. I notice that people who had their interview last week are getting their results about now. So hopefully there shouldn't be too long of a wait left (I'm getting sick of checking CamSIS 1-2 times a day)

So, in case anyone is interested, I just had the interview. It wasn't too bad. There were the usual questions: Why did you apply here; what are your plans; talk about your research; etc There were also a couple technical questions that weren't too hard but that I still fumbled with because I hadn't thought about stuff like that in quite a while. They covered stuff like the basic functioning of the stack, heap, garbage collection, memory allocation, that sort of stuff. I think I got there in the end and showed that my transcripts are not actually forged, but I'm not sure how much the fumbling will hurt me. Guess we'll see.

Yeah, that's what I figured, cheers. Prof is Alastair Beresford

Hmm, interesting, thanks for the feedback guys. I should have mentioned, this isn't for a PhD application, but rather a research focused MPhil (I still had to submit a research proposal). I've only had interviews with companies so far so, just to make sure, I am correct in assuming that these sort of interviews are nothing like the first stage interview you'd have when applying to Google or something like that, right? I mean, I'm not gonna need to revise my knowledge of red black tree balancing procedures, am I? Anyway I set it for Monday, I'll let you know how it went.

I just had a professor contact me about a phone interview. He's not from my specialty area so I'm slightly unsure what this interview will consist of. Anyone done one of these?

Same here. Other than letter writters there's less than 5 people who know I'm applying. One of the wisest decisions I ever made. (now just to figure out how to navigate the holidays without having to tell anyone else about this)