DSA

A couple weeks ago I had posted here all panicky about a last-minute potential maybe-offer from Utah after I had accepted Purdue's offer. I didn't hear back from them until yesterday, when I sent an email to officially withdraw my application from Utah. The school was apologetic in neglecting to tell me that I hadn't been chosen after all. I'm just glad to have some closure (it helps having a clear reason why I'm not heading back to Utah where a lot of my relatives and friends are -- it's out of my control). My path is set, and I'm currently preparing to go to Purdue next month -- the only school that accepted me with funding!

Hi again! I'm back with more questions, this time about housing. I'm a new grad student who is starting as a research assistant at the beginning of May, so I'm needing to find a place to move in around the end of April. I've been looking for lofts, studios, and one-bedroom apartments around the Lafayette area. I'm currently living in the Kansas City area, and while I was able to visit Purdue last month and get a sense of the area, I didn't tour any apartments at that time. I admit I'm flying blind here and, as this is my first time choosing an apartment in a completely new city, I could use all the guidance I can get. How do most people do this process when going into a new city? My upper bound on rent is ~$600/month. I have no problem with being away from campus as I will have a car (plus I've heard that grad students may prefer to get away from the loud partying near-campus places). Access to bus lines would be nice, though. In general, my priorities are less on space and perks like pools (that's what the campus rec center is for), and much more on general reliability and a sense that the landlords aren't completely taking advantage of me. Plus, I'd prefer not to deal with setting up roommates this early on while I'm still getting my bearings. I've been consulting the Purdue graduate housing survey, city guides on thegradcafe.com, and some online reviews. I've started narrowing down a list, and want to know: what have your heard/experienced from these places? Basham Bay Pointe Beau Jardin Blackbird Farms Burgett Rentals Chauncey Village Franklin Park Livesay Management Milakis Rentals O'Neil Property Management Pheasant Run Southridge Commons WH Long - Shoshone Or if there are some I'm missing that I should really check out, let me know! If you could help me out with any recommendations (or horror stories), it would be really helpful. Thanks!

Thanks! Will do. I'm almost certainly going to live off-campus. I've also heard that the east side of the river is better for grad students in general. I'll be getting a car before I head out there. I'm still trying to piece together how best to find a location -- I've never gotten an apartment in a new city before!

I'll actually be starting at Purdue this summer, at the beginning of May. I'll be starting early as an RA for a computer science PhD project.

I'm going to be starting at Purdue in May (moving in mid-April) so I'm also trying to figure out what places to look at for housing. I'm still figuring it out, but what I've been doing is compiling notes from all the gradcafe threads about (West/)Lafayette. In addition, I saw this link to an official student housing survey from 2012; there's some good info in here: http://www.gradschool.purdue.edu/housing/Housing%20Survey%20Final%20Results%202012.pdf As for being bike-friendly, the areas I'm looking at haven't been too bike-friendly, just because I'm strongly considering living in Lafayette instead of West Lafayette. The impression I got while visiting (if current/past students can confirm/deny this, it would be helpful) is that the areas that would be close enough to campus to easily bike there are also the areas that are so populated with UGs that wanting to escape drunk freshmen on the weekends would be a mutually exclusive goal. As for me I'm planning on getting a car.

I would think it would be worth a couple sentences in the personal statement (not on the CV). That's what I did -- I've taken a bunch of MOOCs, and I had a quick mention of it and how it showed my passion for independent goal-setting and love of learning. In my personal statement, I had a footnote with a link to my personal webpage where I host the PDF certificates of accomplishment for the MOOCs I've taken. You can see my results in my signature -- not sure if it helped or not, but I think it wouldn't hurt.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and accepted Purdue's offer. Gonna be a Boilermaker...whatever that is! Now to figure out all the crazy details of moving to a new place, before May...

Thanks for the info -- I admit it all seems like a weird edge case to me; the funding offer is there and guaranteed, though whether it's an RA or TA position or whatever is still up in the air.

Thanks for the advice -- I admit I'm pretty uninformed on a lot of this. When it comes to the whole April 15th deadline, what does it mean by "punishment" in these cases?

Well, I guess the waiting will need to be over very soon for me. My current best choice (the only school that accepted me to the PhD program with funding so far) needs to hear back from me this week in order for me to be able to do a summer RA position with my advisor. Last week I tried poking the grad office of my #1 choice, got no answer, so sent another email poking them again. Basically laying out the other offer I've got and the deadline, in hopes that I can get at least some info about my application before I have to make this decision. I hope it didn't come across as too bothersome, but at this point there's nothing for me to lose from being needy with this other school, because if they get back to me with an offer that's not good enough, or an offer that comes too late, I won't be going there.

It's frustrating in my case because I had emailed UNC to let them know about my Purdue offer, and the graduate office person had gotten back to me quickly -- and then the UNC email (with no funding) arrived the day after that. So I expect that there's no real bargaining possible since they know already what my other offer is and seemed not to bite. But that's OK (for me at least) because I wasn't particularly drawn to UNC enough to favor it over the offer I already have.

Yeah, I got admission without funding from UNC as well. A couple days ago I had actually emailed all schools that hadn't gotten back to me yet, to let them know about the offer I currently have (and to politely tell them to hurry it up if they want me ). Since the acceptance I have from Purdue comes with funding it's hard to beat that. I really only have one more school on my list that could seriously rival that offer... still waiting on that.

Sure! Well, first things first, if you've only been to the East/West Coasts, then Lafayette will definitely be a change of pace. I come from Kansas City and in comparison Purdue is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. When I spoke with various students in the CS program, they all described the city as something like boring. However, they did also mention that there were a good number of student groups and some decent activities. It seems like if there's anything going on, it's going to be associated with the university in some way, rather than some cities where there are more independent events outside of it. However, when speaking with some of the faculty, they mentioned some more events that were in Lafayette, especially regarding the arts and music. There were a number of interesting restaurants near campus, though -- if you're there I recommend checking out the Blue Nile, which is a Middle Eastern restaurant that's quite good. Lafayette's an hour from Indianapolis and two hours from Chicago, so I hear that weekend trips are pretty common. The campus itself seems very nice, and the facilities of the computer science department looked up to date and matching what I'm looking for. The faculty was really friendly and the students' projects were fascinating, and it seems like the CS department is more cooperative than competitive, which is a plus. I also took a quick tour of the new campus rec center and it's a really nice facility there, and I'm pleased at the prospect of being able to improve my fitness there. I did hear about a Student Outing Club that does camping and hiking and stuff which actually sounds like a blast, even though I wouldn't normally be into that sort of thing. In short, I think my trip to Lafayette confirmed my initial thoughts: the city is relatively quiet and not a cultural hub, but it's got enough. "Adequate" is the term I'd use. I'm not particularly someone who needs a lot of things to do in a city, and my goal with grad school is to build up my knowledge and get some research experience. It sounds like a lot of the opportunities for interesting activities come not from the places in Lafayette but from the students and the student groups. Let me know if you have any more questions! EDIT: Looking back I think my post sounded more negative or ambivalent than I wanted it to sound. The distinct impressions I felt while there were largely positive. I found myself really excited to speak with the people in the CS department. But I do think that my excitement is more towards Purdue, and not towards the city it resides in.

I've been accepted to Purdue, and tomorrow and Friday I'm heading out to visit the city and campus. Any recommendations for places I should check out, either on or off campus, either side of the river? I was planning on driving around the downtown Lafayette area to see what the area's like for apartments. I also know there's a Third Friday event on that day; anything I should look at in particular?

Just wanted to mention that it is possible (though perhaps unlikely) to get accepted to CS PhD programs to top 20 schools without research experience. I've received one such acceptance (funded) so far. I did no research while in undergrad and only knew that I wanted to get involved in research once I entered industry and found that the problems I was working on were not as cutting-edge as I had hoped. In addition, my GPA was moderately good but nothing to really brag about (~3.6) and I was below 90th percentile on my quantitative GRE score. The acceptance I had gotten so far was probably due to a particular connection between my interests and the interests of my POI, combined with his desire to do specific project-based research very soon. From this, I think that industry experience and demonstrating that you can get things done is very helpful. Probably the most helpful thing for me (and so maybe helpful for you) is that I worked on an independent computer science project outside of work. This project is coordinated with some current students and alumni of my undergrad school, where we're participating in a competition for building engineering solutions to medical problems. By developing a system that's directly related to my research interests (computer graphics), part of which is already released and open-source on GitHub, I'd like to think that helped me demonstrate my passion for the field. I also took like a dozen MOOCs from Coursera and other sites while I was out of school, some of which were directly connected with my field. I don't know if that helped at all, but I mentioned them in my SOP and included a link to my website where I display the certificates I got from those MOOCs. Maybe not so useful, but maybe it could be.