Cambienta

I lived up in Sherman Oaks for 6 months before deciding to move to West LA. The 405 in the morning is a killer (so are Sepulveda and Beverly Glen, the only other real routes through the mountains); my ten-mile commute easily got up to taking an hour and a half-- and taking the bus was even worse, time wise. If you definitely know you'll never need to commute down in the morning, regularly, then I'd say it's doable--any time that's not rush hour, the drive/bus ride is easy and fast.

One more post to let anyone who's looking for a roommate know that UCLA has a very convenient website for finding roommates and sublets. Hurray! https://housing.ucla.edu/community-housing

I called them this morning. For anyone who is wondering, the listed cost of apartments in Mentone, Rose, etc (all except Hilgard and Weyburn), IS to be split between the number of students to be living there. This includes even the two bedroom apartments-- that listed cost would be split between the two students should one be living in each room! Maybe a thread should be started for incoming UCLA graduate students looking for on-campus apartment-mates? (I could start it, I just don't know if it's against the rules. I don't personally know anyone else who is going to UCLA, unfortunately).

Hi! I was recently admitted to UCLA's MS in CS and am planning to go there. I'm looking at the housing options, and noticed that Weyburn and Hilgard have set "per-student" contract rates, but Keystone/Mentone, Rose Avenue, and Venice/Barry simply list a monthly rent (for example, $1289/month for a 1br/1ba at Keystone/Mentone) and mention that 1br apartments can have up to two students and 2br apartments can have up to 4 students. Does this mean that for the aforementioned $1289/month 1br/1ba--with two students living in it--it would actually be ~$645/month per student? I think I made this question sound more complicated than it is. It might not end up mattering, since it does not seem that the Housing Office matches you with a roommate for these kinds of apartments, and I'm not sure how I'd find one otherwise. (I'm going to call the housing office tomorrow and ask, I just missed their hours today).

I can give you feedback on yours if you'd like, though I don't even know if I did mine correctly or not, haha. I already applied to all of my schools, so you don't have to sweat returning the feedback. You can see mine, if you want, though.

For anyone who might later wonder what I did, I decided to go ahead and include the detail about ASD. Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback, guys. They really calmed me down. With these applications, it's so easy to obsess about any tiny fault you might remember after submission-- especially since most of the deadlines immediately precede winter break. So much time to do nothing but agonize...

I've already finished my statement of purpose, but am super stuck on the personal history statement. It's difficult to know what to write without it sounding stilted, and I'm not entirely sure how to write the conclusion. Would any of you be willing to give me some feedback? Here's a Google Docs link (with commenting enabled): https://docs.google.com/document/d/16zSaw8dpC7hrpEdAMFRWLm013XR9CPvW9_3W___Bf6s/edit?usp=sharing

I hear this. One of my applications was due December 15th and one of my recommenders has yet to submit. I have no idea why. I keep reminding him and reminding him... politely, of course, but still. We aren't on bad terms or anything, so I don't understand why he's being so negligent

Two of the schools I applied to require personal history statements which are separate from the statement of purpose. I submitted my applications two days ago and just now noticed a horrific grammatical error in the last sentence of my personal history. The sentence was along the lines of "A graduate education will allow me to better achieve my goals with respect to not only my academic and professional careers." It's a cliched sentence, but what makes it worse is that the "not only" shouldn't have been there... Anyway, I submitted that, and am now kind of super worried. It wouldn't make or break my application, but it definitely wouldn't help. Should I contact the two schools tomorrow and see if I can submit an amended version of the statement? Or would that be even more embarrassing? (I re-read the statement a zillion times, but after a while the words kind of blurred together and I somehow missed that error...)

Thank you for all of the responses! I really appreciate them. I decided to send both scores to all schools; some schools pick the highest scores per section out of all the exam attempts, so hopefully it works out.

I'm working on my personal history/diversity statement and am trying to figure out what's appropriate to say. I have written a paragraph on my experiences as someone with ASD, and my desire to eventually volunteer with students in similar situations. Is it inappropriate to mention having ASD? I feel it is the most significant thing about me worth mentioning in such a statement (more significant to me, personally, than my being Cuban), as my experiences with learning to deal with ASD and being in special education, etc., were significantly formative. I'm applying to MS programs in computer science. Any feedback would be appreciated!

Hi! I'm applying to computer science MS programs this fall. I took the GRE twice and here were the scores I got: 1st time: 160 V (84th percentile), 158 Q (71st percentile), and 3.5 W (38th percentile) 2nd time: 161 V (87th percentile), 157 Q (68th percentile), and 4.5 W (80th percentile) Were it not for the enormous jump in writing between the two, I'd say my score from the first time was better. However, despite my writing going up so dramatically, my quant (the only section I studied for) went down by one point! I don't know if it would reflect extra poorly on me to send both scores when I show a downward trend in the section which matters most. I already sent the score from the first time to five schools, but haven't sent the second to any. I think it would be worth it to resend with the second included to those five schools if any of you feel it would make a difference. Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!

Hi, guys! This is an update to say that I finished the above SoP. I'd love some more feedback, as I plan to continue tailoring it for the rest of my schools. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nD0zqc5XbB5wRm_PwQ--RXzyK4VZ3sIRCzDVG45R7hY/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you for the feedback! I went ahead and called UCLA and they told me not to sweat it

Application was due at 11:59 pm, officially submitted at 12:01. (I was obsessing for far too long over inconsequential details; I timed myself so carefully and then my browser stuffed up on me. I should have expected that. Maybe it was subconscious sabotage.) I am correct in understanding that this disqualified my application, yeah? (UCLA)

Hi! I'm currently working on a draft of my statement of purpose, but am terribly stuck. I'm going to post a link to what I've got thus far, and if anyone would like to give me some feedback, I've got comments enabled. It's not done yet, but I have an outline at the bottom regarding what I've yet to write. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nD0zqc5XbB5wRm_PwQ--RXzyK4VZ3sIRCzDVG45R7hY/edit?usp=sharing

So, most graduate schools require you to send all transcripts from all schools ever attended. I took classes at a community college while in high school and seriously messed them up. Anyway, I'd resigned myself to sending them to all of the schools I'm applying to. There's this one reach school I'm working on my application for which I sent this particular community college transcript to. However, I just stumbled upon a different page on their website which says you don't need to send community college transcripts. What. Shoot! I already sent them! (Why did I never see this particular page? I found it while doing some random Google search entirely unrelated to transcripts.) I wasn't expecting to get into this school, but without those transcripts I might seriously have a chance. Is there any way to contact the school and tell them I've sent them something incorrectly? Or have I just misunderstood something and falsely boosted my silly hopes? Any advice would be appreciated! (The school is UCLA, I'm applying to MS programs)

I did a search on this question, but didn't find anything helpful... probably because this is something which doesn't exist. I'm currently applying to master's programs in computer science, and generally feel good. When I was in high school, though, I took a bunch of extra-curricular classes at the local community college in chemistry and biology. This was for fun, since I was planning to study something unrelated and wanted to broaden my horizons. However, for a variety of reasons (health issue, and overloading myself), I did very poorly in these. It didn't matter for my undergraduate (and I didn't even use the credits, actually, in undergrad; still earned >130 units at my institution), but now I'm concerned since I imagine that there's no way schools I'm applying to would know that these were taken in high school. So, I'm sending these transcripts to all the schools, and a friend of mine suggested adding a "note" to my applications giving a timeline which basically specifies that those classes were taken in high school on top of an already full high school workload, etc. However, I've never heard of this "adding a note" thing before. Pretty sure they didn't mean that I should include it in my statement of purpose...so...is that even a thing? What would you recommend I do to address this in my applications? Apologies if this question sounds totally ridiculous. (Unfortunately, the number of courses I took at the college is non-negligible, otherwise I wouldn't be so concerned. I was a full-time student at both the college and the high school during my junior and senior years, and completed ~91 units while there (2.95 GPA at the college). Got an associate's. Ach, high school mistakes.)