thisAintNoGame

I'm heading to Northwestern next year to be part of the econ/cs theory group. I'm very excited about it.

Not in my opinion. As far as I see it, being a grad student is one of the worst jobs in existence. You are overworked, underpaid and under-appreciated. I say that you should grab the benefits where ever you can. Also, there are benefits to visits otherwise. You can get opinions and advice from current grad students that might help you make your choice as to where to go, when to choose an advisor, etc. You might also see something that you really like about the school and then start looking for that thing in the schools that you are still considering. Plus, meeting more people in the field is always a good thing. I would probably still go even I had accepted an offer but I have no scruples.

Hey Everybody, Just out of curiosity, when is everyone here going to start contacting schools and telling them you will not be accepting their offer. Obviously this is going to depend a lot on what offers you have but what if you can make the decision right now? Should you tell them? For example, if you accepted to A and B and you know that you would rather go to A over B. You are still waiting to hear from school C but cant you tell B right now that you wont be going there? Or is there some type of fear that is going to prevent you from sending out your rejections too early? I think I am in a position to make a decision like that right now but I am a bit nervous to do it for some reason. Of course, it would be in the best interest of those on a waiting list for admittance or waiting list for funding if I were to decide earlier but I still dont know what to do.

I agree with Gaiden59; the research track record is strong but the GPA/GRE is a little low. I would take the GRE again if you are applying next year. A 3.4 GPA is not bad but you have to remember that the best people from all over the world are applying to these institutions and a lot of them have very high GPAs. Also, the low score on the Verbal of the gre might reflect that you wont be able to write well. Communication is extremely important in research, so the ability to write well is very important. I would try to improve this skill (not just for grad admissions though, its a good life skill). Also, all publications are not equal. Getting a paper into a top IEEE or ACM conference is great but having it appear in a very low prestige or unknown conference may not do anything. In terms of the schools that you applied to this season... Stanford/UWashington - Stanford is one of the top schools in CS and UWashington is too. No one has a guaranteed shot at getting into these schools. If I was a betting man, I would unfortunately have to bet against you getting into these schools (dont worry, Im betting against myself too). I would say probably not (but have hope, since you never know!) Duke/UCSD/UCSB - These aren't the top schools but they are competitive institutions none the less. A person with your publication record will stand out at these schools but nothing is a guarantee. Maybe a 50/50 shot. In terms of advice on apps, if you know the area that you want to work in (I would assume you do since you have all those publications) then tailor your application towards a professor who works in your field that you would like to work with. If you can say something like "I have read Professor X's paper on subject Y and I feel that I could extend that work by taking his approach in section 2 and adding a Bregman Divergence and ..." (I just made that up and put little thought into what adding a Bregman Divergence actually means) then you stand a much better chance at getting noticed and getting in. I am not sure what your area is, but some other schools to consider would be Umass-Amherst, Penn State, University of Virginia, NYU, SUNY Stony Brook, and UNC.

Well I am not quite in the same boat as you since I have heard from 5 out of the 14 schools that I applied to but I can relate a little. The silence is deafening from a few of the schools that I really want to get into. Also, more waiting does not necessarily mean rejected. Most departments give offers in rounds; they send out offers to their first round candidates and then when some of those students decline, they move onto the second round, etc. So not hearing could mean that you (you meaning anybody, not specifically you) could be a second round candidate and stand a non-zero chance of acceptance. There are other schools that do admissions by professor. So if the professor who is put in charge of your application (maybe because you identified that professor specifically or because he handles all students with similar research interests to his) is a little bit bad with doing work on time, it will take longer. Hope is not lost until you actually get the rejection notice. That being said, waiting does suck tremendously.

First of all, congrats. What is your subfield? I have had two "interviews" so far. With the standard disclaimer that all interviews are different, I will tell you about mine. During both of the conversations, the first question was "Can you tell me a little bit more about the research that you did with Professor X..." Then each professor had different questions to ask related to that. The most technical question that I got was "I have done similar work but the optimization function was different [describes function]. Do you think that you would be able to adjust this model to match my function." It was very research specific. My advice would be to know whatever you talked about in your application/SOP like the back of your hand. You should refresh your mind of your research if you haven't looked at in a while. The lion's share of each conversation was the professor talking to me about the program at their school and asking me if I had any questions for them. Just relax and be yourself. Or, if you suck, be someone else. Just kidding, good luck.

The interview that I alluded to was from NW and I just had another one last night from UCSB. It wasn't really an interview exactly, both professors just asked me a few questions about some research that I had done and then explained to me a bunch of stuff about their PhD programs.

I have received one email that simply stated that my application was complete and that they would start looking at applications. I also received one phone call from a professor to schedule a phone interview. Beyond that, I haven't heard any news from any other schools (I applied to 14). The wait is driving me crazy. My field is Algorithms/Algorithmic Game Theory/Social networks.

To be quite honest, I have not heard of either of them.

You certainly seem to be very impressive but I do believe that you made a bit of a mistake in only applying to top 10 PhD programs. There are a number of very qualified applicants who will all be competing for those spots, so nothing is a sure thing. There are many hidden variables to the process and there is an inherent degree of randomness. Additionally (and unfairly) domestic students (students from US undergrad) are preferred to foreign students. I am not saying this a good thing or that it is fair, but it is the reality. So I would estimate that you have a decent chance of getting accepted to at least one program, but if you had to do it again, you should have applied a little more across the board. Just my $.02

Most universities do not fund masters students, they choose to fund PhD students. In US programs, you do not need a masters degree to be a PhD student which is why most professors recommend applying straight for the PhD program if you are planning to get a PhD (or even if you are debating between a masters and a PhD). The first two years of graduate school are usually the same for masters and PhD and many institutions offer PhD students the chance to get their masters degree after they complete their coursework and as they being their research. In terms of recommending schools for those topics, they are both extremely common topics and almost any top 25 university (use the US news and world report rankings) will have research groups in them. You are correct in saying that schools place a lot of emphasis on prior research experience but that doesn't mean they only take students with research experience. However, the really strong schools will typically have enough applicants that they can fill their classes up with students who have strong grades (gpa, gre) and have solid research experience (along with great letters of rec and publications), so keep that in mind when applying. That is, dont only apply to the top 5 schools or something like that because there is not a strong chance of getting in.

What do you mean by realistic? To be honest, you probably do not have a realistic shot at Stanford because it is a #1 school, especially in AI, but dont limit yourself to the top 10 schools. Something that can significantly enhance your application is research experience (and the letters of recommendation that come from them). A strong research experience and letter can more than make up for any low gpa's (since most people will be applying with >= 3.75 gpa's). I would recommend that you try starting some work during the school year and definitely apply to NSF REU programs this summer. The list of sites is here http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.cfm?unitid=5049. To be honest, I dont think that there is a good chance without research experience at any top 10 school. But only considering top 10 schools only is a very limited point of view. I think that you stand a good chance at getting into a solid PhD program if you take advantage of research opportunities (that means doing well in them, getting a good letter of rec, and hopefully a publication).

SUNY isn't a school; it stands for State University of New York. There are many schools in the SUNY system and they all are completely independent (except for the fact that they all receive NY state funding). A big factor that you did not list is the quality of letters of recommendations that you are going to get. Do they say good thing about you (like you could be a successful researcher)? Are they written by someone who is well known? Also, are you going to write your statement well? Will you statement show that you have done research into the schools that you are applying to and have an idea of what advisor you would like to work with? These things are all extremely important. I can't really comment as to how good your chances are, but keep in mind those are all top universities that many people (who all have above a 3.3) will be applying to. You need to convince them that you can be a better researcher than the other applicants. Good luck (by the way, my advice applies mainly for PhD).