hdev

I have received a mail from Penn state that says the following: "Please check your status page for important information regarding your graduate application." When I log into my status page, it shows the following message with two buttons (Accept and Decline). "Congratulations on the offer of admission from your graduate program! As stated in the instructions for admission, Penn State has a two-step Graduate Admission process. You now need to accept or decline the graduate program offer. If you accept this offer, the Graduate School will complete the review of your application and be communicating with you in the near future." I want to hold my decision for a couple of weeks (for some other notifications). What should I do? Should I just click the accept button or do nothing.

I mailed some of the programs a few days back. Unfortunately, there has been no reply. The waiting part seems to be a difficult one.

I have a couple of pending offers, which demand me to reply by the end of February. I was wondering if the aforementioned universities are still considering some applicants. I feel that the chances are pretty low.

Hi, Today, I have appeared for my TOEFL. It was a total disaster. I don't want to bother you with the reasons. I believe, my scores will look like this: R - 28, L - 22, S - 22, W - 28. I am targetting some top schools as I already have offers from mid ranked schools like Penn State. Rest of my profile is good (I do have strong research experience with publications in well recognized venues, my recommenders are going to provide me strong LORs). I have the following questions: 1. Should I retake TOEFL if I am targeting the top schools? 2. Will it be too late to apply (Deadline 15 Dec) if I retake TOEFL on 9th/21st November. I request you to response for both dates. Thank you for investing your valuable time in reading this post.

Hi, I am an undergraduate student from Bangladesh. Two of my posters have been accepted at Sigmod undergraduate research poster competition. Now, I am looking forward to attend Sigmod. I will be receiving some travel grant from Sigmod to attend the event. However, the fund seems insufficient as the airfare from my country to US is very high. Is there any external source where I can apply for travel grants or support of similar kind? I am determined about attending Sigmod and I will be paying the rest of the costs by myself. So it would be really helpful for me if I get some support.

Thank you for your reply. Yes, they are doing really good. I will keep these schools in mind while applying. I have a question on a slightly different topic, if you don't mind. I believe you are from data mining background and social networks are within your research interest. Can you tell me whether COSN (http://cosn.acm.org/2014/index.html) is a good conference? Its a new conference introduced by ACM with a strong PC committee. Last year, the acceptance rate was around 16%. I have recently finished a manuscript that I would like to try in either COSN or WISE (http://delab.csd.auth.gr/wise2014/), which is an established rank A conference. Can you tell me which one will be a better venue in terms of exposure/visibility? My manuscript is on social network mining which is within the scope of both conferences.

I really appreciate your suggestion. I strongly agree with you that many schools are doing terrific research, not only the top 4 or 5. However, I am familiar with the works of UIUC and Stanford in particular. My fascination for Stanford is not out of its ranking. I have been highly motivated by the works of Jure Leskovec and SNAP group. I have cited at least 15 Stanford papers (specially from Infolab) within the very short span of my career. A lot of motivation comes from that. I will definitely apply in a wide range of schools matching my research field. Stanford or UIUC are just a couple of them. I still need to find the other members of the list. I am still an amateur in my field. I will keep your suggestion in mind when searching for schools. Thanks again.

Thanks for the clues. And yes, I will make sure that I avoid saying irrelevant things (e.g., "When my father first brought me a computer and all that") along with any quotes. Thanks again.

I heard the same. My supervisor always encourages me to try the top venues. I have a couple of submissions in top tiers. Lets see, how that goes. And regarding LORs, you are right. They are less likely to be known. However, they have good credentials. I just hope that the admission committee search for their profiles. Thank you. I am hopeful about UIUC as many of my seniors went there and they have good reputation. But I always wanted to go to Stanford. I know its tough, but I would still like to give it a shot. Oh, that's great news. Congratulations for getting into Stanford. I guess, I will have to score close to 113 then. I have two more questions for you, if you don't mind. (i) Any clue on GRE scores? (ii) Can you suggest me any area that I should focus to maximize my chances to get into Stanford. e.g., SOP/LOR/Publication .

That's a relief to some extent. 113 is pretty high for an international student. Is it official? Has anyone tried with a lower score and got admitted?

Hi, I am a final year undergraduate student from Asia (Neither Chinese nor Indian). My school is the top most school in my country. Every year a good portion of our students attend graduate schools. Some of them get accepted to good schools including UIUC (2-3 per year), UTEXAS (1-2 per year), PURDUE (1-2 per year) etc. However, I would like to try the top four schools (Stanford, MIT, CMU, UCB) along with UIUC and some other mid tier schools. (i) Can you suggest me whether my profile is good enough to try the top four schools. (ii) What can I do to maximize my chances to get into these schools? CGPA: 3.88/4.0 (Among top 5%) Publications: (i) 1 tier-2 database conference (ii) 1 student research competition in a tier-1 HCI conference (Extended Abstract) (iii) 2 workshop publications (One of them is pretty good. I received 6-7 citations for the paper. The other one is a decent one.) (iv) 3 national workshops (I believe, they won't help much) All my publications are first author. I have worked under 3 faculties for 2 years in the field of big data. All of them will write very good LORs for me. GRE and TOEFL: I will take them by September. I am expecting around 320 in GRE and I will need at least 113 in TOEFL to apply for Stanford. Additional Information: I have worked in a research project for 2 years under a faculty who received his degree from MIT. However, he is not from my discipline (He is in transportation engineering). He can also write LOR for me. By the time I apply (this December), I am hopeful about having a couple more tier-2 publications, some workshop publications and student research competitions in prestigious venues. I will attempt the tier-1s, but I am not sure whether I will make it.

Hi, Icydubloon Yes. UW also seem to be doing fantastic works. compiler_guy It seems these fields are highly dominated by the Stanford communities. I can also see the other top graduate schools. However, are these people still active, i mean whether they still intake students

Thank you for your reply. I asked some of them. My supervisor likes Stanford and UIUC. I have been following the work of Stanford university (Infolab) and UIUC. (Data Mining group). But apart from these two, I have not found any other very active research group (from top schools) working on management of data. May be I am missing something.

Hello world, This is my first post in gradcafe. I am a final year undergraduate student looking to attend a phd program in Fall 2015. My field of interest is big data analytics. I would like to know about the graduate schools doing cutting edge research in the following fields: (i) big data (ii) data mining (iii) data management Thank you.