newms

classical pianist

Firstly, as someone who is almost 30 as well and who got rejected at all the places I applied to last year, I can tell you that it is possible to apply again after getting all rejections. You need to have good support - as the application process takes a toll not only on us, but on our families as well. You also need to have recommenders that believe in you and will be willing to support you again. Secondly, calm down. You sound like you put together a really good application and I think you should have a decent chance, even at schools that take only 10% of applicants. You have publications - the majority of applicants don't have that, so that alone will make you stand apart from most applicants. And if your publications are good, you probably would stand an excellent chance at getting an admission at most places. That said, it is possible for even an exceptional applicant not to be admitted. There are a host of reasons that could cause this such as, your interests might not fit well with the department's, the POI you would work with might not have funds for a new student or the school might think you're such a good applicant that you wouldn't go there so they don't even bother with an admit. If this does happen, and it's still early in the application process, you could strengthen your application and reapply to a broader range of schools to give yourself more chances. Some schools have Spring/Winter admission, so if you did have to re-apply, the extra wait might not be long. So my advice to you would be, i) don't worry about that now - it seems you have a strong application and it's still early in the season - unless your schools have all finished making decisions? ii) if you don't get admitted, don't take it personally since many strong applicants don't get admitted on their first try. You can reapply and use the extra time to strengthen your application and increase your odds of getting admitted. Best of luck!

blow dry

socialist party

Congrats on the interview invite! I think it's reasonable to ask for a phone or skype interview. The school isn't offering travel reimbursement so they'd have to expect that some invitees won't be able to come. I'm an international and if this happened to me - interview offer without reimbursement, it'd be difficult for me to come, especially if it's not at a top school. Just ask the department politely if you can interview by skype or by phone - I'd go the honest route and just tell them it'd be difficult for you to travel without reimbursement.

I agree with this - that research experience is much, much more important than CS GRE, but the CS GRE can have some limited value if you've been out of university for a while or if you're from an unknown school. The question is if the cost of effort required to prepare for the exam worth the potential opportunity cost of not using that time getting more research experience. For most people its a no, in some limited situations it may be a yes.

rotting corpse

I would prepare for interviews. If the email didn't say that you are admitted then don't assume so. That said, the fact that they are inviting you means that you are at least among the final candidates for admission. An even better sign would be inf they are offering to reimburse your travel - they wouldn't do that unless they are really interested. So I'd say while this is a very good sign, it's not necessarily an admit and I would prepare for interviews. You can also ask the department about what you can expect at the university when you visit - maybe you can ask for an itinerary, and ask if there'll be interviews. Best of luck!

Nicely played. That's hilarious!

I know this is dependent on the cost of living of the city that you will be moving to, but what would be a good amount to have saved up? I read on one school's website that they recommended taking at least $4,000. Is this a good minimum amount?

energy drink

solar energy

Hi gradSchoolBound, Probably the best resource for preparing for the CS GRE, besides the current ETS booklet, is the TitaniumBits booklet by Christopher Scaffidi. He wrote it as a guide when he was preparing to do the test. He scored very high on the test, got into CMU to do his PhD and is now an Assistant Prof at Oregon State. The booklet is here: http://sites.google....e/titaniumbits/ A good community for preparing for the test is the Urch CS GRE forum here: http://www.urch.com/...mputer-science/. The moderator of the forum, CalmLogic, makes a habit of doing that test. There are some great links in his signature on that forum. There is a yahoo group for CS GRE here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/grecs/ I don't think it's active anymore, but the files section has previous ETS booklets, and worked solutions, as well as other practice materials. Here are a couple posts with links to other useful materials: http://www.urch.com/...html#post411230 http://grecs.wikispaces.com/ The CS GRE is a pretty hard test because it can draw questions from such a wide range of sources. It will take literally hundreds of hours of study and practice in order to do really well on it. I don't think that not having it on your application will hurt you, since not a lot of CS applicants do it and not many schools look for it. However, it can help if you do well. If I don't get it this year again (I hope not) I'll probably be doing that test in October/November as well. Hopefully, both of us will get in, though if I end up going to a MS program (I applied to 3 Canadian MS programs) I'll still probably do the test in Oct/Nov to get it out of the way for when I would be ready to apply again to PhD.

control system

Here's hoping that that fortune cookie is correct with respect to your application!

Agreed that the best thing to do is to waive your right. Some profs might not appreciate that you retained your right to see their letter. Some adcomms might frown on it also. There is very little to gain by retaining your rights to see the letter, because as bsol said, you only get to see the letter if the school accepts you.

twisted rope

eminent domain

That's pretty funny. Yeah, in many ways the process of applying to grad school is like dating. First we try to woo them and then after we get admitted (fingers crossed) they try to woo us back.

Not necessarily. Were those 2 schools 'safety schools'? Or were they highly competitive top-ranked schools? If the latter, then its still quite likely that you will get at least one admit. At this point all you can do is wait and hope. It's still way too early to despair.

Hang in there! Applications can always be quirky and even if you you're good enough to get into a school, it doesn't mean that you will get in since there are so many different factors involved. Applying to 15 schools gave you a lot of different options, so somewhere you're likely to get a break in your favor. All the best!

You can check Peterson's for admissions percentages. I'm not 100% sure that they are accurate, but at least it's a guide. Just search for the school and the program. The one thing though is that they don't seem to separate the MS students from PhD students - they just have one rate for the grad program. Here's the profile for Stanford CS. http://www.petersons...9538_10088.aspx I actually think you have a pretty good profile so far and that you'd stand a fair chance at a school like Stanford from what you've posted. Just make sure to apply to a mix of schools, including a couple top ones and then a couple that aren't as highly rated, but still very good in the area you're interested in.

I think primarily you want to focus on your research interests since that's the main focus, but you should have a few sentences to start off just introducing yourself, where you're from and your background. I wouldn't have a discussion of hobbies/personal life in my standard answer to that question, but be willing to talk about them if the interviewer asks a related question.

Sorry, I meant what area of computer science - I'm in machine learning.