newms

Hey everyone, I thought I'd share this site that was put up by Katherine Sledge Moore, who has sat on admissions committees, about what to do to get into grad school. It has lots of information about all aspects of the application process, including a sample SoP and CV from Moore when she was applying to 19 (!) schools. She is in psychology, but the advice is very relevant to most, if not all, fields. I came across the site by browsing her sample SoP that Deven pointed out in

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The most important thing that top 10 universities consider is research experience, so your work in R&D will serve you well. Do you have any papers published? If your research background is strong you'd have a fair shot at UIUC (ambi), Ga tech and UW Madison. Utah, USC, SUNY-SB maybe NCSU would be your "moderate" schools on that list and you should have a pretty good chance at those schools with good research experience. I don't think that there is anything such as a "safe" school since you can't say for certain that you would get admitted, but you should have a very good chance at UFL and Iowa State. Most funding is available for PhD students however, and a lot of schools do not have much funds for MS students. I think UIUC funds their MS students but I'm not sure about the others. Do you want to eventually pursue a PhD? If so, it may be better for you to apply directly to the PhD program where there is more funding available. I'm not in your area (I'm in machine learning), though, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but perhaps another school you could look at is Colorado (Boulder).

Those are some interesting statements at that link. Thanks for sharing!

Glad to help

You're welcome. You should not repeat information in your application. So if something is on your CV, you don't need to put it again in your SoP since the adcomm will see it. You also don't want to sound arrogant in your SoP so if you mention awards, you should do so in reference to something else, almost in passing. Your SoP, ideally, should be fact based and interesting - remember, you want to get and keep the adcomm's attention. 'Interesting' doesn't have to be jazzy, you can write about your research interests and plans and be very interesting - remember, the adcomms are made up of professors not book reviewers for the NY Times.

I think I need to spend more time on my applications

I mean that universities look to see if you have research experience, especially the top 10 schools. They want to see that you have an idea of what research involves and that you know how to do it. If you don't have research experience, all is not lost, but you will now have to convince them that you know how to do research and that you are very motivated to research your field. You will have to do this in your SoP by detailing what research you want to do in grad school. An excellent resource on how you can do this is located here: http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/

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No need to apologize! I think this is reasonable. What you want to make sure that you do is to weave the paragraphs together so that they are not just disjointed snapshots of your past, but show how your past experiences prepare you for grad school and your future plans. The SoP should be future focused, so try not to spend the majority of it on your past. I don't think its necessary to get to the level of a thesis topic, but it should be more specific than just a general overview. Remember that you should try to show how you would fit at the program you are applying to, so you will need to be detailed enough to show how your plans fits in with the work that is already ongoing at that program. Good luck!

A sentence or two is a bit small to have on each school. You really want to show them how well you fit in with their program, so you should have at least a paragraph demonstrating how your research interests would fit in with the work at that program.

For a research based Ms, the most important thing they will look at is your research experience, more so than your GRE scores, so it's hard for me to say which schools you would have a good shot at without knowing your research experience or interests. But for AI, UC Irvine is good, so are Oregon State, UIUC (top 10 school) and Georgia Tech (top 10 school). I'm not sure about the other schools.

All the best. You have a good profile (outside of your GREs) and I hope you're successful in your applications:)

I don't think it will hurt you if you sent your CV along with the application. Perhaps you can ask the admissions people if you should send your CV as well.

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risky business

I've heard of people doing this before - asking the LoR to send them in around 2 weeks before the deadline. What you need to remember though, is that for online applications, they will get an email requesting the LoR from the automated system and that email will have the actual deadline in it. So you have to word your request carefully so as to not make it seem like you are tricking them into thinking that the deadline is earlier than it is. Also, sometimes the automated email from the online application gives them a deadline that is later than the applicant's deadline. Perhaps what you can do is simply ask them to submit the LoR a week or so earlier than the deadline to not risk anything going wrong at the deadline?

code monkey

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As Eigen said, try to get the opportunity to work on a research project with them. Profs are usually looking for research assistants, so browse their webpages or just ask them after class, or by email, if they have any need for an undergraduate research assistant. Be willing to assist in any way you can, sometimes they'll just need help with data entry, which might seem not particularly fulfilling. However, if you do those tasks well, chances are you'll get opportunities to work on more fun stuff when the prof needs help in other areas. When your time comes to apply for grad school, you'll have some research experience as well as profs that you can ask for LoRs.

Adcomms love to see that upward trend so they will definitely take into consideration that you got 3.9 in your junior year. If it's on your transcript then I don't think you need to mention it in your SoP, but if you did it would be to frame how hard you worked and you shouldn't use more than one sentence as everyone else says.

I think you have a great shot at top 20 programs with your research experience. You should stand a fair chance at UMass and UIUC. I can't say about MIT though since its hard to predict applications to the very top schools. I'm not sure about NSF since I'm an international applicant myself - maybe someone else would be able to advise you on that.