Lit23

He's not trying to be a jerk, he's trying to be realistic. It's one thing to shoot for your dreams, it's another thing to chase an unreasonable goal and assume everything will be fine. Nothing pretentious about it.

To correct the record, I was referring to having cited certain of these schools' professors in my actual writing sample, not my SoP. That is, I read their articles, built an essay around them, and cited that work as a means of demonstrating my commitment to the school. True, anyone can name-drop a couple of professors in their SoP, but this was a significantly greater and more deliberate effort. Your snide dismissal of this work was based on your own erroneous reading of my post.

Wow, that's kind of a bitchy reply. But get this:

It's so nice and fun to disparage the ranking system, but the simple truth is that, if a school does not have guaranteed funding for its students, strong library facilities, good professorial resources, and an effective history of graduate placement, then that school will not rank well. In this sense, the rankings systems are indeed meaningless on a micro level (that is, saying that #13 School A is qualitatively better than #15 School B as an exclusive result of their ranking differences), but it is by all means relevant on a macro level. Number-13 School A will almost always serve its graduates' careers more effectively than #57 School C. It's silly of you to suggest that a typical graduate of, say, Brown will not have comparably higher buying power on the job market than a typical graduate of, say, Arizona State. Let's be real.

Given that information, it is indeed bizarre that a student who is admitted to virtually all of the top-20 schools s/he applied to is rejected from every single school in the 50s and 60s s/he applied to. I started this thread as a means of helping applicants feel out how to compose their applicant-school lists. If this trend is indeed real, then that information would be crucial.

It is also not the case that every applicant applies to every school sincerely, that every applicant mentions 3 or 4 professors, etc. I certainly did not quote professors from every school I applied to in my writing sample, as I did with many of these schools in the 50s and 60s. And I did not apply to every school with equal sincerity, as a number of my applications were made strictly because of the advice from my undergraduate mentors, for geographical reasons, etc., rather than a personal passion for those programs. I'm certain this is true of many people on this forum, particularly given that many of us are applying to 15 or more schools and therefore cannot devote ourselves equally to each individual application.

Meanwhile, I appreciate how you've listed out all the potential ways by which I may have been rejected. But I was indeed aware of those matters, as any moderately thoughtful person would be. I was curious if anyone had any useful information about the trend of this, as that would be valuable information for future applicants.

Or, you could be a perfectly capable applicant caught in the crosshairs of a hard year in a hard subfield. Grad school is mostly about hard work and very little about innate intelligence.

If you don't know what you want to study in graduate school, you shouldn't go to graduate school.

Why do you want to go? What do you want to accomplish?

He's not trying to be a jerk, he's trying to be realistic. It's one thing to shoot for your dreams, it's another thing to chase an unreasonable goal and assume everything will be fine. Nothing pretentious about it.

Risk having an undergraduate steal an Apple product when I step away for 5 minutes? Hell no.

If you have senioritis so bad, why do you want to continue with schooling.....? Just asking.

Are there any other college seniors here who know they're going to grad school (MA or PhD) straight-away? I'm still waiting on 5 schools but one acceptance has my senioritis in full-throttle. Just curious to see how you other seniors are doing!

How much debt will you have to go into? How much do you expect to earn once you graduate from Harvard? How about what you would earn after graduating from Tufts or Davis, and how much debt will you have then? How important is your dream, compared to those numbers? Only you know.

More time enriching myself and becoming 100% Yuppie

Then I will be able to afford a posh condo in Manhattan and marry rich
Then I can BUY my way into the Ivy League

haha, fuckers!

I'm not really in theory, but I know the answers to some of your questions, so I figured I'd answer the parts I can.



A $500,000 grant over three years is a very typical NSF grant size. (All NSF proposals in the small category generally meet this. Typically the proposal asks for ridiculously close to 500k (like 499,938) and the NSF funds whatever they feel like of that. Sometimes it's significantly lower, but almost all grants propose at least $500k of funding.) This typically ends up funding about two students over three years. This may not seem a lot for 500k, but grant accounting can be tricky.

Typically 500k gets broken down something like this:
* A bit over half goes straight off the top to fund overhead costs. This part helps compensate the university for maintaining buildings, supplying power, that type of thing. So now you're looking at 250k. 250k over three years is about 80k a year.
* A bit of that usually goes to the professor for a month of summer funding. The more professors involved in the work, the more months of summer funding that might come out of the grant. (The NSF also limits the amount of total summer funding they'll give, so sometimes this component won't come out of a proposal at all if the professors are already at their summer funding max. This can lead to summer funding for students instead. ) A few spare thousand goes towards travel and equipment budgets each, along with whatever else your grant prep people can come up with. Let's say all this totals 20k/yr. (This estimate is high, usually for a 500k grant these type of annual costs are lower and more money goes to students.)
* So now we're at 60k/yr. Which means you've got about 30k per student: ~20k to cover stipends (usually lower), ~10k for fee remission (usually higher, sometimes considerably at private schools or out of state rates for public schools). (You never see this money, but the reason you don't pay fees is because the grant does.) Grad students tend to cost more than 30k/yr a lot of times, but this is about the lowest you can get a grad student to cost. Depending on how things are run at your institution, this part of the grant can be larger. (Again, this does not always translate into more money for you, it may just be your internal fee remission rates are higher.)

Whether or not they can shoehorn in summer support depends on how much the professor is making, whether or not they even want you around in the summer (some groups prefer their students get some outside perspectives through summer internships) and the internal costs of fee remission within the university campus you're attending.

A rule of thumb is for every 100k of grant money you can fund about one grad-student year of work in CS. (In medical or bio it's completely different because they have all kinds of crazy equipment costs.)



TA is a funding mechanism just like any other. You can use it as long as the department is willing to let you, however often departments prefer to fund only the newer students this way assuming students will eventually go and get real jobs on grants. That said, theory funding can be patchy and a good department provides TAships to senior students if needed usually.

Typically most departments prefer you not TA your entire stay in grad school. You should be doing research, so you should get funded as a researcher.



If your acceptance only mentions 9 months of funding, then you may well only have 9 months of funding. Many many many CS students flock to silicon valley, local companies and a few other hotspots every summer to kick back and spend a few months of the summer joining a team in industry.

Summer funding from grants does happen. TAs sometimes even, though much more rarely. Usually summer funding only happens if there's extra money to go around. It can be a very fine line since most groups have a certain number of students they need to fund, it can be extremely hard to hit exactly the right amount of grant money, so most groups are either over or under. Department funds (here's where some of that grant overhead money comes back) can help backfill groups that are under (this is when senior students get TAs) while summer funding can be an excellent use of money when a group is lucky enough to have a bit more money than they needed. (Very easy to do if you get one extra grant accepted you didn't think was going to make it. You don't hear back for six months on these things, so you have to scatter-shot and if you end up being more successful than you expected, you might actually end up with more funding than students, this usually leads to getting more students, but it can also just result in summer funding or intra-department collaboration.)



Again, I'm not in theory, so this one I can't help too much in detail on, but I can at least tell you that the theory folks do the typical weekly meetings. Whether or not your advisor chooses the path of your research or whether you chose the path of your own work depends on the relationship you two establish. Eventually all students should change from being assigned work to choosing their own work as your career in graduate school progresses.

Being overworked and underpaid for the best years of your life just because the department you're a member of has chosen to use you as slave labor instead of hiring more professors/post-docs isn't enough?

Being overworked and underpaid for the best years of your life just because the department you're a member of has chosen to use you as slave labor instead of hiring more professors/post-docs isn't enough?

A lot of people write their results as a visceral first reaction to a rejection. When they fail to attain the lofty goal of PhD acceptance, they will respond with frustration. Later, after some reflection, a considered and circumspect view might emerge.

Don't take the comments too seriously.

First of all, as others have said, this is probably just a gut reaction to the frustration of being rejected. Nothing to take too seriously.

More generally, there are always going to be people who are dismissive of what you study, be it a MA or a PhD. I just recently had a discussion with someone who knew better because they had "a real-life job," as opposed to my sheltered grad school existence. You really should learn to just ignore them. The goals you are pursuing are your own and it simply doesn't matter what some internet strangers think about them.

I know, I know, but this game will be fun for you economics and political scientists out there!
eRepublik-The New World

Hello all,

I would really appreciate it if someone would tell me if I have any chance to get into a PhD Statistics Program. I would like to get into a top 20.

I am not the typical student. First of all I will be completing my BA/MA in Economics this fall of 2010. My school gives you the option to take lots of statistics based econometrics class and I did all that.

In terms of classes (note, the class with a (G) after them mean that they were grad courses) I have taken Calc 1-3, Diff eq, Linear Algebra, Advanced Prob Theory (G), Sampling Theory (G), Multivariate Analysis (G), Econometrics 1 & 2 (G), and Time Series Analysis (G).

I am a BA/MA student. My overall GPA (meaning, the GPA of ALL my classes) is 3.55. My MA gpa is a 3.8 and my undergrad GPA is a 3.6.

I am writing a thesis paper which will have a heavy dose of statistics and econometrics.

I plan to do my absolute best of the GRE but haven't taken it... but for simplicity let's assume I score in the 95th percentile in all the sections.

I can get great recommendation letters from 3-5 professors, although only 1 of them will be from the Math department, the rest will be economists.

I participate in the student body, I have been a TA for the past 2 years and I play Tennis, if that matters at all. I have also been in Economics based competitions twice, one time making it to the semi finals.

I am a minority. I don't know if this helps at all...I know it sure does if one goes for the Econ PhD.

Since the earliest I can get into any program is by fall of 2011 I am planning to take an Analysis course (maybe both 1 and 2 if time permits), a computer programming course (I know VBA and a little bit of python but I have never taken any formal classes) and about 2-3 more Stat course...most definitely Math Stat but not really sure what else.

And finally, some schools, like Cornell, offer a MS/PhD track, do I have a better chance getting into those types of programs?

That is about all the information on myself that I can think of right now. Can someone please lend a hand?

Thanks so much in advance!!

CIR, no. If it were Yale...

If you think the Master's could seriously add something to your application then do that, but otherwise, I would not recommend it. One, Cornell is excellent in IR and East Asia, and outside of HYP I personally can not think of a better place to be to study that kind of stuff. I can't speak to Georgetown, but my close mentor has consistently stressed to me how strong Cornell is in IR/CP and Asia. Personally, I am in CP, but I imagine I will certainly be dabbling in IR, so the school has a great fit for that. Two, the application cycle was really tough this year, and I don't think next year will be any easier. This isn't to say you aren't qualified enough to do well next time you apply, but it certainly is a risk.

If there is any possibility you could see yourself working a non-academic job with a Master's in hand then Chicago makes sense. Otherwise, I would go for whichever PhD program you prefer. I don't know that an additional two years would help you that much more. I am coming from a more policy oriented Master's program where I certainly learned a lot, but also had to spend time taking courses that are not relevant to my eventual studies. I don't regret it because I rolled my degree into my BA and finished in four years, while being funded. Your case is certainly more different and involves a greater cost and risk.

Of course, this is all conjecture and opinion from someone who is just as unknowing as these things as you. I would recommend asking your letter writers what they think about the situation.

And of course, congratulations on your acceptances! Will you be attending the Cornell open house?

Being overworked and underpaid for the best years of your life just because the department you're a member of has chosen to use you as slave labor instead of hiring more professors/post-docs isn't enough?

It completely depends on the school.....

It's not a big deal, it means you weren't accepted as a first-choice, and you weren't rejected either. You are on the wait list, which is for when the people who were accepted as a first-choice decide to go to other schools. It means "Have fun not knowing anything until at least April"

He's not trying to be a jerk, he's trying to be realistic. It's one thing to shoot for your dreams, it's another thing to chase an unreasonable goal and assume everything will be fine. Nothing pretentious about it.

He's not trying to be a jerk, he's trying to be realistic. It's one thing to shoot for your dreams, it's another thing to chase an unreasonable goal and assume everything will be fine. Nothing pretentious about it.