DJLamar

My opinion is that it's probably a good idea to establish contact way beforehand with the professors that you're most interested in. Ask about whether or not they're taking students this year and/or if they're interested in taking someone for some smaller projects to test the water (if you don't already know from visits), ask them what kind of projects they have and are going to be extending that are relevant to your interests, and even ask for some suggested preliminary reading to get up to speed on the projects you like before getting there. If you do that, I think you can hit the ground running when you get there. That's what I'm doing / going to try to do. I suppose it also shows initiative and enthusiasm which can only serve to improve professors' impression of you.

Yeah, Atlanta is a great city and much safer than its reputation suggests. No one that I've known has ever been a victim to a mugging or other violent crime. The worst that's happened is that a couple of people have had their cars stolen. As long as you don't do stupid things like walking around alone at 2 in the morning listening to your ipod in a place where people are known to get mugged (there are a couple of hotspots not far from campus that are easy to avoid), then you'll be fine. I've spent three years here and never once had any trouble, and I'm the kind of person that walks around alone and takes public transportation late at night. Come and visit the city if you can and you'll see that you feel plenty safe here.

You are making the assumption that I actually like the furniture that I have

Atlanta is a pretty cool city. It's fairly big, growing fast, and getting better every day. The cost of living is relatively low for a city of its size, there is a healthy nightlife, and there are tons of very good restaurants and cool, interesting neighborhoods. As far as cost of living goes, you can get a one bedroom apartment within walking distance of campus for no more than $700 - $800 a month. I live with three roommates right now about 2.5 miles away from campus and I pay $450 a month. Downsides to Atlanta: - The weather, though warm and frequently sunny, is not what I would call temperate. It gets really hot and really humid in the Summers, and you'll get tired of sweating during one minute walks between adjacent buildings during the Summer pretty quickly. - Public transit here is not so great, and is even supposed to suffer some serious cuts sometime soon. The buses are fine if you have to get from point A to point B with regularity and can schedule trips to be regular and align with the bus schedule -- they're mostly reliable, it's just that (outside of downtown, I guess) the bus might only come every thirty minutes or so. The train is much better -- I think on weekdays during non-peak hours it still comes every ten minutes -- but the subway grid is really just a big plus sign with a couple of extra branches, so unless you live near a subway station (and there are two right next to the school) it won't be that convenient to get to it. Once you are on the train, though, you can get to a lot of cool places in different parts of the city. Overall, however, Atlanta is a lot more convenient, interesting, and fun if you have a car, so bring one if you can. - Crime is a bit of an issue. I would say most of the bad stuff is localized to certain parts of the city though, and restricted to people being silly and walking alone very late at night in a known hotspot for student muggings (almost all of the victims of the crime streak that happened this past year were doing just that). As long as you're not a fool, you'll be alright.

Ha, I'll be moving from Georgia to Ithaca, NY. I'm going to take all my clothes and books of course when I drive up there, but absolutely no furniture. Probably little utilities like clothes hampers I will also just buy once I get up there. I hate packing things in general...

I'm not in ECE so I don't know how to say anything about the academics (I get the impression that EE is one of Georgia Tech's very top programs and that it probably rivals or beats out CMU's EE program, but that's just an impression). However I am a Georgia Tech undergrad right now and I visited CMU this semester, and I can tell you that Atlanta is, hands down, a cooler city than Pittsburgh (much bigger too, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's twice the size of Pittsburgh five years from now). It's also much warmer here (considering you're from India I'm sure this is a plus ) and the cost of living is not much different. The only downsides Atlanta has are a poorer public transit system than Pittsburgh (but hey, at least we actually have subways!), higher crime (mostly restricted to certain areas of the city anyway), and fewer museums. I might be biased towards Atlanta though since I'm from an hour away from it

Oh, and if you have any other questions about my experiences with the visit day, don't hesitate to ask.

Yeah, the grad student hosts took us around to see one of the school-owned grad houses. The place was really small for the 3 or so people that were supposed to live in it, the cost was at least as much as a much more spacious private house, and the location wasn't actually very convenient or pretty at all, plus the inside and outside of the house they showed us looked drab and nondescript. I would definitely say to just not bother with the on-campus housing. You pay more and get less in every respect. The private houses around the school looked pretty nice, and we were shown the inside of one that a current student lived in. It was a very nice place with lots of room and a nice kitchen and living room. There are also plenty of houses that are only a five to ten minute walk from the CS building (and only a little longer walk from downtown). The houses are also pretty decently cheap -- you can surely find a good place with one or two roommates in a convenient location like I described for maybe no more than $600 a month (possibly with some or all utilities included in that estimate).

I have only gotten a soft copy of the letter (unless it came in at my permanent address and my parents didn't tell me, which is unlikely). I got the fellowship though so my funding has already been decided (the letter said that I received the fellowship).

Yeah, it was helpful mainly since I was able to meet with faculty and find out just how good a fit for me in terms of research they are. My only other offer is the masters in language technologies at Carnegie Mellon.

Were you at the open house for Cornell? I have pretty much decided on Cornell but I haven't sent my notice yet.

My situation is like yours except for some slight differences. For one, as a computer scientist, I don't have to worry about proximity to any archive Second, the program for which I was only accepted to the M.S. program does in fact accept people for the PhD program even if they don't have a masters degree already. They seem to not accept many students directly to the PhD though and strongly prefer their current M.S. students, and the acceptance rate for current M.S. students applying to the PhD program is 60 - 70 percent. Basically, if you are a good researcher, it seems like a surefire PhD course. Third, I would say that the location of my M.S. choice is not beautiful in any way and that that of my PhD choice very much is. However, my M.S. choice is in a sizable city whereas my PhD choice is in a small town. I view both as a downgrade from my current location, though the PhD place is probably more of a downgrade than the M.S. choice (I have become accustomed to living in a fairly big city that I love, though other big cities would attract me as well). Fourth -- and this is the most important distinction -- my M.S. choice did not offer me guaranteed funding at all. It's still hypothetically possible that I could contact some of the faculty that I met with at the visit day and secure (before my decision) an unofficial promise for funding (which would entail a tuition waiver and a stipend of half of what I would get at the other school with its fellowship, and the cost of living is similar in each location). However, barring that, I would have to go in risking having to take out huge loans to pay my tuition and living costs at first. The vast majority of people that go into the M.S. program at this school get funding within a couple of weeks and don't have to pay a dime, but it is not guaranteed. Now at this point, considering the risks and the fact that (after having visited both) I do like several of the researchers at the PhD school enough to feel very comfortable academically going there, I have all but officially decided to take the PhD offer. However, I do still feel confident that if I had been absolutely guaranteed funding at the M.S. school, I would still go there, even if the stipend were half of the stipend with the fellowship at the other school (assuming it's still enough to actually live there). The risk is too great and the benefit is not big enough for me to decide that way without that guarantee, though. If I were you, assuming importantly that you will continue to receive funding when you enter the PhD program as others have said (this is not a worry in this program or in my field, I think), I would take the MA option. As my undergrad research advisor has told me (and I agree and had this notion before his advice as well), the actual money that you get while there should be the very last factor in your decision. Factors relating to your ability to do outstanding research at the institution should be the first thing that you consider, and after that (in my opinion) should be how comfortable you will be living in that location (including all factors -- weather, urban environment, etc.). Money should probably be so far down the list that it is only a tiebreaker.

The only ones that I know for sure happened already are the LTI and CSD open houses (both in the School of Computer Science). I don't know anything about ECE there though.

Nope, haven't decided. I'm leaving for Cornell's open house tomorrow and after that will start really thinking.

Yeah, out of those three Maplewood Park seems the most convenient. I don't know, I guess living in a private apartment off campus would still be fine as long as I had a roommate like I said. I also think I mistyped at one point -- I think Upson Hall is in the southwest part of campus -- but judging from your post you know where it is anyway

I've been admitted to the PhD program at Cornell (I think I posted here already actually) and there is a pretty good chance that I'll go there. I would like to live on campus my first year, and I want to try to live in a building that's close to the building that I'll really be living in (i.e. the building that my department and probable advisors are in, i.e. Upson Hall which I believe is in the southeast corner of campus in/near the engineering quad). I would like to have one roommate (i.e. no rooms alone and preferably no four or more person dwellings), and I would like the downtown and commons areas to be as easily accessible to me as possible. What kind of housing on campus fits my description the best?

Ah, I see. Well make sure to tell me who your advisor is -- maybe I'll recognize the name.

I'm in Pittsburgh right now for the open house, actually. I've met with six professors here so far and they all seem to be very guarded when asked about funding. It seems that in many past years people were assured of funding before the decision date, but that last year three of fourteen admitted masters students did not get funding before the end of the first semester. None of the faculty can really assure anyone this year of having funding ahead of time, it seems. Many are waiting on decisions on proposals they've submitted. There are so many faculty here though that it seems fairly unlikely that you would fail to find funding if you are flexible about which professor you want to work with.

Congratulations! Sure, go ahead with all the PMs you want. I'm in Pittsburgh right now visiting CMU though, so I may be a little slow to reply. Perhaps how might we be related academically?

I don't think there's a separate weekend for MS, but the MS people are definitely invited to the open house.

I also haven't heard from the ML program yet. The results suggest that at least one person here got accepted several weeks ago, so I'm assuming that it's a bad sign. I'm visiting Pittsburgh Wednesday until Sunday though since I was accepted to the LTI Masters program, so I'm hoping they don't reject me before I can talk to some joint LTI/MLD faculty in person

I know how you feel. I realized this in about the same way -- emailed a prof at Berkeley whom I had mentioned in my SOP asking if he would be taking new students next year, and he replied saying he had 13 already so he wouldn't take any students at all. The 13 students were listed on his website too, so I knew beforehand that his group was that big. So then I realized that the other prof I had mentioned in my SOP for that school had 12 students already. Those were the only two I mentioned in the SOP... I feel like I really sabotaged my chances at basically my top choice school (and yes, I already received a rejection from them). There were a few other cases where I mentioned professors in my SOP who already had big groups or who I have already found out through other means are not taking new students next year. I also feel like I conversely could have really helped my chances of admission at some of these places if I would have been more careful to look around for new hires who have very small groups and whose research interests were at least vaguely related to mine. These professors would almost certainly be looking for new students, so the admissions committee at any school would probably be more likely to admit students that wanted to work with those profs. Too late now though. Besides, my indiscretion didn't kill me completely. I still got into one exceptional school for a PhD regardless which is a very good fit for me academically and probably one of the best choices I could have had anyway.

I've worked with and interacted with several of the vision profs here and they seem to generally be friendly guys. The two that I've actually worked with directly seem to be pretty good, attentive advisors (from the perspective of an undergrad ). So if you come here you will probably not only have top-notch researchers but also good advisors to work with. If you get in and have any specific questions about the campus, city, etc. feel free to send me a message.

I'm at Georgia Tech. We get lucky visits by such people sometimes -- the area chair meeting for CVPR was here in the past year (I even saw the professor I had for computer vision when I studied abroad in Germany... haha), for example. Did you apply to Georgia Tech, by the way?

I don't think I would be *that* worried about applying to CS instead of RI -- although you should have applied to both, probably. Also, my current undergrad research advisor was advised by Kanade at CMU, and I've seen Kanade and Efros in person here at my school before haha. Did not talk to either at any point though