DJLamar

figured this wouldn't come out right -- those were supposed to have big spaces in between each phrase since I basically was putting as many letters as I could into fields that were only made to hold four or five characters

Yes, I stuck that in as close as possible to the actual GPA field in every case. On some apps where there wasn't any space to put any extra notes about the scale I even just used the fields for, for example, GPA by year for that school to just type it in like invert ed scale 1.0 is best 5.0 is worst lol. Plus all the schools I applied to are good and well-known enough I think that they probably get enough German applicants to be familiar with the German grading system, and the transcripts that I got sent to the schools that requested official transcripts with the application (i.e. everywhere but Princeton and U Washington) should have all had an explanation of the grading scale on them.

lol yeah, the UIUC acceptances are annoying me too. That's the last place I want to go out of the schools to which I applied and even they won't accept me first round! Not a good sign

Oh, have you already done one? I'm applying as an undergrad, so as long as I can get funded for it somehow, a master's isn't too bad a thing for me to settle for...

Haha, yeah, hopefully he'll think I'm really cool Good luck and hopefully Tom Mitchell will just not little enough about systems to think that your research statement is groundbreaking whether or not it actually is haha. Also I just noticed this when I went back to my CMU application: You may not select both the Ph.D./M.S. and the M.S. programs for the Language and Information Technologies (LTI) program. If you select the Ph.D./M.S. in LTI, your application first will be considered for admission to the Ph.D. program. If you are not accepted to the Ph.D. program, then your application will be considered for the M.S. Program So apparently I'll be considered for that master's program anyway, which is good. Plus I'm sure several other schools will probably do similar for those applying for a PhD (I remember some schools had checkboxes on the applications that asked if you wanted to also be considered for a master's degree).

My school has recently retooled the CS curriculum so that everyone gets more depth in a couple of chosen areas (mine are intelligence and theory) and much less depth in everything else. I took the CS GRE with barely any knowledge of systems and networking, and I didn't even know that I should have studied any Java-specific stuff. I've had little reason to use Java since my freshman year. None of the prep materials or info provided by ETS suggested that I would have to remember how/if you can define a function in an abstract class, or whatever idiotic thing it was that they asked on the test. Also, I wasn't finished with all my theory classes yet so there were some easy theory problems that I missed. As a result, even though I studied some systems stuff from books I bought, I still probably missed some systems questions, I know I missed a few Java questions, and I messed up some theory problems as well. I got 76th percentile on the exam. I didn't bother submitting the CS GRE score to most of the places I applied, but for some reason when I was applying to Princeton I got the impression from the information on their site that they really wanted it, so I went ahead and submitted it there. Do you think this score will hurt me or will they probably just not care? I go to a very well known school by the way (Georgia Tech).

I wonder if I made the right decision about which programs to apply to at CMU. I only applied to PhD in machine learning and PhD/MS in Language Technologies. Didn't apply to general CS and didn't apply to any master's program. I mean, my interests are certainly more geared towards either the ML or LT programs, but what if those are somehow more selective? Plus I should have applied to more master's programs in general to give myself more options if I don't get into a PhD program somewhere...

Warning for those with virgin ears: the song has profanities in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vewAUeIbatU This song is kind of hilarious (just listen to what he actually says in the first verse and you'll suddenly remember how ridiculous you probably were around age 14) and is great for relieving stress, I think. Whenever I get really angry or sad about something, I always just listen to this song, and when I start relating to anything in the song I realize how ridiculous I'm being and I start to laugh at myself. Enjoy.

Yeah, I set up something like this a week or so ago. My method involved just creating a filter in Gmail that would forward all emails with, for example, *stanford.edu in the from field to the address for my phone. This serves the extra purpose of making sure that email from those addresses never gets sent to the spam folder (there is an option for this in filter actions now).

Ok, someone got a call today about the machine learning program at CMU to which I applied. Not me still though, haha.

Well, my application deadlines were almost all December 15th (Berkeley was one day later and Stanford was December 8th). According to the results here, three of the schools to which I applied have sent either acceptance or interview notifications to some people already in the last week (none to me, unfortunately ) unless you count CMU's computer science program separate from the machine learning program (probably sensible) since I didn't apply to general CS there at all. So yeah, I'm starting to freak out a little tiny bit now that I know people have started hearing good things from these schools and I haven't

Also I think my research statements are mostly too long and some of them are a little deficient in discussion of professors I want to work with and specific future work I want to do. Some of them really shine in this area (I think Stanford and Princeton are schools where I definitely blew this out of the water), while this section in some of them is as silly as "here's a random paper by this guy at your school, and here's a brief overview of what he does in it, and I think that's cool so I want to work with him" expanded into a couple of paragraphs. My research statement for my home institution I think doesn't even cite any papers and can be summarized as "lots of people here are good, here are some names for you!"

I always suspect that they'll view all the 1.7s I got in a lot of my CS (i.e. major) classes during my exchange study in Munich unfavorably (even though they count as A's at my home institution :\ ). In particular I wonder if they'll see the European Credit Transfer System grade equivalence chart that says that those are B's when my U.S. school doesn't count them as B's. Also they'll probably laugh at the fact that the lowest grade I got while in Germany, a 2.3, was in the field that I've done all of my research work in for two years now (computer vision). (By the way the German grade system has 1.0 as the best grade, 5.0 as the worst).

This would be a wonderful time to be on Tokyo time...

Someone posted a phone acceptance for CMU's CS PhD today, and dated it as happening on the 24th as well. Are they really calling people on a Sunday or did the person that submitted that just forget to change the date or something?

I think I only have one friend on Facebook that's applying to programs similar to what I'm applying to, and I don't think he's applying to any of the schools that are at the very top of my list (well, maybe MIT since everyone applies to MIT). I think I'll be safe posting something. Honestly though if I got into Berkeley or MIT I was planning on posting something along the lines of "GOT INTO BERKELEY GOT INTO BERKELEY GOT INTO BERKELEY HOLY SHIT" as my status, hahaha. Oh, and if I do get into Berkeley (maybe I'll do the same if I get into Stanford), I don't think I'll be able to resist posting a link to a video of Tupac's California Love along with some comments. That song has become my anthem for high hopes in the grad school application process, hahaha

Obviously you should send this to their admissions offices in an email.

Well, they are both in the School of Computer Science. I used the same application to apply to both (as in the only extra thing I had to do was select another item on a form and pay an extra $50).

Most of the programs I applied to say in a FAQ somewhere that you'll be notified by March 1st or April 1st (depending on the school) -- and almost all of these programs had application deadlines of December 15th. I wouldn't want to bother the admissions office until then at least. Obviously this is specific to my programs and my schools, so if you want to follow a similar rule I suggest you check the FAQ on the grad admissions page per program. Of course, if they don't seem to mention any deadline anywhere, feel free to harass them at a date you come up with some other way.

Ok, I just thought of something. At CMU, I applied to two different PhD programs: Machine Learning and Language and Information Technologies. Will I just get one letter from CMU listing to which programs I was accepted/rejected, or will I perhaps get two separate letters, possibly on completely different days and times, one for each program?

Hmm, according to the results search here, University of Illinois has already started notifying some people for acceptance to my program. I haven't gotten anything yet (which I assume at least means that they don't think I'm one of ther most incredible, stellar applicants). No other school to which I applied seems to have started notifying people for CS PhD programs yet, but judging by last year's results, they should start in a week or two at most...

My undergrad research advisor did his PhD at one of my top choices (I think second tier, where first tier is MIT and Berkeley ). He knows enough people still that when I was freaking out about his late recommendation letters, he was able to find out and tell me that they had definitely not made any admissions decisions yet. He's definitely my best recommendation letter, and I mention him in my statement of purpose, so I'm hoping that will give me an extra boost there...

Well, if you include the time waiting for admissions notices, that would probably be at the top. That's tied with or barely second to getting letters of recommendation. Two of my letter writers -- unfortunately the ones with the less important letters (student took my class and did well, maybe with a project too) -- were extremely prompt, wrote a letter way ahead of time, and submitted to each school within a couple of days of getting the request. However, my undergrad research advisor didn't submit his letter until a week into January (and my deadlines were almost all December 15th)! This was despite copious bugging on my part. After that comes the fact that ETS exists, and after that I would put my statements of purpose. I wrote a sort of template for the first 3/4 or so which detailed my past work and had a general introduction to what I think my interests going into grad school are. The last quarter was personalizing the statement to the school by picking out some professors whose work I liked and picking out specific papers and conjecturing what interesting questions arise from them. That last quarter was the bulk of my effort for each school -- in most cases, I didn't know the professors' work well enough in advance to write much about it, so I had to find their publications page and skim tons of papers to find good ones to cite...

I would email the admissions office at this point and mention that the visit weekend is coming up very soon. Just say that you were wondering about the status of your application.

Heh, thanks for the post, but I Googled it right after posting that message anyway, as you can see