pascal_barbots_wager

Really? It doesn't have to be a formal appointment or anything, have you tried framing it as a brief 15-minute chat about options or people you might talk to? Does the advisor have "office hours" where you could just drop in? As long as you're polite and can explain your situation concisely (being wishy-washy or vague might make you look flakey) any reasonable person should at least see what they can do. Then follow up as needed. This might sound too forward, but if they have office hours I'd just show up and introduce myself. It's much harder to say "you're not in the program so I can't help you" to a friendly, polite person than an email. If you want to get a taste of a programming community...you could do worse than hanging around StackExchange, but definitely don't be intimidated if it seems confusing. By and large people in computer science are like people everywhere and basically kind and friendly, but there's also definitely a dogmatic and condescending strain to it, e.g. "what, you don't know how to work a command line? pfff!". Don't get put off by this. Here's a good, short post about this sort of thing. I also imagine that there are at least a few biology people who do quite a bit of programming. If you can find some people in bioinformatics or another biological field with a lot of programming, that might make good use of your existing background. Anyway, good luck!

It might also be good to ask the undergrad advisor for the CS department at your current university. Even if you don't necessarily want to hang around there, they might be familiar with other students who have tried something similar. Having a faculty mentor - although this might have to wait a bit until you've demonstrated that you're committed to this - would really help navigate a non-traditional path. Once you have a bit of experience programming it might also be helpful to try to use that for some sort of personal project. Doing "research" is probably out of the question for a while, but taking a bit of initiative to use what you've learned on your own is something that looks good to future advisors/mentors/employers etc. And it'll be good practice anyway (and fun/frustrating!). It doesn't have to be anything super sophisticated, just something you can code up that is cool to you. If you're genuinely psyched about it that's a great thing to be able to show someone.

I'd just send this: Good Morning Dr. XXXXXX, I just wanted to touch base with you and see if you have heard anything about the status of admissions. I found out on February 6th that I made the finalist round, and I sent in all of my official transcripts the following week but have yet to hear anything since. Thanks, and have a great day! -Me It's quick and to the point.

Do I have this right: the paper is saying that, according to some measure of scholarly productivity, graduates of the top 10 schools are not so much more productive than graduates of the top 10-20 or 20-30 etc. that their higher representation among faculty can be explained by productivity alone? Ignoring the validity of that measure (which as TakeruK mentioned is a pretty big question), isn't this kind of a misleading question? The number of times you choose X over Y doesn't really correlate with the degree to which you prefer X over Y, or how much better X is than Y. X might be just slightly better than Y, and that might be enough to get chosen over and over again.

+1. There isn't any UPenn version of Craigslist, right? At my undergrad we had our own little classified site where it was pretty easy to find apartments and roommates.

This is true, but at the same time don't be too aggressive about it. Keep in mind, if you're accepted you'll be working with these people for 4-6 years.

In addition to the stuff mentioned above, if your schedule allows, try and walk around campus and the surrounding area a bit on your own. It's a nice way to explore and you might see some stuff a tour would miss.

I did my undergrad at UChicago. If work/play balance is really important to you think carefully about Chicago winters. I was totally fine with them because I'm a gym rat type and never really had any outdoor hobbies, but this might be a problem for you. For November through March - about a third of the year - being outside is almost prohibitively unpleasant, and it will be grey and cold for most of that time. I was fine with this, and in fact kind of liked it (winter sunlight up north is beautiful! and the campus' neo-gothic architecture makes it even better), but it might be different for you. On the other hand it sounds like UChicago would be a better academic fit. It's a bit risky to go to a place where you can only see yourself working on one thing. Sure, people's interests change but if for whatever reason you don't get along with this professor/project/approach it's good to have other options. The fact that multiple professors at UChicago would like to have you as a student also suggests that it could be a good, supportive environment with more opportunities. I don't know how different the CS job market is between LA and Chicago. Bay area vs. Chicago would obviously be a different story, but I'm not totally sure that LA (around Caltech) is automatically better. Tough choice, but both are nice options to have. Good luck!

Try talking to your rec-writers. Maybe people here have some idea, but when it comes down to it we're just random people on the internet.

...probably be so much busier than I am now that I'll just do the same things that adcoms do now.

Both. Have you had/will you get a chance to visit? I don't know if that's possible as an international, but it would be helpful. You might also try asking around at your current university or asking the opinion of the people who wrote your recs. You could also talk to some grad students of your POIs.

What type of research are you interested in? No guarantees that it's the research you'll *do*, but e.g. if you're interested in machine learning USC has more resources for that, while Harvard is stronger in theory (from what I've heard). As far as the Harvard name, I agree that it will be more impressive to people in general, but as far as actual professional utility it seems to be more about who you know and the work you do. For example if you're looking for a summer internship at MSR it's probably going to happen because your advisor/someone you've worked with passes your name along rather than an HR person saying "ooh, look, Harvard". So whichever place sets you up to do the best research you can with the least stressful funding is probably the right choice. I don't think either one is clearly better than the other right off the bat. Cambridge and LA are also pretty different cities...

There's a thread about C+MS They had an interview day in early February and some Skype interviews after that. Some people have gotten acceptances, but it's not yet clear that the process is over (I went to the interview day but haven't heard anything since).

This is just what I've read other people say, but after your PhD the biggest determinant of your future seems to be the research you've done rather than the name/field on your degree, so it's good to go wherever you think will set you up to do the best research you can.

I'll politely disagree with this one. All else equal a high GPA can only help you, but there are plenty of people in the results search who got into Stanford/Berkeley/CMU/MIT with 3.6-3.7s. Hell, even lower GPAs can be offset by great research experience or LORs.

I'm guessing they have some sort of graduate admission coordinator or other contact person for the application process. Definitely ask them to clarify what that means, because I agree it's not super clear.

I want to say there were maybe 20 people for CMS specifically and 10 people for the other programs under the CMS umbrella (Applied Math, CS, etc.). No idea on the number interviewed remotely.

It's not clear how many people they're accepting and in which areas, so until I hear an actual rejection I'm keeping an open mind. Again, I don't think it's a one-round-of-acceptances thing.

No news is better than a rejection, but at least in Computer Science most schools will send out most of their rejections in mid-late March once they have a good idea of which accepted students will actually matriculate.

Still nothing. Hm.

My ApplyWeb has a "view decision letter" (or something similar) button on it that links to my acceptance, but they sent me an informal email at least a week before that showed up.

The impression I got from visit day was that being accepted is very dependent on fitting with some particular faculty member(s) rather than making it past a committee, and that acceptances would be sent out as they're made. So maybe a couple of professors have decided they like some students and sent those acceptances, but others are still deciding. And maybe some of those admitted students opt to go elsewhere and then they look at different students. It seemed like a pretty personal process.

There are a couple of acceptances up on the results search. Neither one is mine unfortunately! I think they said acceptances wouldn't necessarily go out together, but still...

I got a rejection from Cornell yesterday FWIW.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I took the two free official PowerPrep practice tests ETS offers a few days apart and got high 160s (165-168) in both sections both times, and I ended up getting 170/170/5.0 when I took the real thing a few days later. So I think the practice tests might be a bit harder.