thr0waway

Definitely rotate earlier, because sometimes professors extend tentative offers to people who rotate earlier in the year, and then the later rotators don't have as good of a shot. Also, a lot of professors will want you to continue your project after the rotation is over, so you'll have more projects to juggle later in the year.

you may not get your choice of advisor, since the professors you want may choose the better students

take the one with better funding. programs that don't provide full funding to their students don't really value them

Go to UW. The fact that they offered you full funding at Princeton means you're probably one of their top admits. And you know what they say about being the smartest person in the room - it means you're in the wrong room. Also, if you reapply for PhD programs after you do your Master's, you might even have a worse chance, because (a) your research during your Master's program may not be as good as your undergrad research, and then you'll have to explain what you've done for the past couple years ( b ) since you effectively had 6 years instead of 4 to prepare for your PhD, you'll probably be expected to have done more stuff

What exactly was he hoping to do with his life? I can understand doing multiple PhDs if you really liked research / the job of a grad student, but if he wasn't interested in research this is beyond me

Ask the grad students how they are funded and if possible try to find out if the professors are funded by the department at all, or if they have to bring in all their own grants

It's better to live alone if you can, so you can let parents/significant others/other people stay over without having to bother your roommate, and besides there's more space in the fridge, and you can play whatever music you want all the time.

Nobody cares how old you are (unless you look noticeably older or younger). You probably look about their age anyway, so they'll never suspect unless you tell them. Most people in my cohort started grad school when they were 22 or so. So your age difference would be negligible. And the older you get, the easier it will be for you to relate to people of all ages. (I noticed I could relate to a lot more people once I started grad school.)

You should talk to current students at both schools before making your decision. Ask them a lot of questions about their lives, department requirements, specific professors, etc.

How sure are you that these professors will accept you for his/her lab?

These are all excellent questions.

Turn it down if you're sure you won't go. It's nice to do it as fast as possible so you free up room for other applicants.

At Stanford I have three years of guaranteed funding, which comes through fellowships, RAships, and TAships. Generally you get an RAship if your advisor has money to fund you, and otherwise you need to apply for TAships on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Years 4 and 5 are not guaranteed but I think most people don't have to worry, because their advisor has money to give them an RAship, or they can appoint them as a TA for their class.

You should definitely ask people in your program, and also try to find numbers for how many people drop out after each year

In general they would expect most admitted students to be in your situation. So just tell them you're really happy about the offer but are still waiting to hear back from other schools. It's not awkward at all because it's completely normal

For grad students: What do you wish you had known coming into grad school? (both in general, and about your program specifically) What do people need to do to succeed here?

Stanford has married student housing. It's in a nice quiet part of campus and seems like a good place to raise kids (if you can afford it). You can probably see it during visit weekend if you walk around the school. They also make an effort to have healthy on-campus dining options, a lot of vegetarian food etc. The Stanford CS department is a shithole though. The professors are okay, but the department itself doesn't really care about its students. >There are profs in both universities with who I would love to work. There is no guarantee that you will be able to work with the professor you want to work with. I assure you, if you want to work with someone, so will 8 other people. And since the CS department does rotations, you will spend your entire first year trying to be better than everyone else. Note that some people do not have advisors at the end of rotation (this happened to two of my friends), and those people are encouraged to switch to the master's program.

amazon mechanical turk

no they sent this out to all cs phd students

if i were in this situation i would google them / check out their social media profiles before anything else as a coworker you don't need to care *that* much if they're a good student. you should make sure they're reasonably competent (so they don't ruin your project), but they don't need to be a superstar who'll publish 10 papers before graduation their main impact on you will be social, and if you're going to spend a lot of time in lab with them, you'd better make sure they have a good personality. let the professor do the academic filtering; he's the one who benefits most from having good students.

they might just think you're nicer, or recognize you more than the other TA like if i'd only ever talked to one TA and felt they were friendlier, i would probably want to email them instead of the other TA it's not necessarily a bad thing (or gender related) and it doesn't mean they're trying to undermine your authority or anything like that

oh i got an email 4 hours ago saying the students have already been picked and we have to plan social events for them so i bet you guys get decisions tomorrow good luck

it's better than having the prof turn against you after you've already decided to go to the school if the prof and you don't get along it's better to find out sooner than later so you can explore other options. you may find out the prof is a jerk in which case you dodged a bullet