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svent

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Everything posted by svent

  1. svent

    Rochester, NY

    Rochester traffic is not bad at all. Think of it as a midwestern city, not a NY city. I hear parking on campus is terrible though.
  2. Sounds fine. An operating systems class could help, or something related to your interests (ML, Crypto, graphics, whatever).
  3. Then I don't see what you're hoping to accomplish here. Just apply to all the programs in NYC if location is more important to you than potentially better programs. If you really want more advice, post what CS classes you've taken.
  4. 3.2-3.3 is fine for Master's for schools ranked around Vandy's ranking. For schools a bit higher, 3.5+ is good. For the Stanford's, 3.8+. For PhD, try to get 3.6+ (or 3.8+ for the Stanford's) and get plenty of research experience and great letters.
  5. Full-ride + stipend. I think it's more important what you accomplish, not just the name of the school. Then again when I had this decision to make, the schools' rankings weren't too far off... certainly wasn't looking at any non-top-100 schools. Sure, if it's Stanford CS or Harvard Law, maybe you take a chance. But in this day and age, I think it's smart to minimize debt when it comes to school (or anything else for that matter).
  6. Look, if someone deserves a grade bump, so be it. Whether that student is pre-med or an art history major has no bearing on this. These kids are whiners and will cut your throat if it means an A instead of an A-.
  7. I don't know what QM is, but if you get into a software engineering job after school at some point, this looks like a nice project to have on your resume, regardless of how many people use it.
  8. GT is ranked higher if you care about US News. When I looked into GT, I looked up the career fair. They've got plenty of local companies, plus all the big companies from SF/SV. I don't know about Yale's career fair. But even if it's as good, Atlanta is in a better area for jobs I think. Atlanta+Raleigh+Houston+Dallas+Austin are all semi-nearby and all pretty cheap to live in. Near Yale, you have Boston and NYC which have good job markets, but very high COL. Plus NYC is all finance-related jobs, not as much of a pure tech scene as SF. I would ask yourself if you'd rather live in the north or south (not just weather-related). You can always move after school, but you have a couple years while there to build your network.
  9. I agree. Sometimes people will enter UC San Diego, sometimes just UCSD. Some people have even mistakenly entered San Diego State. To be honest, I don't really have any use for it myself. I already know where I'm going, and don't expect to ever read the results page again.
  10. I see. I'd go to Tech then. Yale doesn't really have the same level of prestige in the field that it has overall. It's ranked very highly for undergrad, and for some other stuff like law school. But when it comes to CS or Math, it doesn't come close to ivies like Princeton. I've never met anyone who had gone to Yale, whether current students or professors who did their PhD there. Which doesn't mean it's a bad program, but Tech is better IMO. Just try to take one soft class per semester. Unless Yale has "easier" classes. Taking 4 grad CS classes each semester sounds really tough. But Atlanta is a good city to be in for jobs.
  11. I see. Probably a good tool for most schools, but if there's a reasonable chance of results pulling in multiple schools, I'd analyze the results manually. (UA/ASU, TAMU/UT, UPenn/PSU, etc.).
  12. Pretty cool. How specific is the search function? For example, does Texas A&M include all the UT Austin, UT Dallas etc. results? Does University of Arizona include Arizona State?
  13. Disagree. PhD pushes you into research even the first couple years. You may even burn some bridges in quitting like that. Some schools won't let you duck out with a Master's. You won't have nearly as much time to work on your portfolio for jobs.
  14. If you want a Master's, get a Master's. Hopefully you can get a TA job or at least a summer internship to mitigate the effect on your savings.
  15. Probably a better department than Yale, and certainly a better city for jobs. But I would be concerned about the course load, I think it would be very isolating. I'm not familiar with the undergrad program, but I doubt you take 4 CS classes each semester. That said, they do have a few soft classes that you could use to soften the blow, like Ethics of Computer Science or whatever.
  16. Study what you want to study. UCSD is still a big name.
  17. Georgia Tech requires 12 credits per semester for full-time status (3-credit classes). I don't know if part-time enrollment is allowed. I'd think it'd take 1.5 years to get through. Taking 4 CS grad classes per semester sounds pretty insane. Not sure how the course load is at Yale.
  18. If it's PhD and your interest is academia, not industry, I don't see why California would be better. In fact, CA would be far more expensive to live in. UC stipends are also kind of low considering the COL. Don't know about ML at either school though. Would you rather live in a room in CA or get your own apartment in IN?
  19. 200 is actually current... when I looked in the fall, their fall classes for algorithms/machine learning were more like 500+. ASU has like 50-100 students in grad classes I think. You can usually look at course schedules for the particular school and figure it out. Number of professors is probably a decent proxy too. And size of schools too.
  20. I recommend sending an email that doesn't make it look like you hired an HR Director.
  21. Sounds like they want another $90 out of you. Unless you're actually interested in embedded systems or other related areas, study CS elsewhere.
  22. svent

    Tempe, AZ

    Don't worry, Phoenix is full of transplants from the midwest.
  23. Applicants, maybe. Enrolled students, no. There are some schools that are known to be very international-heavy like USC, ASU, NCSU, GT. Some schools like Duke, UCLA, UPenn offer statistics. I know UCLA shows how much of its class is international/American, male/female, things like that (not sure if Duke/Penn have those stats). UCLA is still > 50% international, but it's nowhere near 90%. Over the next year, as you do your research, keep an eye on these forums (and possibly others), you'll see plenty of international students asking for profile reviews, posting their SOP, things like that, and you'll see what you're up against. Unless you've got some serious red flags on your record, I don't think you should have too much to worry about. Still keep a list of backup schools just in case though. Edit: Also look at the results page for particular schools the past few years. Most of them are internationals there, but they often post their GPA/GRE/other stuff, so you can get an idea of what kind of profiles get accepted and rejected.
  24. The best thing to do is ask some professors if they remember you and if they could write you a letter. I did take some classes as a non-degree student and got a couple LORs that way, so only one of mine is from my old degree (not quite as old as yours, but pretty close). But I wouldn't have done that had I been a CS major. MS is surprisingly easy to get into. It's nothing like PhD. I had worries about even getting into one top 50 school, so I made a list of backups ranked around 50-100 with late deadlines (May-July) just in case I didn't get in anywhere. I applied to 9 schools. Got into 6 (including some much better than USC, but didn't bother applying anywhere like Stanford), no rejections yet. I'm sure I'll get a couple in the next few weeks. Most of your competition will be Indian (and Chinese) students applying so they can enter the American job market afterward. Most of the SOPs that I've seen them post just look terrible (strange phrases, talking about grades, telling a dumb story about how they fell in love with computers as a kid, their industry experience, etc. -- grad schools care about research, not industry). Your GRE scores will almost certainly be much better than those of your competitors. Perhaps you can write about why you want to attend an MS program. I would focus on top 50 (mostly around 30-50), and know that no school on the list is too high to apply to, provided you're actually interested in going there. I would try to avoid some of the schools known to admit as many internationals as possible. So for example, apply to places like UCLA and UCSB, and avoid places like USC, ASU, and NCSU. All schools are going to have plenty of internationals, but it's no fun for an American when you show up 10 minutes before class and the room has 200 people all talking to each other, and none speaking any English.
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