LifeGoesOn

Thank you. The letter says that they had 24 places for 258 applicants (9.3%). My hopes are over for MIT, and Caltech only admits very few people, so I think this will be the place. Pittsburgh seems so depressing compared to {big european capital} where I live.

Dear all, I was accepted at Carnegie Mellon - Robotics Institute PhD. (5 years full tuition + $2100) They sent a letter through UPS on February 16th and arrived today, at 9:00 monday. The package is very very thin, and so it has been a little scary

I sent two emails, to a prof. at Caltech and one at MIT that have the closest research interests to me. Both emails are now in Tumbolia, the land of dead hiccups and extinguished lightbulbs, where rejected online applications rest in peace.

Control/robotics. It happens that Bachelor's thesis and Master's thesis become publications. Typically each "thesist" works alone on a topic. Then, the paper is as follows: X, Y, Z "My thesis", in Proceedings of the IEEE ... where: X: Bs/MS student (wrote the code) Y: PhD student supervising X (wrote the paper) Z: professor, which is vaguely aware of Y's presence in the lab, and once met X.

cantab, [DISCLAIMER] You have a good curriculum, but how come no publications? Is it normal in your field? In my field, 4th author does not really count anything, but could be different in nanotechnology; for example, I guess there are large teams involved in every research. Isn't a MPhil the equivalent of an american PhD or a european MS+PhD?

amine, I'll respond privately.

Amine, I think that you have a very strong academic profile, so one of the top 10 schools will surely offer you something. Myself, I only applied to the top 3 (for my field). And to say the truth, one month ago I did consider CMU as a "safety school" :-). At the moment I have the very depressing sensation that no school will accept me. The other alternative that I have is an excellent place here in Europe, so I did not apply to second-tier schools, or to the top-schools that are not so attractive (es: GeorgiaTech -- great school, but who will survive 5 years in Atlanta???). In the end, MIT and Caltech did have a higher "expected value" from my point of view, but the *variance* is very big in life. Now I'm forcing myself to think of the plus side of a PhD here in Europe: +) 1h plane from/to home for 30 euro +) 2x the money and 0.5x the stress +) much more freedom in choosing research topics But there are many minuses: -) not so curriculum-building as a MIT PhD -) much less networking ...

If I may ask, how many publications do you have? I have 4 (first author at intl. conf) + some group publications, however the topic is somewhat different from the research interests of the profs at MIT and at Caltech. Moreover, I don't have fellowships (actually, in my country there are very few, and you can only get those after a MS, and I'm still finishing). Plus, I think I screwed up my SoP. I guess that next year I will have a profile very similar to the chinese guy, who got a MS last year. Now I have to decide whether to get other offers I got here in Europe, or try again next year after some other research.

I was just googling around... do you want to see how a new graduate at CS@MIT (and Stanford, and Princeton) looks like? http://dahua.spaces.live.com/ http://personal.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/~dhlin4/ "When the new century reached, I began my study in University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). It is the first time I need to leave my hometown Foshan for a long term. In this famous university gathering talented youth, I found that it is more difficult than expected to obtain outstanding grades. However, the challenge did not stop my steps towards excellence. After a year's persistent efforts, I managed to one of the best students in the department, and acquired the respect from both the professors and the peers." I though that science was about modesty.. > GRE ( Verbal 540, Quantitative 800, Analytical Writing 6.0 D'oh. My GRE scores were 630/800/4.0 -- I hope that 4.0 does not count so much for Caltech and CMU.

From this site itself: you can still see submissions for 2006.

I did not expect any activity on saturday. According to last year's results, most of the MIT admissions were sent out on Feb 12nd-14th, with the occasional one between 17th-22nd. So, yes, probably it's over. Did anyone hear from CMU/Robotics PhD?

Dear Martin, I was about to have a good night's sleep (+6 hours on this side of the ocean), then I read your message. It's a week that I remain awake until 3/4 AM.

Unfortunately this theory doesn't go well with the RVSP dates: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/admitted/ (cs) http://www.eecs.mit.edu/admittees/ (ee) We should start crafting a theory about second-round acceptance. :-)

By now I think all MIT admissions are gone out. Congratulations to those accepted. Congratulations also to the guy accepted to CMU/Robotics. Now a good hot bath, and.. life goes on. Anyway, now that my PhD possibilities for next fall are over, it could be a good occasion to rethink my life plan: actually, a PhD is the "easy way" out of school. A real job, volunteering? Who knows.