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cpu90

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cpu90 last won the day on April 8 2010

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  1. Hi, The general sub-fields of computer science (or in my case, computer science and enginenering): Architecture Theory and Algorithms Database High Performance Computing Networking and Security Computer Vision Bioinformatics Computer Graphics Robotics Programming Languagues Hope that helps.
  2. I'm a RIT MS graduate, and one thing I know is that my friends from RIT got amazing industry offers, salary of at least 80k+ from big names such as nVidia, Microsoft, Google, you name it. The downside is, there isn't much TA/RA available, the school is more career oriented rather than research geared, therefore while the education from RIT can help u to get an awesome job, it won't prepare you much in terms of research. Not many professors in RIT CS are doing any funded research, actually just a few. The classes are more application based rather than theoretical for job-readiness. Anyway, job-wise RIT is seriously awesome. Research wise, it is trying to catch up but currently still pretty terrible.
  3. I would have to say if you are looking for industry options after MS, stony brook is the better option, purely because the school has a TON of industry partnerships, and not to mention the school is right next to the Big Apple, New York City! If you want good job prospects, where else do you want to go except schools near huge cities? Companies would usually prefer to look locally than nationally, it is more economical and convenient. So if you are looking for industry option, stony brook is my vote.
  4. Hi I'm curious, how did you select those schools as the list? Any criteria such as location preference? ranking? reputation? pofessors? research areas? Because while you seem like a good student, I've never really hear of most of those universities' computer science program being top notch, or maybe that's just me. So I'd like to know how you came up with those school choices. CP
  5. I could have said that you do not have facts either, but I never did, because that's a meaningless rebuttal....even if I do give you the list of the schools that e-mailed me regarding my undergrad GPA, how would you check the validity?? If you tell me where you attend school and your program's average accepted GPA/GRE, how do I check it?? You are missing the point. Point is, low undergrad GPA is a huge disadvantage no matter what, and low GRE will keep you out of top schools unless you strive to score as high as you can. Exceptions do exist but that does not speak for the majority. But I guess you choose to end the discussion with a series of personal attacks, which I have no done so in any of my posts. That is up to you.
  6. Ms. grotesqueidols no it was not Brown. You know that it would be a bad idea for me to provide the list of schools who denied me and e-mailed me regarding my undergrad GPA, yet you still ask for it, you're seriously not in for a fair discussion are you? I don't know the situation in Cambridge UK since I'm in the State. I don't understand why you want to keep arguing about how "bad" you are with terrible GRE and GPA and you're in a great PhD program. Would that really help people here? It is not a good idea to keep padding people in the back and tell them "you can do it!" while they clearly have problems with GPA or GRE, are you suggesting people to just go ahead and apply with a poor GRE/GPA, and just don't worry about it because you made it in? Any serious applicant would try to put together an excellent package for application and improve wherever they can, and from what I'm hearing from you so far, you're disagreeing with me because I sound discouraging, and now you are disagreeing with me for the sake of disagreeing, this is not a rational thing nor a productive conversation. I don't think I am pushing it too far, since I've accepted that probably not all schools use GRE/GPA as a pre-screen but some definitely do, and now you're just going to bring up all the "diversity" of the student body in Cambridge. Plus, what is wrong at seeing the numbers? Like I said there are always exceptions, but majority is what we look at and that's why there's a field called statistics. I don't think anyone can disagree on that a low GPA/GRE will only hurt one's application chances, and the only way is to improve it. Ok let's assume there is no place that ever pre-screen by GPA/GRE, would it then be ok for a person to feel good about his or her chances with a poor GRE score, and throw in that 100$ application fee and expect to be admitted? Ms. grotesqueidol please do not argue for the sake of disagreeing, you are so hung up on the idea of there is NO GRE/GPA pre-screen that everything I say becomes flawed to you even though I am simply being objective and realistic. If my story is a discouraging one, it's not like I wanted it to be, it is the real story of how a low undergrad GPA haunts me for my entire career, don't try to find flaws in my other credentials, try to look at the big picture: are the majority of low undergrad GPA (below 3.0) doing good at applying to top PhD programs? some probably does, but not "majority" for sure, so there is no point arguing this guy or that guy got in here and there with this terrible GPA/GRE, that's misleading, that's just telling people that if they got a bad GRE, dont worry you'll be fine, don't retake it cuz this guy got in here with a terrible score.
  7. Chill out, all of you. I'm a guy applying to CS phd with 2 MS under my belt, good number and quality of publications, awesome LOR, custom SOP for each school that I applied, Good enough GRE, but a BAD undergrad GPA of 2.71 cume and 2.5 major. In the end I get 3 wait listed, 1 fully funded offer, and 10+ rejections. I'm not even applying to top notch schools like MIT (I do have awesome schools such as berkeley, cornell, etc). Refer to my other post for my detailed stat and school list. Bottom line is guys, I think undergrad GPA is important, more important than you think for admission. Research experience affects more of funding opportunities. Many people apply straight out of undergrad and get into great schools, and they don't have many publications, and so the grad schools do look at undergrad GPA more than grad GPA. I'd say that scoring 1300 GRE is no difference from scoring 1500, it is simply a pre-screening cut-off type of thing. Maybe 1500 will get you funding later on, but in terms of admission I think as long as you score 1250+ you'll be pretty safe as in being reviewed by the committee and not screened out by the secretary. I admire your passion DrFaustus666, while I myself is the realest case of a person who had terrible undergrad GPA and tried to do well later on, but it doesn't matter, I'm just still not being accepted by those places. But I do hope you will not be the 2nd me. My dream was to 1 day write a book called " from 1.9 to MIT" to inspire people that a low undergrad GPA will not doom you for life (my freshman gpa was 1.9 and I was suspended for 1 semester!), but I guess in the end I can only write something like "from 1.9 to stony brook", which probably won't sell much.
  8. Ms. grotesqueidols, you are right the departments do publish their TOEFL cut offs. But if you look closely, vast majority of them also do publish their undergrad GPA min. I can quote "minimum Undergraduate GPA of 3.0" from so many of the departmental websites from the schools that I applied. The e-mails that I received was from early janurary, basically saying that my application will not be reviewed because my undergraduate GPA is below their bottom threshold, straight from the secretary, not some mass e-mail rejection that they sent out stating too many qualified applications this year and we're not able to admit all of the bright students etc etc. Furthermore, early january is not when they hold committee meetings, way too early, that's even before they distribute the applications to area faculties. Then again, like I said, I didn't get that e-mail from all of the rejected schools, just some. With the fact that I am on wait list for several of them + a fully funded offer, not all schools do hard-cut off from undergrad gpa is agreed, but apparently it does happen more than you think at least by looking at my case. Lastly, the fact is that very many applications are well put-together, very many applicants have never really made any mistake in their school years, and most of the people who apply has great qualifications. If you're in (or your bf) a grad program, look around you, they're all top students from top universities world wide. Take my department for example, 75% of our grad students are international, all coming from top notch schools such as Beijing University, Tsinghua University, IIT of India, National Taiwan University, you name it. Not only they're from those top universities, they all have high GPA, with most of them having better GRE than I do (especially the chinese students from the mainland, they all score 600+ on verbal, some 700+, and you can guess that they all pretty much have 800 on math) The competition is extremely tough, each school (the big schools such as the ones that I applied) send out just 100 offers, and really a big percentage of those 100 overlaps from school to school, because when a school thinks of a candidate is qualified, usually if this guy applies to other schools it'll also be the case. So if you count in my 20 schools, each sending out 100 offers, total to 2000 offers, with maybe 50% of them being overlaps. Therefore, 1000 offers for the entire world, that means if you want to really secure your chances, you want to shoot for being the top 1000 student in the world. There is a reason why engineering graduate school consists of on average 75% or more international students...because they know that if you want to have a chance, score as high on GRE as possible, 1200 is good but not enough, 1300 is nice but can be better, 1400 is great but still 200 away from perfect score. Samething applies to publications and more. Many great applicants therefore cannot be admitted due to the space limit per each department, so to push yourself into the tight spots, really have to aim 100% on all the things you can do. if undergrad gpa is set in stone, do all those other things you can improve upon and hope for the best, that is the only way, and you may become the exception of being given a great offer such as Ms. grotesqueidols' boyfriend and me. Nevertheless, don't just relax and think things will be ok because such exception exists, exceptions are exceptions, vast majorities of people who get in do have very eye opening background (2 guys from my department were physics/math high school olympic representatives from their province in china), and if you know that those are the likes that you are facing in the competition, make sure you aim to do the best of the best on everything.
  9. cpu90

    GRE/GPA

    Totally agreed.. not impossible, there's still chance, I got into stony brook and penn state with full funding and fellowship (although rejected from everywhere else) but I still made it, but it's tough, and I've given almost that 100x extra work.....but the setback is just extremely real to me because I am the guy with the low UGPA who tries to make it and gets that slap in the face ...
  10. btw my SOP was reviewed and revised by one of my recommender, he is a close friend of mine almost like a father to me, and he is the head of his lab at a unviersity medical school. I appreciate you going over what I could revisit. Unfortunately I do my research and my homework before comitting to applying to schools and even what schools to apply. I apologize for the discouraging tone, but such is life. Facts are facts while there are exceptions, we should always look at the majority. Can you disagree that majority of the people who get accepted into decent schools are well-rounded students with good records? Can you disagree that GPA of lower than 3.0 are among the definite minorities (if any) of the offers sent out by those schools? Yes not all chance is lost, to the original poster. He does have a chance, there is no such thing as 100%. I got in stony brook, and who knows I might get accepted by the wait listed schools also. But I'm being realistic, probably not, I'm not blinding myself to make myself feel better, but we need to be realistic and that's when we can make the next step to improve ourselves. Real advise is hard to swallow, and only the bravest can see his own weakness and improve upon it. You can say it in any better way to make anybody feel better, but the fact is a low undergrad GPA or GRE hurt your chance greatly. Do what you can to improve your chances on the things you can still improve on (research, etc) and hope for the best, I dont' see what is wrong with this.
  11. Ok let me be more political correct. What I said probably do not apply to ALL schools, but it is indeed happening, secretary (or whatever you call them, but NOT the admission committee themselves at the meeting) do discard applications at pre-screening. I know this because I got e-mails from some of the schools telling me that my undergraduate GPA is not enough for them to consider my application. (not all of the rejected ones, but they did e-mail me) So I did not make this up. Moreover, my girlfriend is trying to go to the same school as me, therefore she also applied. She is a foreigner, while her undergrad GPA was 3.9 with very high GRE (790 math and 670 verbal) and numerous awards, her TOEFL was only a 82 iBT. She did not apply to as many schools as I did but 3 of her schools also e-mailed her that her TOEFL is not as high as their required 100 iBT, so she will be rejected and not reviewed. The persons sending this e-mail IS the grad admission secretary, because the e-mails have their names on it and on the signature part. You may say that it may be the decision of the graduate committe and she's just the one sending the e-mail, but no this is not true, because we fought for her TOEFL case by e-mailing the graduate committee chair asking them to waive this requirement since she has been in the States for 2 years, and the department chair forwarded our e-mail to the secratary, telling the secratery to re-consider her case. After that, the secratery asked her for some other documents, and told her ok they will consider her file. Tell me if this doesn't prove that the admission secretary indeed does the pre-screen. Again, I apologize for my not 100% correct wording. Not ALL schools do that, but "most" of them have pre-screen cut off, and pre-screen cut-off's purpose is to reduce the number of applications to be reviewed due to the astronomical number of applications each year. Therefore, low undergrad GPA or low GRE has low likelihood of being admitted into decent schools. WAIT I didn't say they will never be, exceptions do occur, I am happy for your boyfriend, but lets be honest, do you really see a guy with 2.71 undergrad GPA of having a good chance of getting in decent place? I am not crying in sour tone. Obviously I did all the work I can do, I'm not sitting around complaining and giving up on my life just because of my 2.71, read my stat from the previous post. My recommendation writers (3 of them) have know me for many years, 2 of them have known me for more than 4 years and we're very good friends, 1 of them even gave me a copy of what he wrote of me.....so don't assume that they're not writing good things about me. I applied to 20 schools because after 2 MS I am now 27, and if I miss this chance I will not apply again, so I applied to all the schools that I found interest in. I studied each school's department, and every professor that does my area of focus, I did my research as best as I could, I don't just throw money into the pot and see what happens, please do not assume, once again, that I am just picking schools by name. I have 20 versions of SOP, 1 for each school, each indicating the professor of my interest with reference to their recent publications. Plus if you look closely my 20 schools are carefully selected, only a few top names, mostly in the mid level, all big engineering schools with my specialization, a very reasonable list. I don't doubt that you have worked admissions. But that doesn't mean all admissions work that way, and the e-mails that me and my girlfriend has gone through certainly are not the case in your school, which means you really can't just use your experience to rule everything out. Please no personal attacks here such as " if it makes you feel better ". We're adults and when I say things thats' because something happened (those e-mails and calls), with facts not because I'm ranting cuz of all the rejections. Thanks.
  12. for most schools that are decent, they tend to have very many applications every year, and they use GRE as a pre-screening process. Because the department is not able to review every application in detail, they cut people out by GRE, undergrad GPA and/or TOEFL for international applicants. For more competitive schools, the cut off is around 1250 to 1300. For ok schools, cut off if about 1000 to 1100, for less reputable schools (or schools who think they're so awesome such as MIT, not that they're not awesome but you get my point), they don't require GRE at all. With that said, you can say that GRE is either a huge part of the application (because if you don't score higher than their threshold, you're thrown out by the secretary and no matter how impressive the rest of your application is, it won't even be seen), or you can say that GRE is just a small cut-off part of the application (you don't need to score 1600, as long as you're over their cut-off, you'll be reviewed.) I agree with ebaronov that your working experience unfortunately will not help, if at all, because they are not research related. Usually research experience is for decision of funding opportunities anyway, so it is a little different from the things they review for admission. The important thing is you MUST raise your verbal GRE. English is my 2nd language and I took the GRE 3 times...(or maybe 4? I can't even remember exactly lol) all I know is my first and 2nd time my verbal was like 350 and 360, it's horrible. And I got rejected across the board for MS (math has always been around 770, and AW around 4 to 4.5). I managed to get into 1 school from waiting list and now I'm finishing my MS here, applying to PhD (computer science). I studied verbal over the summer last year and I managed to get 630 this time, so as long as you put time to it, you can do it. Memorize words after words, it's a no-brain labor type of thing but you just have to do it. You may get lucky by getting admitted with verbal at 410 but seriously don't count on that, be realistic and give yourself a better chance by taking it again..
  13. cpu90

    GRE/GPA

    Hi, I think you guys are all really stating what admission committees SHOULD be doing, by considering the upward trend of the undergrad grades, other accomplishments, and to see the whole picture before making the decision of admitting x or y. I agree, this should be done by the committees, but in the committee meetings, the pre-screening secretaries, in the real world, they try to do that and it is often difficult. With that said, a low undergrad GPA will inevitably doom your high tier grad school (phd, or even master's) dream, even if you do well on all other things. This is just the fact. I'll run down how it works when a department accepts students and review applications: 1. the graduate secretary, and the graduate coordinators gather each and every application, put together the materials, file them and organize the data. 2. shortly after the application deadline is reached, the graduate secretary does the pre-screening by discarding applications that do not meet the minimum requirement to reduce the number of applications that they will actually review in more detail. What are the minimum requirement? undergrad GPA, GRE, and TOEFL for international applicants. Most of the schools keep the undergrad GPA threshold at 3.0, TOEFL at between 80 to 100 iBT, GRE of at least 1100 (competetive schools' GRE threshold is usually at 1250). If an application fails to meet any ONE of the 3 requirement, it is discarded, rejected before further review. 3. The pile of applications that have passed the pre-screening, will be sent to different professors of different area of focus in the department, depending on what the application specified as the intended area of focus. 4. the professors go through the remaining applications to see which students he wants as his RA, and recommend those students for admission to the graduate committee. 5. if there are still open spots available after the professors have made their RA selections, the department will offer TA (or no funding) to the selected applicants from the remaining application pool by holding a late round of graduate admission committee meeting. This is done twice if such department keeps a waiting list. Now, from the above steps, it is easy to see that if your undergraduate GPA is low (below 3.0), your chance of getting into any decent graduate school is slim, because such a person would be cut from the very first pre-screening phase, simply because it is impossible for departments to review each and every application in detail, they must reduce the review to a realistic number before they start to actually review the applications. Take computer science for example, it is a popular field and for many schools they receive over 3000 applications for phd+ms (take maryland for example, this year they had around 2000 applications for MS and 1000 for phd. I don't know about MS's situation but I know that they sent out 100 offers for phd, expecting 30 to 40 of which to accept the offer. I know because I called and asked...and myself being one of the applicant and on their phd waiting list.) I've posted my 2010 application result on the computer science section of the forum, but I will describe it again here: I also have very low undergraduate gpa, overall was 2.71, with my major gpa even lower...maybe 2.5? I am a computer science major, and I really didn't care about school much, I started to work hard from 3rd and 4th year after being suspended at the end of my 1st year due to gpa below 2.0...I started to work hard because I was doing an internship at a nearby medical school as a programmer, and the research that they did really intrigued me and motivated me to work hard and continue my education. But the fact is that with a very bad foundation (what do you expect from a guy who got gpa of 1.9 from freshman year, and maybe around 2.3 from sophomore year? this indicates I didn't learn much and my knowledge/practice was very limited), it is very difficult to do well for the later years, I had to re-learn my 1st and 2nd year material and really change my life style. It wasn't easy, and I averaged maybe 3.3 or 3.5 for my 3rd and 4th year, but when you average those all together, it was still just a lowly 2.71 cumulatively. I didn't want to apply to schools at that point, cuz I think nobody will accept me anyway. my own school ended up accepted me into their MS program with probation: I had to keep my gpa above 3.0 or I'm out. I managed to graduate from it with 3.89 GPA, and an graduate student award that was given to 2 students out of the entire department. I started my 2nd MS to try to boost my application further, I am about to graduate from my 2nd MS this May with GPA of 3.56, with 1 journal and 4 conference publications. So I applied to PhD programs a few months ago. Guess what, I got accepted into just Stony Brook, rejected from 10+ other schools, wait listed on 3, and no-reply from 5 (probably will turn into rejections eventually). by the way my GRE is 770 math 630 verbal 4.5 writing. I've done everythign else right. But my undergraduate 2.71 is more of a problem than any of you can imagine. as nice as you guys are, saying there can be any reason that causes a nice boy to have a low undergrad GPA, the grad committees don't care. There are thousdans and thousands of applications from around the world, VERY MANY of them are good students through out their lives, consistent through out their academic years, no mistakes ever made. The graduate schools have more than enough of those perfect students to choose from, and the sad truth is they will like those guys and pick them...and for people like me, we really are just stuck being wait listed, or admitted to ok schools, with our undergrad gpa haunting us the entire life. The depatments don't have the time to understand why we messed up at the beginning, nor do they care, they are like a business that they admit students who demonstrate consistency and potential for success, and they usually get more than enough of those applicants since people from around the world apply each year. undergrad gpa, like the GRE and TOEFL, is the pre-screening selection criteria. They don't look down at you, they don't think anything of you, they just discard you if you don't score higher than their minimum threshold hold simply because they cannot and are not able to physically review the initial 3000+ amount of applications that come in, and they have to have a way to reduce this number down to a realistic sized pool, and the best way they can think of is undergrad gpa/gre/toefl combination. I can't say that this is wrong, but this is just the sad truth that if we mess up undergrad, we seriously need to put 100x the work and try to get lucky..
  14. just to add to my qualifications: I received Outstanding Graduate Student Award, this is a 2-recipient award for the entire CS department. So I'd say I definitely aced my MS degrees, but yea, still very poor admission results.......undergrad GPA will burn me for my entire life I guess.
  15. Hi, Unfortunately, I have to say that research/publications are NOT the most important part of your application, nor is GRE. I have my own case to offer, I am applying to computer science PhD this year and so far I am very disappointed with what I've got... My problem: Low undergrad GPA. My advantage: High grad gpa ( I am finishing up my SECOND ms now btw), multiple publications ( journal AND highly reputable conferences), and high GRE. Result: 2 wait-listed, 1 acceptance, around 5 yet to hear from, the rest rejections ( around 12 ). My detailed stat: Major/focus: computer science/computer vision for PhD Undergrad GPA: 2.71 (major might be even worse, at around 2.5?) Grad GPA: 3.89 (from RIT), 3.56 (from Penn State) GRE: 770 math, 630 verbal, 4.5 writing TOEFL (if it even matters) 110 iBT Publications: All first authorship. 1 @ journal of neurophysiology, 1 @ MICCAI (#1 medical imaging conference), 2 technical reports at Penn State and CMU, 1 from AIPR workshop, 1 from CVPR 2010, and 2 posters from Society for Neuroscience. Research experience: RA experience of 3 years at University of Rochester Medical School, 1 summer at CMU Robotics Institute, 2 years at Penn State. Schools that I applied (20 schools) USC - no reply yet NYU - rejected Johns Hopkins - no reply yet Northwestern - no reply yet UCLA - rejected Berkeley - rejected UC Irvine - waiting listed Stony Brook - Accepted, full TA (regular year) and RA (summer) funding with additional departmental fellowship U Maryland - waiting listed Cornell - rejected WUSTL - rejected U Texas at Austin - rejected Purdue - waiting listed U of Minnesota - no reply yet Brown - rejected Rochester - rejected U Penn - rejected U Ullinois - rejected Georgia Tech - no reply yet Anyway, the REAL story is that yes the professors need you to be ready for research in order to survive. However, undergrad GPA (and GRE) is the threshold: if you don't go over the threshold for each school, the secretary will just discard your application, so none of your publications/experience will be seen no matter how impressive they are. Just look at my case. My GRE is probably enough for most of the schools that I applied (to at least pass the screening threshold), but my undergrad GPA, horribly low, probably got me cut from all those rejected places by the secretary. So, I hate to say this, but low undergrad GPA IS a problem. The only thing you can do to improve your chance is to do well in MS and publish, since there's no much other things you can do anyway. Then, apply to a variety of schools like I did because the schools' admission process can vary from many factors, and maybe in some years undergrad GPA isn't so important. One more thing: international applicatns tend to already have a MS, whereas the US domestic applications apply straight out of undergrad. The difference then is research experience. I was invited by Stony Brook for department visit maybe 2 weeks ago, there were 10 of us and I was the only one with MS! And here is the key: I was also the only one with RA summer funding and additional departmental fellowship, the rest of the guys had just TA funding for regular year. This tells you that research experience won't get you accepted by itself, your entire package does. But research experience gives you extra funding opportunities that others won't get, because you are research ready. But to be admitted, undergrad gpa and GRE is SO important because these are the screening threshold. You know each school's CS department gets like 1000+ applications and they can only send out around 100 offers (30 of which will actually accept). They cannot go through each and every application in detail, so they screen out unqualified applicants first by undergrad GPA and GRE, therefore those 2 things are important in this regard. So you don't have to try to get perfect GRE as long as it is high enough, but to my understanding, undergrad GPA is really important because most of domestic applicants don't have a MS degree and are you saying they have no way to be admitted? and yea I think research experience is overrated. it's good that if you are research ready but you go to school to be trained, so they are looking for students with potential, whom they can train and shape into a good researcher, so having mad (or quality) publications will help, but it'll really only be affected your funding decision, not admission decision from the department.
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