i_am_freaking_out

Yes program reputation of your grad school matters. A postdoc with a prestigious lab or program can help increase your standing if you didn't graduate from a name-brand program. I believe reputation matters mostly when it comes to landing an interview. After you land the interview, the job talk and interviews themselves will matter more.

Definitely it's better to do this once you are admitted. Before you're admitted, most questions about a program can be answered via a Google search. I've emailed students in the past without problems. I don't start with a flood of questions, just an introductory email asking if they want to chat. If a current student doesn't want to reply they don't have to. It's an email, not a threat. I've asked about flaws of the program (e.g., is there something they wish the program could improve? Is there friction between certain professors?) but I never email their responses to the department chair. Often it's harder to ask these types of questions in a panel-like setting. I've picked students to contact based on shared research interests. I ask questions about my POI's advising style. My peers who are underrepresented minorities in the field contact students who are involved in oSTEM, women in STEM, etc to get an idea of the non-academic activities one could get involved with. I've also contacted someone because they were in the same undergrad research group as me (two years before me, so our paths didn't cross then), and I wanted a comparison of our undergrad environment with their grad one.

At least we know from that Twitter thread that the UW Statistics department has at least one current student who won't make fun of people trying to make informed decisions about their lives. Perhaps this thread gives an indicator of what kind of cohort environment an applicant should look for: one that is welcoming versus one that is riddled with negativity and social barriers.

Someone quoted you on Twitter and some computer science professors replied.

Alumni who haven't attended the school for a long time might be less useful than more recent alumni. Looking at their LinkedIns to get an idea of their post-graduation trajectories seems like a smart idea, though. This is not the same as "stalking people on the Internet." People create websites and LinkedIns so that other people have a good idea of what people are up to. That's the purpose of those platforms. You should contact current students, though, once you are admitted. This is encouraged. I think bayessays' opinion about contacting current students is an uncommon one.

This is opposite from the advice I've heard elsewhere.

I heard from a classmate that they called some people today about research interests, so it does not seem like Berkeley EECS is completely finished.

NLP group is still finalizing the shortlist.

Yo do y'all see the stuff on the results page? Notifications coming out soon.