Azazel

Any consistent employer of CS PhDs will have equivalent respect for the Berkeley and Stanford "names." This goes without saying for academic and industry research positions, but I expect it holds even in areas totally outside of CS research (e.g. jobs in I-Banking, SDE at Company X, etc). Any relevant employer who is competent will have some idea where the "talent" can be found. Sure, a random layman may not be as impressed with the Berkeley brand, but a random layman is not going to be hiring you ;-) So even as a tie breaker, I'd be skeptical about going on brand name. But maybe things differ outside the United States. I can't speak to that issue.

Then it's possible that we've met ;-) Initially, I felt that too. But as it turned out, the three potential advisors I met with all seemed interested in working together on collaborative projects. So that sort of laid to rest my concerns. But your experience may vary... Good luck with the decision.

I have a friend who got into a few Top 10 schools (including one of the Top 4) with around a 2.0 GPA. How did he do it? Basically, he had a professor who aggressively went to bat for him. More than just writing an great letter, this professor made a bunch of phone calls and convinced his colleagues how awesome my friend would be as a graduate student. So my advice to you would be to find a respected professor (ideally, one with connections at the schools to which you want to gain entrance), and convince that professor you would make an excellent researcher/academic. Usually, this will involve doing high-quality research under said professor ;-) Good luck -- while hard, it's definitely possible to work around a low GPA.

With that kind of choice, you can't really go wrong. I had a similar dilemma and decided on Stanford (I liked the more entrepreneurial culture), but my subfield is different from yours, so I can't speak to the quality of its computer vision and neuroscience programs. Were you at visit days for both schools? If so, I'd just go with your instincts...

That's true. I'd offer two thoughts, however: It's unlikely that your solution will be "innovative" in any non-trivial way. When you consider that all the coding challenge problems already have known solutions, how novel can your algorithm be? And the time constraints in these competitions tend to bias answers towards hackish solutions, or solutions isomorphic to well-known algorithms, not new theoretical contributions. Even if you do come up with an "innovative" algorithm, how will your work be validated? When you talk about research results in your application, what you say will be backed up by a letter writing professor or (even better) a publication. Who (besides you) will speak to the originality of your work in a programming competition? Just something to think about.

Don't expect to impress grad schools by participating in these competitions. My experience is that admission committees care little about them. You will be better served putting time and energy into doing good research, and acquiring strong letters of recommendation. Of course, good research and coding challenges are not mutually exclusive, but you probably only have so much time... So I'd advise you to compete in these challenges only if you find them inherently fun. Don't expect them (even if you win) to work magic on your grad school application.

If you think that you will definitely do better, go ahead and retake it. But don't stress out about it. I was just talking to someone who got accepted to top schools without even taking the GRE. And these were schools for which it was supposedly "required." He was in a different technical field however, not ME. To add to this evidence, I got into top Computer Science schools with a lackluster GRE. Just to be safe, talk to people in your field. It's entirely possible my experience doesn't generalize to other Engineering disciplines. But really, I don't think the GRE matters much...

As many others have posted, graduate school is principally about doing research. As test scores are poor predictors of research ability, schools don't tend to weight them very highly. I really think the issue is as simple as that ;-) Unsurprisingly, the adcom's best proxy for your research ability is the opinion of a professor with whom you have worked closely (doing research!). So LOR are generally considered important.

I've had a similar experience. And although the schools may "go out of your life", it's possible that some of the people will not ;-) At the very least, you may find yourself interacting with them at some conference or another. I've also heard that the networks you build over visit days become helpful (in some small way) when looking for a faculty position.

I have sort-of similar interests, and I applied to the "computer science" program. I'd actually suggest applying to both (CMU allows you to do this ;-)

This observation is limited to my subfield, but I found the professors at Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT to be equally awesome. Everyone was doing good research with a strong focus on "impact", and there seemed available a diversity of advising styles at each school. For a systems-ish area, Berkeley seemed to focus on larger research projects (e.g. you might find a number of students working within the scope of a single tool or technique). My impression of MIT was that research projects were more individualistic, and Stanford fell somewhere in between. Stanford and MIT seemed more focused on building real artifacts (software, tools, etc.) than Berkeley, although at Stanford, such artifacts might have a greater tendency to spin off into companies. In regard to program requirements, Stanford had the fewest, Berkeley had the most, and MIT fell somewhat in between. Stanford also had what they call a research "rotation system", which is unique among the schools I visited. Under the rotation system, you can work for a few different professors throughout your first year, before deciding on your permanent advisor. Berkeley didn't seem overly concerned about budget issues (in fact, they gave out the most free swag). That said, they simply may not have wanted to talk about this. I encountered grad students at other top public schools who mentioned (slight) changes in the department due to state budget cuts. Berkeley's CS department is insulated to some extent from these budget issues (most money comes from other sources), but I imagine that it might have a bit less to spend than the programs at Stanford or MIT. Hope that helps. All these schools looked like great places to be. For myself, I'm still deciding ;-)

Berkeley is quite a nice place (despite its homeless population ;-). Visit days were pretty standard, as far as these things go. I was impressed with the faculty and grad students, and Berkeley came across as a quite collaborative place, with a strong sense of community among its grad students. What kind of information are you looking for?

Yes, it is very strange. I've also heard nothing from their PhD program. The least we might expect for our application fee is some information as to whether we are accepted or rejected. Personally, I'm not really worried about it, as I have a number of other great options, but under different circumstances I could see myself being quite annoyed with such treatment.

Thanks! I'm going to attend the respective visit days before deciding anything. And that's too bad about the visa -- non-U.S. applicants seem to be at a disadvantage in this respect.

I'll have to make a similar decision (albeit, adding Stanford into the mix). Are you going to visit days? For myself, I'm not making any decisions until I see each school and meet with potential advisors. That said, here are a few bits of information I've been mulling over: - MIT seems to have less stressful academic requirements. Only 4 course requirements, and quals is basically a research presentation! This may make it easier to get started immediately with research. See: http://www.eecs.mit....aminations.html - Berkeley claims to have the best placement rate for academic positions (http://communism.cs....Admit_Questions) - Everyone I've talked to has mentioned the wonderfully collaborative atmosphere at Berkeley - Jean Yang suggests some reasons to choose MIT (http://jxyzabc.blogs...ool-visits.html, http://jxyzabc.blogs...cking-grad.html) - Berkeley is close to Silicon Valley. This makes for better startup opportunities, if that matters to you. - Berkeley weather > Boston Weather ;-)

Congrats at getting in to Berkeley! Are you attending visit day? This very much depends on with whom you want to be employed. Berkeley CS (so I've heard) has the best placement of any university for academic jobs (e.g. tenure track positions). Likewise, if you are seeking an industry research position, Berkeley's reputation will help you just as much as MIT's or Stanford's. Most CS PhD students are interested in one or the other of these positions. For any other kind of job, Berkeley's reputation might not be quite so sparkling as that of MIT/Stanford, as you enter a realm in which people don't know/care about what's involved in a CS PhD. Even still, if the job is at all technical, I have a hard time seeing how Berkeley can hurt you. And even if you end up looking for a job entirely unrelated to CS research, Berkeley still has a very strong reputation in many, many other fields. So I'd say Princeton has a slight edge in layman notions of prestige, but this should matter very little to you if you applied to a PhD program (where it is all about your research). And most technically-minded people who know what they are about would consider, a priori, Berkeley CS to be stronger than Princeton CS (although this does depend a bit on your subfield).

No. I'm not sure that they did interviews this year... haven't heard of anyone who had one.

Congrats Lanchka and Awexome! I'll summarize my results so far: Accepted: Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UW Rejected: CMU Waiting: Harvard This will be a hard decision. But one that I am happy to have ;-) Good luck, everyone. Maybe some of us will run into each other unknowingly over the visit days.

Congrats! Me too. One of my top choices.

I'm in! Got an email from a POI yesterday. Official results should be out today.

Thanks for the info (and sorry if I came off as grilling you). Hopefully a bunch of us will hear from Berkeley pretty soon.

No, it hasn't changed.

Well from the browser side of things, it shouldn't be too hard to write a javascript bookmarklet that removes all the table rows with "MS" when clicked. Alternatively, the owners of this site could add better support for regular expressions.

They are legitimate. It was a generic acceptance letter, emailed in mass, which is why the results appeared so quickly. Somewhat to my surprise, I received one.

Nice! Seems you have good reason to be optimistic. Did the Prof. say whether the admissions committee had met yet this week? My impression (as of late last week) was that they were to have one more meeting before things are decided.