ASDen

Hello, I was asking how safe is it to defer your admission ? can they suddenly decide the next year - and after accepting to defer- that they can't take you (better candidate, cutting budget,... etc) ? i was told this is doable and deferring is dangerous even if they accept it, especially given the current financial situation in the US what if this is a top 20 school, is it still dangerous ? Thanks,

@OH YEAH my goal is for PhD, but a major lesson learned from my last year round is that foreign unknown recommenders do kill regardless of what they really say, still i'm not able to get around unknown recommenders + school. only solution seems to be quality publication which i'm working on currently but it takes time : D, which made me think an M.sc might have lower acceptance requirements (but, for me, must be funded : D ). also still not satisfied with settling for a top~60 dept and aiming higher.

Hello, i'm applying again this year, and since i partially changed my field of interest i'm applying to princeton, but really hesitated between applying to funded Ms or Phd directly (my concern is which would be easier to get accepted) I've two research posters at a big international conference(SIGGRAPH) one of them was an ACM SRC semi-finalist at the conference, and two papers under review at medium international journals(~IF 1.5) GRE : 790/420/3.5 not-known, outside US undergrad school,topper, graduated at 2010 (finished courses year of Ms in my school) i know an advice would be, don't apply there from the beginning : D, but i'm applying anyway, just hesitated between the two choices, if someone can confirm that they consider failed PhD applicants for funded Ms, then problem solved Thanks,

since i applied there, i think yes they did, you can try to ask them

they had send lots of rejections ~4th march, check the Results section

@ shashakoe: i didn't appeal yet (deadline 30 April), but i don't know why would they hate it ? (this is my right after all and i think I'm not misusing it here, I really feel injustice here, you can't simply judge a paper just given a title or a project without looking at results, worse is filtering without even looking at those)

my approach here was getting in as an MS student in my current school(back during season), was super easy as people know me well (was Plan B, to improve my current profile, but surely not intending to really take degree if got a good offer, people here knows this of course) , it allowed me to apply to many of them (in companies and research labs, luckily no fees here ), but getting in any looks to be a totally different story , and not very less competitive. absolutely no clue, but I'm defending it to the last hope, and really all i want them to do is to really consider me, read my publications and have a look at all projects, I'll fell satisfied if they reject me after doing so

given your profile here : No, don't waste your time on the GRE, yours is already decent enough, and your research experience also, i think I'm in the same boat here, and i'm most probably applying again next year (maybe after the last shot with the UIUC appeal ) the advice i got from a Berkeley professor, which i think applies to you as well, is to get a research intern at the US. yes, we *may* look good, full of potential on paper, but it seems guys there - in top schools - don't afford to be wrong and take their safe chances with people with recommenders they know / trust, it seems an intern at a distinguished place in US/Europe is the way to go for this . I don't know the specific effects of economy things this year, but it looks this year also was somewhat different (i.e. more competitive than previous ones). the worst thing i felt this year is in most places i applied people didn't even take time to look at my papers,projects,..etc on my website, though my applications are filled with links to it, i received no visits at all (except, and i don't know why, from Berkeley), which strengthens my previous idea, i was rejected in the simple filtering round, not after *deepened* examining and consideration (i.e. didn't reach the *really* reading applications round) it was shocking this year, but let's learn some lessons

well, at least they didn't told you to cut hopes we can be positive and say that would mean a very small number of additional acceptances, maybe some waitlisted, but this would raise the question, why they take a 3-4 weeks to send rejections this year instead of the usual single week period, strange.

any news ? anybody called them ? , maybe this year also they are taking the UIUC trend and sending decisions late (mid-end march)

what they told me "Our committee is still reviewing applications and all decisions will be sent by March 15." let's hope for they really have some spots left

no body googles by name, emails are more of an identifiers here (names may tie-break). let alone they know many many things about you from the application. so i think, given an applicant, it would not be that hard to know many things about the internet activity about him (this applies best to CS applicants)

@my follow rejected Berkeley applicants i contacted my PoI for the reason of the reject, and he answered as follows hope this helps somebody

the professor i contacted told me that they finished their admission decisions

Thanks

UCB results are out, and I'm out again

@newmanhattan: i also had a visit from a Californian address with a UCB referral on 20/1, but was a single visit to the links i provided during application if you hear any thing from them, post it as fast as possible (though previous results suggest they make a single accept batch ~8 Feb then a reject batch a week later) (just hope it wasn't a page collecting bot that captured pages from the ~3000 applicants)

well we can be somewhat positive and say they made their decisions regarding some of fields and another meeting will be held for the rest (maybe two-same-batch HCI people isn't a coincidence ). this will also mean that if any systems guy was accepted, I'm officially rejected

well, did it finally and i think it was the right decision. being a TA for 3 courses, application hassle just eaten my time, took about ~2 weeks of very interrupted study. Q:790 V:420 generally I'm happy with it. the V part is a bit below average, but should be above the cutoff point for most depts, which is the whole point of the GRE thing ( the nice thing is that ETS advices depts clearly not to put a GRE cutoff, and use it only for fellowship awarding and alike )

Hello, normally (or at least at schools I'm applying to), TOEFL is automatically waived for domestic applicants regardless of any other factor recently i received the following response from berkely eecs "US Citizens must take the TOEFL if their undergraduate degree came from a non-English speaking country." is this a real tendency between a number of schools, or it is just berkely ? by no means i won't be able to take TOEFL before deadline, any suggestions ? anybody with more info on this point, please share Thanks,

thanks for the responses timurlap, Bukharan. i know i won't mostly get straight responses before admissions, but it sometimes happen. i wanted to try esp. i'm afraid to come out empty handed this year, due to university mis-selection, i need to make sure a certain professor has a place and thinks I'm fit. ---- i have a further question, this response does he mean post-admission talking, or right now (i.e. should i respond now ?). Thanks,

Hello, for a while, I've tried mailing professors who have interests very close to mine, and I'm interested in their current work. lately i got the following responses from two professors "Please keep me posted of the progress of your application. I will contact you to discuss research opportunities once you have Received admission" "Please apply to the University X, and send me a follow-up email once you do. I may not have enough funding to hire another student next year, but I think there are several research groups here that would be interested in your work." from your experience does they mean / promise anything ? any advices are welcome Thanks,

to my knowledge, where you published makes real difference i.e. if you publish where professors from your target unis. regularly publish, it's much in you favor from a conference with nothing special but the IEEE tag for example (in other words the word international alone isn't helpful esp. when it comes to top schools)

@OH YEAH: this is not the case with me, and this is the main reason i'm doing this effort to apply this year not the next. due to many reasons by next year I'll mostly be as-is with ~0 changes in profile. well after landing at ~0 choices, i took the decision and registered for next month to give it a shoot. i'll have to do my best during this month

Hello, due to very limited time off-work, there is a good chance that i wouldn't be able to take GRE before deadline (or worse take it and do badly). so, my question, do you know of any top 50 depts that doesn't require GRE ? i only know MIT, UIUC, Purdue, Brown but all these are very competitive, and applying there only is dangerous. so, do you know of any additional top 50 schools ? Thanks,