starmaker

I don't know what Ivy you got into that you think is shoddy in CS, because all of them are top-50 and all of them but Dartmouth are top-20 (I am going based on the US News rankings, but IIRC all of them that are top-20 in that ranking are at least top-30 in the NRC ranking, and most are still top-20). None of them are "unpopular." Getting a master's won't hurt your chances of getting into a PhD program. How does it make sense that CS degrees would be less prestigious than CompE degrees? They are different fields with different uses and some overlap. In the US, a master's in CS will not somehow degrade your bachelor's in engineering. I can't speak for other countries' systems. Your job prospects with an MS in CS from any of the Ivies will be just fine. All of them will look fine to prospective employers, and besides, they'll still see the name of your bachelor's school on your resume. My bachelor's university was somewhat more prestigious than my MS university, but prospective employers are still impressed about the bachelor's.

Haha, no. It will make it easiER. Very different. People with blue-blood credentials start with a leg up, but if they expect to just cruise into a job without learning job-hunting skills they are going to be very sad later on. Eh, false dichotomy. There are also good advisors who are famous and brutal ones who are unknowns. No, it just means that they don't go into the process with that particular extra boost. This is one reason why people like famous advisors - a famous advisor who is also a good advisor (which not all of them are) can help you get more publications in higher-quality venues. However, you can still have good productivity without this advantage. The travel funds thing depends on whether your field tends to be more conference-based or more journal-based. In mine, a lot of the leading publication venues are conference proceedings (which publish more quickly than normal journals, by the way), while in some, conferences are not considered reputable publication venues. If you are in a field where conferences are important, and your program doesn't have much in the way of travel funds, I suggest looking for conferences that provide competitive travel scholarships. Back when I was a non-degree student who didn't have access to my school's travel funds pool, I won a travel scholarship from a conference where I had a poster accepted. Well, you want both your advisor's connections and your own - any student of a famous advisor who doesn't make their own connections as well is a fool. Again, this is a false dichotomy. You can network in the way that you described, and you can attend conferences and talk with researchers there, and you can volunteer as conference staff and network with the conference organizers. You can also have your advisor, famous or not, introduce you to the connections that he or she does have. I've been one of the people saying that ranking and connections do matter, but I never meant it as "If you are in a famous lab your life will be Easy Street and if you're not you will be professionally doomed." It's more like, everybody is running a marathon, which will take even the fastest people over two hours, but the minority with the famous advisors and prestigious programs get a 15-minute head start. Everybody, including the people with the head start, still has to actually run the 26.2 miles in order to complete the marathon, and someone without a head start but with good strategy and training and endurance can still place quite well or even win the race.

Well, there's also the issue that "Man Bites Dog" is bigger news than "Dog Bites Man." People don't tend to express shock or complain as strongly at being rejected from reach schools, and other people reading their posts or listening to their rants don't notice those rejections as much.

The best case is a strong letter from a big-shot researcher, but a strong letter from a small name is generally better than a mediocre one from a big name. Also, small-name programs sometimes have big-name researchers. If your internship supervisor or your undergrad prof are big names in their own right, it doesn't matter much if they come from smaller-name institutions. "Did Well In Class" recommendations are a waste. However, are any of your classes seminar or research-based classes related to your field of interest? You might be able to impress a professor with a particularly strong and innovative term project, for instance.

Some people get fooled by the pseudo-social nature of such events, and think it's a great time to act like they're at a real social event with their friends. They don't quite understand that this is still part of the interview process, that they're still being judged.

You'll be better off posting this on the Computer Science subforum. Since I'm also in CS (and currently in an MS program) I will try to help you. I can't give you your chances because I don't know anything about your subfield, your reasons for applying to particular schools, your research experience, your recommenders, or how to convert your GPA to a US-style one. Your GRE-Q is slightly on the low side, though probably not enough to take you out of the running by itself. The writing score is also a bit low, and some programs will care about that more than others. The CS subject GRE would be useful if you didn't have much formal training in CS, or if you had bad grades in your past and wanted to show that you have now mastered the material. It can also be helpful for funding and fellowships. Other than that, it doesn't do much for you - most schools don't require or recommend it, and most applicants don't take it. You can find acceptance rates of many programs at Petersons.com, though you should know that they combine master's and PhD acceptance rates. Many universities do keep waitlists, both official (for which they notify the students) and unofficial (for which they don't notify the students), and will offer places to students on those lists if enough students who were accepted decline the offers. If you end up applying again, I suggest that you get a native English speaker to review your statements of purpose. I mean no insult to your English abilities - it is quite difficult to write compellingly in a language in which you are not a native speaker, and a reviewer who is a native speaker can help improve the flow of your statement.

I don't know if this is the standard or not (interviews aren't particularly common in my field), but it's a good idea. I'm interviewing for non-academic jobs right now, and it is considered good practice in that arena to send thank-yous to your interviewers. If you forgot to send one at first, send one now - apologize for the delay and increase the level of appreciation that you express. This is a case where late is better than never, as long as it's before decisions are made.

If both you and your advisor think you are making satisfactory progress, it doesn't really matter how many hours each week your classmates are working. There's a temptation to compete at "Who can claim that they're working the most?" I think you are smart for staying out of that game. That way lies madness.

The best way to show that your past issues no longer affect your coursework (I have some first-hand experience with this as well) is to prove it. Take classes as a non-degree student and do well. Not that you shouldn't give it a try even before you've done so - you might be able to get in in spite of your GPA based on your other credentials! - but you should have a Plan B, preferably a field-related one, as you do so. For instance, you could work as your field's equivalent of a lab tech, if it has one, for a year, while taking a few non-degree classes. This might also help you get good recommendations.

I find it moderately useful, but I work outside of academia. If you have interest in collaborating with people outside of academia, or building connections with people that you meet at conferences, it might be useful. Also, LinkedIn has discussion groups, including discussion groups for research professionals in some fields, so you might find it useful to join groups and participate in discussions with other professionals.

Argh, in a normal job interview it would be illegal for them to ask how you were going to cope as a single mom, or any other question about your family status. I would say don't bring it up unless they do, and follow UnlikelyGrad's strategy if you get someone who is inappropriately concerned. Stay professional. Your career in biotech is not your personal life, it's a relevant part of your background in the field. I think that's a fine thing to discuss.

This is going to be different depending on what school you attend. At my undergrad alma mater, you could walk on to probably over 90% of the club and varsity teams with no experience in the relevant sport - I was on the novice crew team my freshman year, despite not even having seen a crew shell before when I first arrived at the school - and intramural sports were grouped by skill level, with teams for people who were pretty good and teams for people who had no idea what they were doing. At other schools, there might be more tryouts. The varsity teams will probably be more competitive, in general, than the club teams, even at an NCAA Division III school (a smaller school with less competitive sports teams). It will also depend on the sport. For example, the rugby club might require tryouts while the jiu-jitsu club might take anyone who wants to join regardless of skill or aptitude. Most universities will have websites about their various sports programs. I suggest looking at what your prospective schools have to offer.

Ultimately, what you're concerned about is job placement (and how your school's reputation will affect that). I think you're right to be concerned, because there's a correlation between program reputation and job placement. But you don't just care about a general correlation. You care about the specific programs on your list, right? So go look at the placement records for the programs on your list. The NRC collects this data for research-based doctoral programs (though their data is four years out of date), which you can see for free online, and programs themselves will often have it available. You want to know what percentage of a program's grads have a job lined up when they graduate, and, depending on your career ambitions, what percentage have an academic job lined up. You probably also want to know the quality of the jobs in both categories. While it's true that more prestigious programs tend to have better placement rates, if you're considering a mid-rank program that is a good research fit for you and has a very strong placement rate...clearly they're doing something right. Different advisors within a department also sometimes have different placement rates. Awesome Dr. Connected's advisees might nearly all end up in top postdocs, tenure-track positions, or highly prestigious industry jobs, while most of her departmental colleague Dr. Blah's advisees might not even have any good prospects by the time they finish. One thing NOT to do is to simply accept the program's glowing reports of their best three success stories of the last decade in place of numbers about how the average graduate fares. Most programs, even if they're not very good and have poor placement rates, will have the occasional superstar who has his or her pick of the best jobs. You can't assume that that will be you. You want to know how placement works out for the students who DON'T walk on water. Depending on what, exactly, you want to do, there might be other factors you care about. If you know that you want to teach at a community college or small liberal arts college, you want a program that not only has a good placement record but turns out good teachers. If you want to work in another country, as several people have said on this thread, straight-up reputation can matter a lot. I tend to place more emphasis on prestige/reputation than I think a lot of applicants on boards like this do, but it's because those are generally linked with good resources and outcomes, not because it's nice to have random people ooh and aah when you tell them where you went to school. They're a proxy for employability. But if you can get the actual numbers on employability, that's more useful information than the proxy.

Mostly, schools care that you have research experience at all. Publications are a nice bonus, but they want to know that you know what doing research in your field is like, not that you're already a research whiz. Most undergrads applying for grad school have no publications, or maybe one article in their school's undergrad research journal or something. And yes, you look much more attractive if you have some focus and appear to be considering grad school for reasons other than "I feel like it's what I'm supposed to do." They want to admit people who will complete the program - attrition rates are high enough as it is. People with no idea what they want to do, why they are there, or what they are getting into, are high-risk for not finishing. And they usually don't have the savvy to structure their graduate experience in a way that makes them employable afterward, even if they do finish.

Many universities have intramural and club sports programs, and, at least in the ones I've seen, grad students are allowed to join. In the case of intramural sports, a department or program may even have its own team for some sport.

I consider myself non-traditional, but not in the same way that some of you are. I got my bachelor's in the traditional way at the traditional age, but in a different field than I'm currently in. I got a job after graduation, and decided that I needed more formal education in the field of the job, so I started taking post-bac classes in my new field after work. Then I decided that I wanted an advanced degree in that field, so I've been working full-time and getting an MS degree part-time. I'll be applying for full-time PhD programs in the fall, and, if all goes well, will matriculate into a PhD program at age 27. In general, I think being a part-time student/full-time worker is a great way to get a master's degree. It does cause a few issues, though: - Potential employers sometimes think I'm in an extension school/"night school" program, because they think that's the only way you can get a master's while working full-time. Night school programs are less prestigious, so I have to explain that actually, no, it is the normal degree program, the same one that the full-time students are in. - I don't know very many of my classmates, since I'm not on campus that much, which makes it harder to find people for group projects. - Since I can't spend my whole day on campus, it's harder to get to know the professors, which means that I have to be more resourceful about building relationships for recommendations.

Your stats are good enough that they aren't going to exclude you from anywhere. You have research experience - pretty solid research experience, if it's good enough to get published. Is the grad coordinator for the department a prof or other known researcher? Failing that, does he or she at least have a PhD? One thing that matters a lot, given equally good letters, is whether the faculty at your target school have heard of your recommenders. What programs did your recommenders graduate from? They may have special clout at those departments.

This is not strictly true. If you have an advisor with good connections, or are in a program that is very good in your chosen subfield even though it's not great as a whole, you can get an academic job even from a poorly-ranked school. The NRC study actually collected data on the percentage of grads from each CS PhD program that got academic jobs, and there are some pretty random programs that have high academic placement. There are lots of jobs for PhDs in industry (I'm in industry right now) and government. The big corporate research labs (e.g. AT&T Labs, Microsoft Research, IBM Research), the government contractors (big ones like Raytheon, smaller more specialized ones like iRobot), the FFRDCs (like MITRE or Lincoln Lab), the Department of Energy's national labs, NASA, the NSA...all of them hire CS PhDs, for PhD-level jobs, in significant numbers.

Your cGPA is fine for going directly to a PhD. What subfields are you interested in? What sort of career might you want after getting your degree? It's hard to help you narrow your list when we don't know what your interests are. Most of us also don't know much about most of these departments. I suggest that you go to the department websites and see which departments have labs related to your interests. You can also use the website phds.org to create your own customized rankings, and to find data like job placement rates. I think your credentials are competitive for most if not all of these. Which doesn't mean that I think you are guaranteed to get in, just that they're not going to look at your application and decide that you're obviously unqualified after a first glance.

A second-authored publication is excellent, a first-authored publication is even better. Fewer grad school applicants have any publications at all than you might think. Even fewer have several. Like barber5 said, the quality of the conference or journal also matters.

This seems to vary by field and/or program. I've encountered students in fields and programs very dissimilar to mine, who claim that in their programs, anything in the B range will be considered, at the very least, a yellow flag, and will probably lead to conversations with your advisor about where you went wrong. In my MS program, a 3.5 will qualify you for our chapter of our field's honors society (undergrads have a lower threshold, so this is after having adjusted for the fact that we're grad students). Bs are common and acceptable (at least one class that I have taken, where the prof conveniently provided class averages and such, was centered near the B/B- border).

Conventional wisdom (usually applied to students who win multi-year fellowships) is that bringing your own funding does help you get admitted. It won't help you if they actually think, based on your qualifications, that you can't do the work. But usually admissions decisions come down to choosing between good, qualified, applicants. And people who bring their own funding free up the department's funding for other students or other purposes.

This is often true. The people who really need the extra credit, and are also motivated to do well, are probably people who are struggling with the material (since they have good work ethic but still need extra credit). This means that they're working their butts off on the required work, and don't necessarily have much time to do extra work. The people with time to do the extra credit are the people who are breezing through the material anyway (or the people who don't care enough to do better than a slapdash job on the required work, but those people probably won't bother with the extra credit). I agree with the people saying don't take it too much to heart, but do look for how you can improve (because who among us can't improve?).

East Arlington and South Medford/Hillside are not more suburban, IMO, than large parts of Somerville and north/west Cambridge (now, Turkey Hill or Arlington Heights, sure, no argument there). I can walk to any of Alewife, Davis Square, or Arlington Center in less than half an hour from my place in East Arlington. They're also likely to be easier to commute to Methuen from, because you have quicker access to less congested, more open, parts of the highway. For that matter, you're more likely to be able to find off-street, non-tandem, parking, the farther out you go. I agree that Melrose is fine. There are a number of towns in the area that feel very urban near their downtown areas and very sprawly/suburban outside those areas - Waltham and Lexington come to mind (though Lexington's likely to be way too expensive for a grad student anyway). Sometimes the feel is more about the neighborhood than the town itself. Compared to most of the country, Boston public transit is phenomenal. It all depends on what you're used to...I came up here from a mid-sized Southeastern city that had a crappy bus system and no trains at all. One of its biggest flaws, though, is that it's arranged in a spokes model - it's easy to get into Boston proper from outer towns, and easy to get to outer towns from Boston proper, but it is hard to get from outer town to outer town! Commuter rail (which goes to the places too far out for the subway) has gotten less good over the years - budget problems have caused the powers that be to implement some service cuts.

The commute from Cambridge/Boston to Methuen will be much less bad than the commute from Methuen to Cambridge/Boston, so I think your bias is right on. You'll be paying more for less living space than you would in one of the far-off suburbs, but in addition to the better commuting situation, being near the city will make you less car-dependent. And there are some relatively cheap places in Medford. Arlington (where I live right now) is also a good possibility. Winchester's in that area, but it's kind of a "bedroom community". Malden and Everett might be worth considering. To some extent this depends on which Boston-area school you are interested in. If, for example, it is Tufts, then South Medford is great, because you'd be right there! If it's anything on the Orange Line, Malden or Everett or the Wellington area of Medford might be good. If it's one that's primarily accessible via the Red Line (MIT, Harvard), you might want to look at East Arlington, so that you could walk to the Red Line.