starmaker

How do you find time? I'm not convinced that it's as hard as people think. I am skeptical of claims that grad school is just so hosing that you will never have time to do anything else. I've been a part-time grad student for a couple of years while working a full-time job. I also have a husband with whom I spend plenty of time, and a whole bunch of activism- and service-oriented hobbies. And I run 15 or so miles/week, and I have lazy leisure time to read novels and watch TV and hang out with friends. Now, I realize that being a part-time grad student is a different ballgame, but are you going to tell me that a full-time research job plus being a half-time MS student is incomparable to being a full-time grad student? To be a little more helpful...treat grad school like a job. Structure your time, make a schedule. I realize that in some fields you might have to come into the lab at odd hours, and there's nothing you can do about that. But, it might be helpful to work in large blocks of time (e.g. the classic 9-5) if you can. Or set goals about what exactly you need to get done that day, and then do those things and go enjoy yourself. Obviously, there will be occasional times when you have to do pretty much nothing but grad school, just like how in a non-academic job there are crunch times when you have to punt everything except work. But those shouldn't be "all of the time." There will be weeks when you don't have a chance to take a photograph, but there is no good reason to pack your camera away for several years.

You'd be surprised. I say that as the person who's nearly always the sober person in the room. Some drunk people are not fun, but many are hilarious. You can have a lot of fun playing "straight man" to a bunch of drunk people. Or at least I can.

No (to your first question) As long as your GPA is good enough not to raise any flags, most STEM PhD programs don't consider it top priority. They care more about your research experience and your recommendations.

There are a lot of open source projects out there. There are also a lot of software developers who are absolutely awful at UI design. If the open source project has, or could really use, a GUI, chances are it could use the help of an HCI person.

People just don't care that much whether you are drinking. You can still hang out with them. You don't need to explain yourself if you get a soda or something instead of an alcoholic drink. They're only going to care if you are obviously passing moral judgment on them because they drink. There's no reason that you can't attend the same social functions as everyone else. And bars really aren't that scary.

I'm having trouble getting a handle on how in-depth our summaries of past research experience should be. After all, the whole essay can only be two pages long; that's hardly any space at all! I saw the winning CS essay linked to in the OP, but that applicant only had a few past projects. Even if I limit it to CS projects that are directly relevant and/or resulted in a publication or presentation, I end up with seven projects. That comes out to very little space per project. How much are people writing about each research experience?

You and I actually have pretty similar backgrounds. Very low undergrad GPA in a non-CS STEM field from a tippy-top university, post-bac classes in CS in a mid-level department, wanting an MS in CS. I was accepted to MS programs in CS (this is my last year in mine and I'm applying for PhD programs), which bodes well for you, especially since my undergrad GPA was even lower than yours. One thing I was doing, was working in a CS research job (I was taking my post-bac classes part-time). That helped me clarify my research interests and get a couple of publications before I applied to MS programs. It also got me a letter of recommendation, and some tuition reimbursement. My GPA in post-bac classes was solid but not outstanding. The programs that I got into were mid-rank, and one of them (the one that I'm now attending) gave me a substantial merit scholarship, presumably based on things other than my grades, like my research cred and a relatively good GRE. Most CS programs don't require or expect the CS GRE, but if you want to take it, here are two resources: The HunterThinks online study guide: http://www.hunterthinks.com/blogger/2004/11/computer-science-gre-study-guide-home.html Chris Scaffidi's study booklet: http://sites.google.com/site/titaniumbits/ Of the big test-prep companies, the only one that puts out a CS GRE study book is REA. I have heard that the REA book is absolutely atrocious and that nobody should ever use it (go read the Amazon reviews for specifics).

A lot of what I watch are shows that I didn't see when they originally ran (because that was before I was born/old enough to appreciate the show/aware of the show/into the genre). Or shows that are more recent but that I didn't have the time to watch at first or decided that I'd rather watch on DVD. Lots of sci-fi and similar - B5, ST:DS9/TNG/TOS, Farscape, SG-1, SG:A, Firefly, Life on Mars (the British version). My husband and I recently got through Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, and we've been watching the silly X-Men cartoon from the early '90s. We are slowly working our way through the '60s spy parody Get Smart. As for modern shows that I watch as they are actually running, the main ones are Archer (<3 irreverent James Bond parodies), the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and Futurama. Also, the Walking Dead, but it has been awhile since the season ended, and it's too intense for me to want to rewatch a bunch of episodes while waiting for the new season. I'd watch Sherlock regularly if there were more episodes...silly Brits with their short seasons.

My husband showed me this. I thought some of the folks here might appreciate it. http://sotak.info/sci.jpg

There's a forum specifically for DoD SMART. http://www.thesmartforum.org/index.php?sid=e2d620b8789baf424d7c77cbe4fc3ef9

Uh, I already work in industry, so I'm pretty clearly not in grad school because I am clueless about what to do and/or hiding from the job market. Actually, I originally decided that I wanted a PhD because I was enjoying my industry work but wanted a PI role in a similar sort of company, and a PhD helps with that. Though lately I'm increasingly keen on the professor route. I see your point that industry is a vague term. There are a lot of different kinds of industry, and roles in industry (I'm actually going to be on a panel about this, at a conference this fall). There's a world of difference between, say, being a PI at an FFRDC, being a consultant in a management consulting firm, and working on the initial product for a brand-new startup. And a lot of grad students don't know that this difference exists. Heck, neither do a lot of professors - when I read books on careers in science written by academics, the token chapter on jobs in industry tends to portray industry R&D jobs as all cut from the same cloth. However, how is this any more vague than saying that you want to work in academia, or in government after you graduate? Academia could mean an R1, or a small liberal arts college, or a community college, or something else. It could mean a tenure-track position, an adjunct position, an administrative position, or a non-faculty research position (e.g. research engineer). Government could mean one of any number of government agencies with very different agendas and approaches, it could mean a think tank, it could be national, state, or local, it could be military or civilian, it could (in science) be scientific research or science policy. Granted, you do come across people who have a clear goal of, say, wanting to be a tenure-track prof at an R1 (though some of those people collapse emotionally if they don't achieve that - flexibility can be useful), but a lot of the people that I come across who want to go into academia are just as vague as the others.

You might consider a post-bac program, like they have at Tufts and Brandeis. Post-bac programs are intended to provide formal CS background to people who want to get graduate degrees in CS or work in industry in CS jobs, but don't have the formal CS background for it. They're shorter than MS degrees (generally five classes or so).

Yep. I'm only applying to programs that are within commuting distance of where we live now, as he doesn't want to move right now. Fortunately, this still leaves me with more than half a dozen options, some of which are top programs (this area has a lot of universities). Even if we were willing to do a long-distance relationship, we're planning to have a kid in the next couple of years, so it wouldn't really work. There is one program, a top program in my field, that is just far enough away that commuting there is not feasible. About once a month I look for ways to make it work, and then curse the state for putting its flagship school in such a relatively remote area (nothing against Amherst, I've been there, I thought it was a great town and that Western Massachusetts is gorgeous in general, but the town is kind of isolated from things like, oh, major highways, or direct commuter bus routes from Boston). That's the only one that really frustrates me, because it's close enough to be tantalizing but not to be reasonable.

You said earlier that you plan to cut ties with your parents once you get your PhD. I wouldn't suggest waiting that long. Your PhD should be funded, and then you won't need money from your parents. I sympathize with the "fake an apology, get by" strategy - ideally, you would be able to get out of the situation altogether, but you are the expert on your own life and your own safety, so I respect your choice of survival tactics. But you also need to consider that a situation like this could come up again - you can fake an apology and get by now, but will you be able to keep it up and keep your parents at bay through the rest of undergrad? What if they force you to come back to their home in the summers by threatening again to cut your funding? Many schools will allow students to be considered financially independent from their parents if the students can document abuse - I know a couple of people who were able to get through undergrad because of this. Do you have/can you get any documentation? Can you talk to the financial aid office and find out if this is an option? If you can get them to consider you financially independent, and give you finaid based on that, your parents will lose their hold on you.

We might be having terminology confusion here. My undergrad school (for instance) had MEng programs where students did a thesis and were sometimes funded (and some of them went on to the PhD). I don't know, in your field, which top universities are which, but as a very general rule of thumb, universities where the graduate school (as in "Graduate School of Arts and Sciences" or "Graduate School of Engineering") has more input into the admissions process of individual departments, tend to be less friendly to students with lower grades but otherwise-good apps. Apply widely, if you don't have geographical or other serious constraints. If you know current grad students at any of your prospective programs, ask them what they know about the admissions process. In general (in STEM fields), my impression is that if you have at least a 3.0 from a strong undergrad program, you are not screwed, in the sense that they won't toss your app based on low GPA alone. You're on the border, but you're there. If you have any useful sub-GPAs (e.g. your in-major GPA, your sci/eng GPA, your GPA from the last two years of college) that are noticeably higher than your overall GPA, you should bring them up in your statement of purpose or elsewhere in your application, because that can help. Also, connections/networks can have huge power. Occasionally someone who likes you will actually be willing to call up a colleague on your behalf, but that's not common - they have to really like you and care about your future, as it's a big favor to you. However, to get into most grad programs, you need three recommendations, and a glowing recommendation from someone that members of the admissions committee know and respect is a huge plus, and asking someone to write a letter for you is a much less drastic favor than asking them to call people up for you. If you can get the director to write you a strong letter of rec, and you apply to those top places where the director has connections, this will be a big help. My MS program is going fine. I'm trying to assemble a thesis committee and put together a proposal right now.

There's certainly a stigma attached to Southerners in other parts of the country (I'm a Southern expat who went off to New England when I started college, so I know about this firsthand). But people know that good universities are everywhere. In my field, two of the top 10 ranked departments are in the South (UT Austin and Georgia Tech), and there are several others in the top 30 or so.

According to Google Maps, I live 7.2 miles from campus, which is an hour on public transit (it requires a 12-minute walk and a transfer between trains, which add on time), and honestly, probably not so very much less by car during heavy traffic hours. At least on the train I can do work or read a book. The commute isn't fun, but my husband and I have a bunch of constraints on where we can live (one of them being "within a reasonable commute of our actual paying jobs" - I live only 1.65 miles from work).

Your GPA is not a killer if the rest of your app is good (good recommendations, good previous research experience, good SOP, good GREs). There may be some schools that count it heavily against you, but there are others that will care little or not at all (including, and in some cases especially, top schools). Since grad apps are fickle, and there may be some places that consider your GPA too low for comfort, I'd say apply for a mix of MS and PhD programs. You may not even have to do much extra work for this - some engineering schools will have a check box on their app that says something like "Yes, I want to be considered for the MS program if I am not accepted to the PhD program." Taking a few non-degree classes will help somewhat (as long you do well), but may not be necessary. I'd try going for MS and PhD admissions first, and only do the non-degree classes if you get shut out. By the way, I had a 2.5 GPA in undergrad, am in a part-time MS program, and am applying for PhD programs this year. There's a whole thread, somewhere, that is mutual encouragement and commiseration for people with undergrad GPAs below 3.0. You're not quite there, but you might find it inspiring anyway, since some of the people who have posted on that thread have gotten into grad programs.

In addition to what everyone else said, fellowships provide you with financial independence. It's easier to get out of, say, an exploitative or abusive situation with an advisor, when the money that you live on doesn't come from your advisor (through an RAship or TAship). And even if your advisor is awesome, a fellowship may give you more latitude in what you work on - if you are being funded by your advisor's grants, you may be restricted to working in the specific topics of those grants. Edited to add: Oh, and it may give you more choice of advisors. Your dream advisor, who supposedly wasn't taking on new grad students, may be more willing to take one on that they don't have to fund (depending on whether they were not taking on new grad students for financial reasons or because their adivising powers are overextended).

Well, yes, arguably none of the places in my "rougher area" category do, though you could debate East Cambridge and Mission Hill. Though I still think it's important to emphasize that "unsafe" in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville is not the same as "unsafe" in some other cities (anymore). There might be specific blocks or something that I'd avoid, but there is no general neighborhood of Boscamberville that I'd be unwilling to walk through alone in daylight. Area 4 is the most "unsafe" area of Cambridge (and I certainly know several people who have been mugged there at night), and it has that big old housing project right along Main Street, but I walked through it (generally right at the edge of the previously-mentioned project), alone, at night, dozens of times when I was an undergrad, without a problem. I have friends, young professionals who make good money, who choose to live in Area 4, because of its proximity to good food, the Red Line, Tech Square/Kendall Square workplaces, and geeky social activities based at the MIT campus. Oh, another rougher area (not as much so as Roxbury/Dorchester, which are the roughest areas that I mentioned), that tends to be relatively cheap: Allston. Lots of students live in Allston. Though, how convenient it is for someone attending school in Cambridge, depends on which Cambridge school you attend (it's pretty convenient to Harvard).

What do you consider affordable? That's going to heavily influence my recommendations. Affordable studios are not easy to find in any case, especially in safe neighborhoods (though I will note that a lot of the "unsafe" neighborhoods of Cambridge and Somerville are less unsafe these days than the bad areas of many other cities). People usually live with housemates or significant others. In the nicer areas of Cambridge and Somerville (Davis Square/Ball Square, Porter Square, Harvard Square, West Cambridge, Strawberry Hill, Neighborhood Nine, maybe Cambridgeport), an apartment shared with others will probably cost $550-$800 per person per month, not including heat or utilities, depending on how big the place is (bigger places with more people sharing tend to be cheaper), how many bathrooms there are (if there's one bathroom for an apartment that holds five or six people, it will probably be cheaper), what condition the place is in (you want to check on this, as some are not very well-maintained), and precisely where it is (Harvard Square will almost certainly cost more, places that are steps to the Red Line are more expensive than places that are a half-mile walk or more). East Arlington also falls into this general category of places. All of these areas have pretty good public transit access; some of them have excellent access. You will have trouble finding a studio for $1000/month in these areas, and possibly trouble finding one for $1200/month. If this sounds too steep for you, Watertown, Waltham, Arlington (other than East Arlington, which I mentioned before), and parts of Boston's Jamaica Plain are all likely to be a little cheaper, still fairly nice, and are still doable by public transit. Possibly also places with lots of immigrants and blue-collar families, like Everett or Revere, but I don't know as much about that area. If you're willing to try a rougher area, you can find cheaper places in Cambridge's Area 4 or East Cambridge, Somerville's Winter Hill, or Boston's Roxbury, Dorchester, or Mission Hill. If your school in Cambridge is MIT, Area 4 and East Cambridge would both put you within easy walking distance of campus. A middle ground might be an area like Cambridge's Union Square (moderate safety level, mediocre public transit but within walking distance of a lot of things, relatively cheap). If you want prices that are much cheaper than I discussed earlier, but still in a nice neighborhood, you'll probably have to go further out and buy a car (which might negate the price difference in housing). You might get lucky and find some place for cheap in Belmont (which is both nice and pretty close in), but my understanding is that Belmont tends to be pricey.

Many of my close friends are not grad students at all. The ones that are are in a variety of fields, mostly STEM fields. Most of my close friends went to the same undergrad institution that I did. I have no close friends in my program (arguably no casual friends either - there are a few that I know and like and have collaborated with, but nobody that I socialize with outside of a school context). A few of my older friends (in the sense of their age, not how long we've been friends) are postdocs, a few are post-PhD industry researchers, and one is now a prof.

In my experience, they help grade the work (or possibly do all of them grading themselves), sometimes give the lecture in an area in which they have special expertise (for instance, if it's a machine learning class, and the TA is doing their dissertation in the area of reinforcement learning, the professor might have them give the lecture on reinforcement learning), hold their own office hours so that students have multiple avenues from which they can seek help, and (this one is obviously a little field-specific) help students with programming difficulties (especially if the class is taught using a programming language that most students don't already know, since it means that they're having to learn the language and the content of the class at the same time).

Here is another example, that I've posted before in similar threads. http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2007/12/writing-to-me.html

This is the same guy who has written a bunch of these pieces, like the Just Don't Go one. I find some of his points ridiculous. TA exploitation is a problem, but I've never understood why TAs teaching a class is presumed to be intrinsically bad. I've had plenty of TAs who were better teachers than most profs, and since they learned the material that they're teaching more recently, they're sometimes more up to date on it or remember it better. And, aren't VAPs the norm in some fields, much like postdocs are in others? How is that an unsuccessful placement? If it doesn't lead to a permanent position (in or out of academia) down the road, that's a problem, but the placement itself is a useful step. I agree strongly with some of his other points (make info about grad programs easily available, stop regarding non-academic jobs as second class, accumulate skills that will make you employable outside of academia in order to avoid exploitation). I think the bit that Strangefox quoted is nonsense. I get the point that the author is trying to make, but he paints with too broad a brush. Plenty of people (like my sister) aim for and start grad school in the humanities with their eyes open and viable plans for a non-academic career if the academic option doesn't work out. And a lot of social and natural sciences already have real non-academic job markets for PhDs (and yes, a PhD can provide an advantage over an MS even in these non-academic settings - I've been working in them without a PhD for four years now, I probably understand how they work better than the author does).