Amogh

Virginia Tech is a lot easier to get into than UNC Chapel Hill for sure. For Masters or for a PhD.

@Nimmott: Take the postbac and then do apply for a masters since your reasons for doing so seem solid. Don't worry about being an older person on campus, you bring a different perspective than the rest of us so adcomm's will consider that. Also your sop for admission should tell your story of why now really well and I think your age and experience can actually be made to work to your benefit. A career shift is a great thing to go back to school for. All the best. Regarding the PhD: Unless you'v saved a ton of money and don't mind spending it now to make yourself comfortable, IMHO you are a little too old for a rigorous PhD programme because you have to go back to living so cheap. If you can afford to make yourself comfortable though, I think you should go for it, if not for anything else to get rid of that ABD that seems to be nagging at you. Of course the academic preparation you would have to do to be competitive is going to be quite crazy If you finish your masters degree I don't see any reason why you should have a dip in salary. Your experience in technical writing will still count vs a fresh graduate student with lil-to-no experience.

@kobeallen I think you should consider the entire top 50 and choose 15 schools doing great work in Databases and apply to those instead of going just on the rankings. If your papers get admitted, your chances of getting in will skyrocket. Don't think too much about the master's degree reducing your chances. professors will bat for a good student if they are impressed no matter what the other credentials are. So get good Letters and apply and keep your fingers crossed .

@nabusman You could try studying for the CS gre and do well on it. That will help you show admissions that you can do well in CS. They may give you a conditional admit. But your MBA presents a major roadblock. Most every university has a policy of not admitting some1 with a masters degree.

Erm Why are you attaining a PhD? Don't mean to sound rude but you don't seem to have any idea whatsoever of why you want a PhD. It isn't worth the commitment if you haven't even selected an area of interest that too after 6 years of computer science education from top universities. Stop and think of why you want to apply for further education.

First things first: Why do you want a Graduate degree? Everything depends on this. Read some of these articles: Professor Matt's advice Advice compiled by Michael Ernst http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf

Hey, IMHO I think you should go ahead and take thouse pre-requisites through community college or online and then apply for Fall 2013. However, I think that in this one year, you should also try gaining some more research experience. A publication isn't all that important as the development of a clear plan of what you want from the graduate degree. You do have a good chance of admission. Don't worry too much and go for it. Cheers:D

Hey, Since you are interested in operating systems work(me too! quite rare. hard finding people these days), try the following places Vrije University (Andy Tenenbaum is here! heard of minix?) Suny Stony Brook (quite active OS group file systems and all.) UNC-CH (not exactly OS work but realtime systems work that includes playing with kernels. Good value for a degree from here) There are more but I can't remember them off the top of my head. Do keep looking though and post here if you find anyone.

head code monkey. love it

To qoute MIT's EECS Dept(http://www.eecs.mit.edu/ug/brief-guide.html#eng):

@eigen: That's the spirit . hehe. but seriously that is really sad and inconsiderate of your labmates.

Hey, You seem to be terribly confused! Do you want to specialize in SE, UI or Animation? You seem to want to do everything. Cheers

@soniat erm wrong thread?

I agree with Newms. You say that you have done 3 independant research projects and 1 REU that's really awesome.

I say start worrying if it is lower than say 50% but otherwise it should be fine. I can think of several programs where a lot of the people dropped out to start up companies and just never went back.

Well said. ..

I see.. interesting.. They are finally waking up to the plight of us poor students eh?

The issue with this guy is that he thinks it's criminal that universities charge for MS degrees. I mean those degrees are essentially cash cows for both the university and the recipients. lol.

Oooh.. that is hard. Well, since it is a departmental policy I don't really think you can do much about it. He could try talking to them to give him a check a little earlier but i don't think they'll budge. Must be having some sort of fiscal disruption or something. Eitherways u guys have saved up like 5000 bucks. u should be able to survive till the first stipend check. Sure you have moved to a new place and everything but given your situation you could just put off buying all the necessary but not urgent stuff like furniture and decorative items and entertainment for a while (or substitute them with cheap stuff from craigslist if required) and i'm quite sure you'll be able to sail through the storm. The largest chunk of your savings will of course go for the rent deposit. So plan accordingly and i'm quite sure you guys can manage till midway through october atleast. Keep a creditcard handy for emergencies and don't spend on frivolous things and you'll be fine.

Bang on i'd say. Bang on.

Ah that makes sense especially considering that bank deposits and for utilities are things people tend to overlook while budgeting. @Ninevah i meant spending that much in moving in and setting up charges not on a monthly basis. on essentially all the things newms listed.

Good conversation we'v got going here. I think that people are too focused on studying, getting their degrees and their high paying jobs. They miss the more important things. the little things that pay off more in the long run.. .. but lets not take it astray. This is actually a tendency followed by any ethnicity anywhere in the world. Like how settlements are usually divided based on ethnicity. Interesting how we humans so consciously divide ourselves into us and them.. not good.. not good at all.. leads to a lot of social tension.

Thanx..