edvolkov

What method of evaluation do you use in your ranking? In my experience all the ratings suck. For example in the computer security field of research about half or more universities from usnews ranking top 20 don't deserve such placement. You should be keen not on the ratings, but on the publications at top conferences in your field, alumni placement. If I had a choice between Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Cornell, Harvard and UCSB which is only top-40 I would definetly choose UCSB, since other universities suck in computer security and UCSB has a very strong lab. I think such situation pertains to other fields as well.

I've heard that SB is much cheaper than UCSB

UCSD and Columbia are very good in Network Security, Purdue has few projects in this area, but they have a great security research center.

I've had a conversation with several grad students from SB - they said that they heard opinions about "depressing" environment but they don't understand such opinions, because it's pretty good there.

Yes, there exists very common and very widespread opinion about bribes in this Univeristy. But that opinion is only about undergraduate school. And who knows, maybe it's wrong, but I don't think so. BTW it is MGIMO parking place http://apikabu.ru/img_preview/535245.jpg (each of these cars worth about 300k dollars) And I agree with previous poster that you should carefully inspect publications at top tier conferences in your field to get the sence of its real reputation. Also - think about living in Moscow - that's really awful nowadays. The public transportation system reminds me about being packed like sardines. And the traffic jams are unbelievable.

Just my 2 cents. Maybe you are talking about Soviet Union, but nowadays the reputation of MGIMO in Russia can be expressed as "A lot of boast and bad education" (in Russian the abbreviation of this phrase is MGIMO). Also it is excellent example that demonstrates the level of corruption in Russia. Of course there exist some smart people, but their percentage is extremely small.

IMO your academic record is the last thing adcom is concerned about. Recommendations, SOP and research experience are the things that really do matter. So I don't thing that's a problem.

Yes, Purdue is the strongest since they have CERIAS. I think their university is second-strongest in this field after CMU. If I find any support in Purdue, I'll definitely accept their offer.

No I hadn't contacted professors at Purdue and I don't know if they given out all admissions. If you are international applicant, don't rely on Purdue too much since their funding situation is very bad. If you have less then 27 points on TOEFL speaking then you cannot get TA, and RA is given very rare for the incoming students.

I have to think about it - I also have offers from Purdue and SUNY SB. Thus, it would be quite difficult to decide.

I used excel table with schools info and folder structure as prev poster. Also I've created another excel table wchich lists the info if school received my GRE or TOEFL scores, transcripts, application status (complete/incomlete), submission status etc

I've just got TA offer.

Same here. I had't received anything too.

In the internet you can say anything

If you will take something more than 95%, then yes. This topic was already discussed here - it's better to devote your time to research

I was contacted by prof from UCI and he said that the results will be out approximately after one month (it was exactly one month ago). I've saw several results from UCI, but two of them are only invitations to visiting weekend and one is informal notification which doesn't seems truthful (because it also says that the results will be out on next week and it was 10 Feb). Also there are too few admits from UCSD (last year there were 10 and now - only 3), thus I think that they will send out more.

It's too early to celebrate - most of Purdue admits are without funding (as in my case). Taking into account that only 50 percents of Purdue incoming students receive financial aid and that no more than 20 percents accept admit without aid (that's my assumption), I evaluate the probability of getting funding in this university as no more than 0,17 - that's extremely small value.

I've got admit yesterday. Three days ago my applyyourself status changed to "recommended for program" I didn't get e-mail like "There has been an error in the application system which sent admission notices for the distance-learning program to all of our applicants. Please disregard this notice. Official admissions decisions will be sent no later than next. ..."

There were no results from UCI, UCSB and only two results from Purdue (if you are talking about PhD degree and not Masters).

I've wrote greasemonkey script that removes masters entries from results. // ==UserScript== // @name thegradcafe remove masters script // @description removes all masters entries on results page // @include http://thegradcafe.com/* // @include http://www.thegradcafe.com/* // ==/UserScript== var tmp = document.getElementsByTagName('tr'); for (i=0;i<tmp.length;i++){ if(!(tmp.innerHTML.match(/<td class="instcol">[^<]*<\/td><td>[^P]*PhD[^<]*<\/td><td>[^<]*<\/td><td>[^<]*<\/td><td class="datecol">[^<]*<\/td>/))){ tmp.parentNode.removeChild(tmp); i = i - 1; }

I've just noticed that in previous years the number of interviews was several times smaller. I guess, it's not in our favour...

jacobwarsx, congrats! Would you mind to share your profile? I'm just curious what kind of people can receive offers from such schools Thanks!

I will try to send inquiry to them about it.

Yes, my status turned to the same. But it looks like that they missed my transcripts.

Yes, I have the same situation. What is your app status? Mine is just "submitted".