michigantrumpet

+2

As far as I know, offers are only contingent upon graduation. I would assume that getting arrested or caught cheating would jeopardize your admission, but I don't think bad grades do. Last year, we were only required to submit a final transcript to the university to prove that we graduated. I don't think I ever had to submit a final transcript to the department, which is of course where graduate admissions decisions are made. That being said, slacking off is always a bad idea EDIT: your formal funding letter should list the details. If it doesn't say anything about spring grades, I'd say you're in the clear. Most offers dictate that funding after the first year is contingent upon satisfactory progress in your program, which is a subjective measure. I guess if you really pissed someone off, they could look back at your undergrad grades and say you're not making satisfactory progress.... but that seems like a big stretch.

Are they giving out ratings sheets as NSF did?

If you log into your application status page, it now says: Posted April 7, 2010: All students with completed Office of Science Graduate Fellowship applications will receive an email by April 15, 2010 notifying them of their final status for this year. Haven't gotten a call... oh well! Congrats to everyone who did! NSF it is :-)

IT'S UP!!!!! LOG IN TO SEE RESULTS!!!!

I'll stop lurking and put my CS knowledge to good use. Here's a shellscript to check the site every 15 seconds and start beeping continuously when it goes back up to get your attention... modify it as you like. #!/bin/sh while [ true ]; do curl -f https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then break; fi sleep 15 done while [ true ]; do echo "\a" done

Don't voluntarily put yourself at a disadvantage. The test is horrible and I would never want to study for and take it again, BUT, you should take it. Everyone should take it. You'll probably need to study for a few months and then sit there for three hours and answer the questions. Don't get me wrong, I think the ETS is a horrible and evil company (NOT a non-profit) and should be run out of business. However, that's the system and we all have to work within it at the moment. I only did marginally well (75th %-ile), but that was good enough everywhere coming from a reputable program (which GTech is) with well-known recommenders. Think of it this way, if you don't take the subject test and you end up unhappy with your results this time next year, you'll wish you had taken it. Besides, you might actually learn something studying! :shock: I know I did. Just my two cents...

I withdrew and beat them to the punch. They never replied to my e-mail, but they must have gotten it since I didn't get the "duh" e-mail. Whatever, CalTech.

hahahhahahahah You do realize that's what's gonna come up when you google him pretty soon ;-) And gaaaah. Just send out the e-mails already!

My understanding is that stipends are pretty much standardized within a department. You might be able to push for a fellowship or something if those come with higher stipends at that school. If you ask me, just be happy with your offers as-is... this isn't a job search.

Yeah, and your profile says Mechanical Engineering. This is the Computer Science forum... thanks but no thanks.

We had an interesting talk tonight with the head of EECS admissions at MIT. He's one of my potential advisors here, so we were at the same table. He said they generally spent 20-30 minutes on each application until they narrowed it down to the top 100. Then they literally spent hours on each app, downloaded the papers we listed in our app, and even looked at the project source code if we had it available for download O_O (luckily, we didn't). He said the GRE is absolutely pointless and a waste of money, which is why they don't require it. He's even been trying to get MIT to lower or eliminate the application fee. Just thought I'd share!

It was prolly a missing transcript or something... he said completed not submitted.

It is low, yes. Part of the reason CMU CSD has to keep its enrollment so low relative to the number of faculty members is their perpetual funding guarantee. Their approach is a bit communist... some of the professors' money gets pooled so that if a given professor is low on funds for a semester or two, they don't have to drop students, projects, etc. This safety net limits the number of students. It's weird... CMU feels both big and small. In terms of the diversity of projects, it's huge, but 2.2 students per faculty is really small. A LOT of the students are co-advised too, in the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration. I would imagine that it is a little risky, but CMU has been doing this for years, so their estimates must be pretty accurate. They hope for 26, which I assume means they have funding for a few more. I think they also assume that people who get into CMU also get into a few of the other top schools. So if you assume 75+% of the people who got into one of the top 4 schools got into at least one other one, the numbers start to average out. As far as international students coming, there were a couple IIT students (one from Bombay, and one from another campus I can't remember off the top of my head) and one South Korean student. Visa permitting, you should really try to visit!

Just finished with the Carnegie Mellon CSD/ECE visits. I was supposed to split my time between the two, but the scheduling was such that I missed most of ECE. So, everything I say below is about CSD specifically, not other SCS programs or ECE. Overall, I was extremely impressed with everything! There's a real philosophy here on collaboration, open doors, and grad students being considered a valuable and scarce resource. Every grad course is pass/fail so that you focus on research, not GPA. There are no quals. You're guaranteed funding for AS LONG AS IT TAKES by the department, not individual faculty members. There are never issues of specific projects or professors not having funding and having to do research that you didn't want to do. The new Gates building should be open over the summer (I have my doubts), and it's gonna be really cool. I thought Pittsburgh was gonna be terrible, but it's a decent city! The residential areas are very nice, and I'm strongly considering accepting my offer! Deciding in a few weeks could prove difficult... stay tuned for more visit reactions. Here are some admissions stats that are probably useful on these boards: Applicants: ~1500 Admitted: ~70 Visited: 53 Target number of incoming students: 26 Current PhD students in CSD: 177 Current MS students in CSD: 9 Faculty members in CSD: ~80