michigantrumpet

Good to know. I applied for some minor fellowships at a few schools based on different aspects of my background, but nothing CS specific. Hope I didn't miss anything! Out of the big ones, I only applied to NDSEG. I hadn't finalized my research statement in time for NSF, so applying would have been pointless with so many qualified applicants out there. I don't expect we'll hear anything for another month.

I assume you're talking about Hertz/NSF/NDSEG/NPSC etc. for the other sources? For university ones, are there specific CS ones you're supposed to apply to? I thought they were just part of the funding package you're automatically considered for.

The CSD visit is next week, so those decisions are definitely done. No idea about the rest.

I appreciate that. I agree that admissions can be unpredictable. It's just a little insulting for my admissions to be reduced to complete randomness. Let's just drop it. As far as first-author publications, I guess things are different depending on the area. I stand corrected. In systems/computer architecture, many of the projects can 12-18 months, tens of thousands of lines of code, and week-long simulation runs. I don't think too many undergrads can end up first-author on a project like that, but I could be wrong. It's the same reason most of the potential advisors I've spoken to say to plan on 6+ years for PhD since that's typical for my area at those schools (without a prior MS).

I'm sorry, but demeaning someone else's work is exactly what he/she did. What do you call "just one third-author paper. period."?

I am assuming the poster is referring to me. Being a jerk on a forum where we're all trying to share information and get through the process isn't very helpful. I understand the stress of rejection, believe me. I had a very low admission rate into undergrad music programs (granted I only applied to top 5-7 conservatories/universities for my instrument). I even got three rejections on the same day. My current career trajectory is in large part due to my relative lack of professional success in music. You live and learn. Perhaps projecting maturity in the LORs and essay is one important criterion that kept your app from being "frickin impeccable" after all. As far my having just one third-author paper, I'll sacrifice a bit of anonymity for the sake of making my point. The conference was the IEEE/ACM Int'l Symp on Microarchitecture (MICRO), which is one of the top two architecture conferences. The undergrads who have multiple first-author papers show great initiative, but I guarantee the publications are not at conferences anywhere near this calibre. The project I worked on took well over a year to complete, despite having 3 grad students, 2 undergrads, and 3 faculty members working on it. I implemented an entire x86 emulator for the project, while simultaneously taking the hardest senior design course in the department. Our results were crap until about 2 weeks before submission, when an observation and fix I personally came up with saved the paper. I also presented a poster (I guess you could say first-author) on this project at the Grad Symposium here. The process I went through on this paper has a lot more to say about research potential than the objective statistic of only having one publication, and being third-author at that. I think my recommendations would have been just as strong after that experience had our paper been rejected (which it almost was). I should also mention that my two recommenders are very well known in the architecture community, so their comments came with a good deal of credibility. Since publishing that paper, I have worked on two other projects for the same professors, and my hard work and insights have given them a lot to write about. It's really hard to strike a balance on these forums when trying to convey the merits of your application without sounding pompous. I apologize if I went too far. Best of luck to my colleagues still waiting to hear from places!

You're absolutely right. It's hard to judge your own essay, so nobody lists "killer essay" as part of their profile. I assume everyone thinks they have a great essay. If you don't, then you should probably work on it until you think you do have one! I got some helpful comments from a couple of my recommenders when I gave them an early draft. Definitely worth it.

Will do. UCLA and UCSD both conflict with other visits, unfortunately. Maybe somebody else will post their experiences at those visits.

I think you guys need to back off a little. Most schools overaccept slightly, and rushing our decisions won't significantly increase your chances of being accepted. It's only mid-February. If we haven't decided in early April yet, then you can start pestering us Picking the right school/advisor is a bigger deal than just arbitrarily choosing the one you had the highest preconceived notion about. You only get an overall picture after visiting and talking with current students and faculty. Sometimes the one professor you really wanted to work with at a school ends up being a real jerk. You really don't know until you visit. After the visits are over, I agree that delaying your decision is a little pointless.

That document is the best resource out there for how to apply to grad school in CS. I based my entire application process on it. I was totally clueless until I read that the first time...

Someone should really graph Semester GPA vs. Percentage of Semester Remaining When Discovering Grad Cafe...

Couldn't you leave CUNY after the MS portion and apply again for PhD?

I just got a congratulatory e-mail from CSAIL that made it sound like I should have already received an e-mail from the department. Maybe some of their area II e-mails haven't gone out or got lost. Weird...

It's a small world, so you definitely don't want to burn any bridges. If you do e-mail the professor, I would keep it professional and avoid appearing desperate. Best of luck!

CMU CSD/ECE maybe 3 weeks ago; Berkeley last week Check out the "CS applicants where are you" thread This is true. I applied to the standard CS PhD program. A lot of the specialties have not notified to my knowledge. Berkeley, possibly. CMU, depends on the program. IMHO, calling is in bad form, yes. They're not going to tell you anything useful over the phone anyway. If you've had prior contact with a specific professor, you can inquire with them.

They still haven't updated mine, so I don't think so.

UMich is open... MLK is the only holiday second semester. No snow days either... no matter what! There's nothing on the MIT academic calendar about a day off.

Guess it's tomorrow or bust then

Man I hope not! I didn't get acceptances to Stanford or Berkeley until 2-3 days after people started posting admissions to my area. So... keep up the hope until about Friday afternoon I'd say. I guess I'm due for a rejection, though... Looks like I was right about admissions coming out earlier... despite those 10 or so obnoxious survey postings insisting that all the acceptances must have been BS.

I wouldn't be too sure. A lot of people have gotten personal acceptances from potential advisors (even those with whom they had no prior contact) before official notifications go out. I found out about Stanford and UW from professors, rather than the department. I predict a lot of acceptances will come out between now and the 17th. Of course, I could be way off. Everyone should really stop bugging the admissions office...

What does your online decision status show? It might take them longer to process international students... :?:

Basically, the caching scheme we were using was horribly inefficient. I observed that about 99% of our cache was being wasted by data that could not possibly still be relevant for reasons specific to the paper. So, by auto-evicting those now-unnecessary cache lines prior to trying a standard eviction policy (LRU, etc.), our cache efficiency increased two orders of magnitude.

My UG research wasn't actually through a formal program (UROP, etc.). In the middle of junior year, I approached a professor whose class I did well in to discuss grad school possibilities. She talked about some of her ongoing projects and one new one that I was really interested in. I did the programming grunt work for a few months to set up the simulation framework (and reading papers, Intel x86 manuals >_<, etc) for that project. As we got close to the submission deadline (top architecture conference), our results were pretty crappy. I made an observation and suggested a new solution that improved our results 100X just in time to submit, which made the two professors on the project very happy. It also got me put on the paper as third author (behind two grad students). They hired me for the summer to continue working on the next phase of the project, and I'm still working for them. The grad students in the lab have done a great job of introducing me and a couple of other undergrads to the research process, so I definitely have them to thank, too. That may be a long answer to a relatively simple question. I also did a term research project for a grad-level class I took with one of the professors on that original project, so that gave him more material to write about. Hope that answers your question! Again, good luck to everyone!

I'm going to all the visits I can. Right now, I don't think there are any conflicts. I'll try to keep an open mind everywhere and keep good notes about each program... then decide. For undergrad I picked Michigan over Berkeley (just as an example... Berkeley is one of my top choices this time), so "fit" is more important to me than rankings. My professor told me to keep all my options open, which I think is very good advice. That's why they give you until April 15!

Impressive stats, nebulasam! How did you find out about the admission rates for this year? I agree with tedjj! You must have been one of the elusive funded MS students (as Stanford?). I posted my profile earlier on page 3 of this thread. My numbers are definitely not a strong as yours, but I made up for it with my LORs. Two well-known architecture profs who co-authored my top conference paper. Several professors who have called me from various schools have mentioned the paper specifically.