barber5

I can't tell, last year they called a few people on a Sunday and then sent out some email invites later in the week. Now did they send email invites to people they tried to call and couldn't reach? I do not know, but my phone did not ring yesterday :/

Congratulations! Now I begin obsessively checking my phone

I felt the exact same way, but I managed to do all 3 in a class today, so I guess not.

I can't be sure, but after talking to some people who have been making admissions decisions in my department (granted the research group I was talking to is unusually prolific) I think that a first author paper is weighted quite a bit higher. At the same time, the quality of the conference can also have a large effect.

To a fairly large extent in a lot of engineering disciplines GRE doesn't matter much at all and a reasonably high GPA is a necessary but nowhere near sufficient for getting into the top 5 or so. Even though it's specifically for CS, you might want to read this so you can get an idea that a lot of programs (PhD in CS in particular, but this must generalize to some degree) are looking more for solid recommendations (not "this person got a 100 in my class") and other evidence of being able to do research.

I started the night before because I knew it didn't really matter for the programs I was applying for

I've talked to some people I was already in contact with before the admissions process, but I have not gotten any new emails form SOP people or emails from people I had talked to specifically referring to admissions.

Congrats, I haven't heard anything back from Penn about the PhD program yet, but as far as I know they've only informed a couple of master's applicants. All I can say specifically about machine learning at Penn is that Michael Kearns is there and he's a very big name in machine learning. They are also especially well regarded for what they do with Natural Language Processing if that is an area that interests you. I'm sure there's much more to it than that, but that's what I know about the department.

I don't imagine they are completely done sending admits, but I suppose it is possible On the other hand, I did get an email today talking about the visit day, which is February 24-26th.

Human Dynamics is my first choice by a long shot, but also Macro Connections and Object-based Media

shashakoe, it might not last this final semester: this will be the semester of taking classes I didn't want to take and have put off. scyrus, congrats. From your signature it looks like you're in HCI? Which groups did you apply to at the Media Lab? newms, No word yet on anything like visiting.

I'm presently an undergrad at UIUC and had gotten an early admit notice from them back in September but today I received official notification along with funding information. Full tuition and partial fee waiver + insurance + 25k stipend + 5k CS Excellence Fellowship for a year I'm working in data mining and specifically information/social networks. I've also applied to CMU, Stanford, MIT's media lab, Cornell, and Penn Stats: 4.0 / 800Q / 640V / 5.5 A / Couple of years research 1 journal publication, 2 conference publications under review, and 1 conference demo in prep -- all as coauthors