PCP

I know some of us have contacted professors at various schools. Have any of you contacted grad students? It seems like they might have a better impression of what its like to attend the place. Anyone? What did you learn?

Well I know Stanford has A.I. game theorists: Yoav Shoham publishes in places like AAAI and AAMAS, and Daphne Koller has done some game theory as well. Berkeley not so much though. And CMU has pretty good game theory in both theory and AI.

Oh, too bad. Waterloo isn't a bad place to stay though. I'm not at Waterloo, but I basically applied everywhere that had a game theory group. I'm more in the theory game-theory community. Its strange, it seems to me that AI researchers study game theory, and theorists study it, and they don't talk to each other or cite each other at all.

Hi Alice, I'm in game theory too. What sorts of things are you interested in? Where are you thinking of going? You said you're at Waterloo, right? What do you mean your professors don't have any connections? I applied there too, and in terms of game theory at least, I know Kate Larson got her PhD at Carnegie Mellon w/ Prof. Sandholm.

Sigh, no word from MIT yet. I guess I was due a rejection.

I had no interview at Berkeley before I was accepted. That being said, from what I know talking to current grad students at these places (the big schools at least), they don't really do multiple rounds of accepts. A place like CMU or Berkeley expects to get a large fraction of the people they admit, and the fraction is pretty consistent from year to year, so they just factor that into the initial acceptance rate. Its hard for schools to do anything else, since they can't make you get back to them before April 15th anyhow.

Bernard: Theory Michigan: Not sure yet -- I'm going to be abroad starting at the end of February, so it would be a bit of a trip. I've visited before though.

Well, Berkeley sent at least two accepts. I got one too.

Ranking departments is a pretty futile exercise, but subfield rankings are particularly stupid. The "theory", group in a department, for example, is often just a handful of people, and new hires, which happen all the time, totally change the makeup of the group. Also, the overall rankings change regularly. Go to archive.org to find old ones. For example: In this ranking, CMU is ranked #4 and Berkeley #1. Go back a few years, and its reversed. Go back more, and you can see it continue to fluctuate. You can also find Stanford and MIT out of the top spot. If the rankings were the same every year, no one would by magazines.

How much does it matter where you go to grad school, do you think? What if you find an advisor who is a great fit somewhere thats not one of the big 4 schools -- should you go, or are you giving up too much by not graduating from a place like CMU or MIT?

Hey longhorn. My stats: 4.0 from ivy, GRE: 790 math, 760 verbal, 6.0 writing. 880 GRE subject, letter writers all supervised research projects (although this only led to 1 paper), various departmental awards. Michigan: Thats funny that Berkeley basically asked you if you'd come if admitted. You'd think a school like that wouldn't have to. Do you think they are having issues with the California budget crisis this year?

Hey guys, I also have been admitted to CMU (computer science department PhD). Awesome! My area is theory. What about you guys? What are your top choice schools? CMU might already be my top choice, but I'm waiting to be convinced by Berkeley or MIT...