Bleu

I think that one of the facts that puts some Asian universities top in this ranking is not considering the size of the department. It's obvious that a university with a lot of profs and PhD's and post docs generates a lot of publication, which can cover their even low quality in the final ranking score. But by considering criteria like publishing in Science/Nature or winning Turing award, a ranking like ARWU eliminates these less known schools from being ranked among top schools. This criterion has its own drawbacks too, for example a university having a prof who has won a prize some while ago would rank higher than a much better school which lacks such prize winner.

I have seen another ranking which relies merely on research publications. It claims to be more reliable than the above rankings. It also has a CS specific ranking among other field and subject specific ones. Another interesting thing about it is that unlike other rankings, it covers 300 universities in its subject specific rankings. Here's the link: http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2010/homepage

In fact, for some universities like Toronto, or maybe UBC, there's no need to contact professors before the deadline. They have admission committees who are in charge of admitting or rejecting, and in such schools professors usually don't respond to email inquiries from prospective students. But in some others which are more professor oriented than committee oriented, like Waterloo, McGill, Alberta, or Queen's, it's better to contact your POIs before the deadline. These are the universities which ask for the name of potential supervisors in their application forms. As I have experienced, if some professor is interested in taking a student, he/she kinda contacts the student to know more about their research interests, characteristics, .... This not however a fixed rule and highly depends on the university and POI.

In my opinion, if you are contacting a new professor whom you have not contacted before, write a cover letter, and attach your resume, also asking for his/her open positions. Don't forget to remind them that you have officially applied, since if they feel you are only evaluating your chances for admission, they will be unlikely to respond. In case of professors you have contacted before, send them your updated resume, and tell them about your new status there. It's possible that they have forgotten to review your application.

Yes, because of being in North America, and specially near California. By the way, if you consider ARWU, ETH is only slightly higher than UBC, and I personally believe that the best place to study computer science, besides US, is Canada, even though there are a couple of very good schools in some European countries. I know many professors from Switzerland, and mostly graduated from ETH, who are now at Canadian universities, but I don't think there's the opposite case too. Why a German professor who got her PhD from ETH has come to McGill, and didn't stay in Europe? I also know professors at Waterloo. Many has also come to US. I think it's mostly because of better job opportunities in North America.

If I were you, and everything specially funding was the same, I would go for UBC because of its location, and better potential job opportunities.

I contacted the grad coordinator again, and asked her about contacting potential supervisors. Here's her response: "You may if you wish or you can let it keep circulating. It is up to you. This may help generate some interest." So, I think it's better to contact professors again, because there isn't anything to lose!

Yes I contacted them but got no answer. I think it's a good idea to contact them again, and remind them of my new status there.

Thanks for your answer. They have a group called CrySP, which I am very interested in, but in the group page and member pages, they have clearly mentioned that they do not like to be contacted directly, and the only way should be sending an email to some specific group email address. I have seen a couple of other professors in other universities who have explicitly said they do not like to be contacted directly. Do you have any solutions for these cases? Waterloo is one of my top choices specially because of their strong DB and security groups (at least in Canada)

Hi everybody, I have applied to PhD CS at UWaterloo, among a couple of other Canadian schools. Since I have not got any status changes since the date of application submission, I contacted them, and they said: " ... Your file has been reviewed and approved for circulation. At this time, a supervisor has not been found. There has been no decision regarding your application. We do not have a set date on which decisions are made ..." Now my question is that should I contact potential supervisors again at this time? I had contacted a few before the deadline, and some said they were not going to take any new students, some did not answered. Do you have any suggestions?

Yes, there have been a couple of Masters decisions in the last two days. It seems that they have finally woken up! But I don't think that they will be able to finalize all the applications even by the end of April.

My status in Minerva has changed to "Ready For Review" since a few weeks ago! It seems that they have finally decided to review the applications! I really don't expect any news from them this month.

Your googling has been right, since they are generally the top two universities in Canada. However, that's not the case in computer science, as you may have found out till now, I mean for McGill, to which I have applied too. I have also applied to Queen's, and its small city is not important for me because it's a very beautiful city, and because of being small, living costs are less. Besides that, I am from a very crowded city, so I prefer to live in a small city like Kingston for a few years. Hope to hear good news from these two universities soon.

Maybe you're right, but are you sure whether they have such a waiting list? By the way, it's very interesting that you have only applied to these two schools, since there are a couple of other top ones between these two, such as UBC, Waterloo, and Alberta.

I am still waiting for my rejection! It seems that they were right about saying that most decisions will be made till mid March.

Do you know how many students have applied for grad CS, and how many seats they have? Do you think there's more than 1000 applicants?

I don't think that's true. Some American schools make acceptances first, and then send out all the rejections. But I think that's not the case for all the schools specially Canadian ones. However, the bad thing about UofT is that there's no online status, and they don't answers emails anymore.

I received an email from McGill about a month ago stating that all of my materials were missing! I emailed them several times, and got no answer. Finally, I called them, and talked to the grad secretary and was able to get her confirmation that all of my supporting documents have been received. As I have seen myself, and heard from some people, their admission process is messy, and I don't think there is something like an admission committee. I asked the grad secretary about the approximate decision dates, she told me that it depends on whether my selected professors had time to review my file or not! I don't think they make any decisions in March.

I've also applied for PhD CS at UofT. The status of my TOEFL, GRE and Transcripts is still unchecked, and documents pending in the grad app, which the last one is apparently normal. I emailed them a couple of times, but only got an automatic response. Before the deadline, they responded to my emails very quickly, even withing 2-3 hours, but after the deadline, I didn't hear from them anymore. I have applied for a couple of other Canadian schools, and my status in none of them has changed since the deadlines!

Congrats for being admitted to the best Canadian CS and U Michigan. I am not sure, but according to their website if you were told to pay the domestic tuition fee, it was $6,621 for the 2010-11 year. You can check this out using this link: UofT Tuition Fees As far as I know, unlike American schools, for Canadian universities you should deduct the tuition fee from the funding, but the amount of tuition is much less in Canada.

I have also applied for PhD CS, and have not received acceptance or rejection till this moment. They have not even updated the status of my TOEFL and GRE scores in the DCS grad app. However, according to their website, they should finish making decisions by the end of March.

I have applied for all the top Canadian universities, and UofT is the only school that I didn't get any answers from its professors. About UBC, the interesting fact is that they comsider themselves much higher than their real standing among CS schools. I was reviewing the website of one of their faculty, and he had written "I am extremely unlikely to take on new PhD students from outside UBC unless I am already familiar with their publications from conferences that I attend"! So if you were graduated from Stanford, but he had not seen you anywhere, he would to accept you! They also admit many qualified students from outside US and Canada, to their PhD track program instead of direct PhD. They do not review GRE scores, and in general, they are somehow special. According to Endowment/Student, Queen's is the top Canadian university, at least until recently. But, their CS grad program is maybe 5th-7th there.

Yes, I have an MS already. UBC has a program called PhD track MSc, do you know about it? It seems they admit many applicants who already have MS to this program instead of their direct PhD.

The interesting thing about Waterloo is that they admit students for PhD three times a year, Fall, Winter and Spring! And, they also have a lot of faculty. About Queen's, I do not agree that it is rated among universities like Carleton and Simon Fraser. Their school size is not that large, but research budget/faculty is pretty good. They say that they are fifth in Canada. My problem is that I have applied only for these schools, and I doubt whether it would better to apply for Western Ontario, Calgary, or McMaster instead of Queen's. For some reason, I have only applied to Canadian schools.

Would somebody rate the following Canadian schools according to their PhD program in computer science? UofT, UBC, Waterloo, Queen's, Alberta, McGill