Hendersa

I will be starting the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) PhD program at Syracuse University in the Fall 2011 term. I will have a few months of downtime this summer, and I am hoping to use that time to get a jump on studying for the written qualification exam that is coming at the end of the Spring 2012 term. I've done some searching and can't find anything describing the scope of the material on the exam. The department web page states that this information is distributed to the students in the first weeks of the Fall term. Every other university that I applied to provided exams from previous years, old study guides, etc. right on the department websites, but SU doesn't do this. Does anyone have the scope/study guide/syllabus for a previous year's CISE qualification exam that they can share? Has anyone taken it in the past and is willing to provide some advice to the rest of us?

I just called and was told that we would "definitely be notified before close of business tomorrow". As to what time you will get your award/rejection mail during the day, I don't know. It will be before 5 PM East Coast time, though. I also apologized for making the same call that she has probably gotten 500 times today, and she was very good-natured about it. I think those poor folks probably are used to it.

This is incorrect. From http://www.nsfgrfp.o...r_2011_nsf_grfp: "Starting in 2011, the GRFP fellowship cannot be accepted concurrently with another Federal fellowship. In other words, it will not be possible to accept both the GRFP and another Federal fellowship (such as NDSEG), then put the GRFP on reserve for two years and while you receive the other Federal fellowship funding. Please note that this guideline does not include traineeships (such as IGERT or GK-12) or research assistantships."

If both boxes at the top have green checkboxes, you're in the running.

I was under the impression that the contact information was there for the review board to see the number of *.gov and *.mil e-mail addresses, phone numbers in the 202 area code, etc. that there are on your application...

I doubt you were considered, if that was the case. Easy enough to find out, though. Just log in to your application at https://ndseg.asee.org/apply and look at your overall status. If you don't have a green checkmark in both of the boxes in that section, and you don't see "Complete" next to "Required Information" and "Supporting Materials", you weren't considered.

I have not heard anything yet. I feel bad for the CSE graduate secretary, since she is probably getting pestered daily by people about something she has no control over. I am in a troubling spot, since another university that is offering me funding wants an answer from me ASAP (actually, they wanted an answer two weeks ago), so I am going to have to accept the other offer because I have not heard from PSU. If PSU then offers me a spot, I'll have to petition the other university to release my admittance. I'll lose my deposits for the other school, but I don't have a choice.

Well, you might want to stay up and keep checking tonight. I just saw an NSF GRFP acceptance pop up in the Grad Cafe results database a few minutes ago. It says "Just got an NSF notification by e-mail! Can't believe it!"

I am afraid that the wait continues. Still no word back on admission or funding. I suspect that the applications are floating around to the various professors in the department for consideration for research assistantships. So, it is in the hands of the faculty at this point. One thing that I had a friend offer to me as a suggestion is that pending funding cuts may be impacting the process: Governor proposes $21 million cut in Penn State funding I really doubt this, though, since it appears to be focusing on the in-state tuition rates. For a PhD student seeking funding via a TA position not funded by a research grant, I suppose it might be possible that this will have some effect. Doubtful, though. I feel for the folks in Minnesota who are being left high and dry because of similar (and bigger) budget cuts to their universities. Seems to be delays across the board. NSF, NDSEG fellowship, PSU... March is turning out to be a very long month, indeed.

On March 17th, I contacted the graduate secretary again. I have an offer from another university that includes an assistantship, and that offer was given to me back in January. The recruitment coordinator said that she expected to hear back from me whether I'd accept that assistantship offer by "no later than mid-March". When I contacted the graduate secretary at Penn State, I relayed this information and told her that I really needed some indication of a decision from the department, or at least some idea of a timeframe when I'd find out. She got back to me quickly and told me that my application was under review and in the hands of the faculty member who was interested in working with me. She said that she'd follow up on it and get back to me shortly. So far, I have not heard back from her.

Well, I see a few more results in the database today, but they're rejects for the masters program. I guess Penn State's admissions committee is working their way through the stack of applications. Perhaps the results will make it through for all of the PhD applicants within the next few days? Good luck to those that are still waiting!

During my visit to Penn State during their visit weekend, I had several grad students mention to me that acceptances for the PhD computer science program would go out at the start of March. I've seen a few hits in the results database for PSU, but not a flood of them that would suggest that the bulk of the results have gone out. I contacted the graduate secretary last week, and she said that as soon as the admissions committee told her about a decision on my application that she would let me know. Has anyone received an acceptance or rejection that isn't in the results database? Has anyone heard anything from his/her POI or from the CSE department in general? Is there anyone reading who is at PSU now that might have some idea of when the acceptances are going out? The results database indicates that the notifications are going out via e-mail, so I doubt this is a delay of letters in the mail. Maybe they are just running a bit behind when they planned to get everything out?

Alas, I have finally received a rejection e-mail from Cornell. Not to worry though, since I have prepared the proper response: I don't expect to hear anything back. Oh well. Feel free to use this as a template for your own rejections, be it for paper submissions, applications to programs, or even job applications.

I'm in the same boat. Not a peep out of Cornell on my application. I have sent out a few mails requesting information to the "phd" e-mail address for the department, but they have all gone unanswered. I have also called the graduate coordinator a few times, but the phone is never answered. I am afraid that I am looking at a rejection at this point because the results database entries for Cornell's Fall 2011 PhD admits show that admissions and interview requests went out at the start of February. No communication from Cornell about being placed on a waitlist, interviews, or visits. No invitation for a campus visit. On the bright side, no rejections or offers of admittance to the MS program. Does anyone have any insight into the admissions timeframe for Cornell? Has anyone received a rejection from them yet?

They were not. IST programs of study are within the College of Information Sciences and Technology. Computer science (actually "computer science and engineering") falls under the College of Engineering. The list of majors that were invited to this particular event are listed at: http://www.engr.psu....h/programs.aspx

I just attended a visit weekend at Penn State at State College this past weekend (11/12 February) for the PhD computer science program. The event was put on by the school of engineering, so other majors like electrical engineering and mechanical engineering were also covered at the event.

I have not yet received a formal acceptance/rejection from Penn State for the computer science PhD program, but I can tell you what I know. I heard from the CSE graduate students that acceptance notices are sent out in the first week of March. I just returned from Penn State's engineering graduate recruitment weekend. It was on 11/12 February. All of the graduate engineering programs, including computer science, were covered at that event. The invitation that I received for the event arrived to me via e-mail on 21 January. The graduate students that informed me of the decisions being mailed in March gave me that information at the event. Here are some other items that might help you determine where you stand: 1. There were seven students that applied for the computer science PhD program that went to the event, including myself, and somewhere around 70 students overall that attended (including the students applying for electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, etc). I don't know how many CS candidates were actually invited. Four are currently seniors that will be completing their BS in computer science this semester (SUNY Binghamton, University of Rochester, SUNY Buffalo, and a smaller private school near PSU that I can't remember the name of). The other three already have or will be finishing their masters degrees this term. Of the seven of us, three were women and four were men. 2. Of those that have masters degrees, one was in electrical engineering, one was in computer science, and one is an MBA. I am the MBA, but I have about 15 hours of graduate coursework in EE and CS. The fellow with the MS in CS and I have industry experience in computer science-related fields. He has about five years industry experience and I have about twelve years. 3. Only three in the group had any publications: two of the masters students (one being me) and one of the undergrads. I have two CS publications, both conference papers. One conference was in Florida, the other in Japan. Both were papers on brain-computer interfacing for robotics. 4. The graduate students at PSU showing us around told us that we were most likely going to be accepted if we were invited to the recruitment event, since PSU would not pay for our travel expenses and hotel stay if they weren't interested in us. There was also a much smaller turnout for the event than in the previous year (which had 25 or so CS PhD applicants show up). 5. We were shown different labs based upon our research interest areas. Of the seven of us, we had three interested in data mining, one for embedded systems, one for computational methods, one for algorithms/theory (OS thread pooling), and one for distributed systems/networking (Byzantine fault-tolerance - me). I was passed from group to group and saw four of the labs because of the broader applicability of my chosen area (secure networking, scalability for supercomputing, communication among multicore CPUs and FPGA components, etc.). 6. My scores are a 1510 GRE (800Q, 710V), 3.67 undergrad GPA in CS (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), a 4.0 graduate GPA for the MBA (Jacksonville University), and a 4.0 graduate GPA for my EE/CS post-bac coursework (University of North Florida). I am currently under a one-year grant from PSU's Center for Neuroscience, and I visited the CSE department and toured its labs when I visited the campus for a grant review meeting with the Center for Neuroscience last summer. My CS PhD application was completed and submitted to PSU on 14 November 2010. I also applied for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NDSEG Fellowship, but I won't find out about those until April 2011. I mentioned that I applied for those fellowships in my PSU application. 7. The big recruitment push was for the hardware-oriented lab projects, like MDL. Those projects have dozens of students, and funding for more. The grad students told us to seriously consider those projects, since funding was available right away (i.e. research assistantships in the first year) and there were more opportunities for publishing because of the quick evolution of hardware. If your expressed interest in your statement of purpose was hardware-oriented, you are increasing your chances because of the $100+ million in research funding coming into the CSE department largely from hardware-oriented sources like Xilinx and Microsoft Research. That is about it, I think.