csApplicant

Thanks - you're right that I'm afraid to say something for fear of making it worse, but I simply cannot live under this pressure anymore. I'll talk with him and see what happens. I guess if I don't speak up he'll think he can keep getting away with it, too.

I came to the school I'm at because my advisor is very famous and has had a very industrious career. I've been struggling with my classes and my advisor has been very rude to me lately as a result. The project ideas he comes up with are horribly embarrassing - projects I'd die of embarrassment if my name were on them. But not only that, he gets angry at me every week when we discuss the projects. He barks, "Why are you doing it that way?" and gets very angry. He forgets that he TOLD me to do it that way. Sometimes we do have great discussions, but it appears that the following week he completely forgets and gets angry at what I am doing. Sometimes, after I leave, I write my ideas down and send them to him via email. This helps us to get on the same page, but he still forgets the content of the emails in the following weeks. He doesn't treat any of his other students like this. I don't know what to do and dread working on the projects. I leave our weekly meetings depressed and wanting to drop out of the program. Somewhere, subconsciously, he's decided I'm a bad student or something. There are many areas in which I am talented, but he always fails to see that. What should I do? I'm tired of living like this... Does anyone have a similar story? Any words of wisdom? Advice? I cannot leave without my PhD now that I've worked this hard for this long. I just simply cannot. But I cannot get a paper out because whenever I have ideas or try to make movement toward a paper, he won't let me proceed. Some of the ideas come out in similar publications by other researchers at a later date so my ideas cannot be that off base.... Thanks.

yes, there is an april 15th deadline, but let's not forget we want to not step on anyone's toes because we will be working with them. what i would do is call up the 2nd school and tell them as nicely as you can that you have another offer pending from another school in which they have offered you full funding and you would like to know when you can expect to hear about the funding so you can make an informed decision. if the school wants you bad enough, they'll make decisions FAST. keep in mind, be careful to state your reasons for knowing because it is true. schools are not alloweed to make you reply by the end of this month. that is 100% against the rules and they could get in trouble for that.

does anyone know anything about cmu's Software Engineering Institute?

how did the school screw you? are they allowed to do that? don't they have to give you the offer they said they would give you? please explain.

anyone have any thoughts on jhu's information security institute? how strong is the program?

maximKat. yes, i would. B-O-R-I-N-G. in the middle of nowhere and boring is my opinion. that is why i did not apply there.

baltimore? that one is kind of a crap shoot. no one seems to have any information about baltimore.

help! chicago, baltimore, new york city, ann arbor, san diego or seattle????? please explain why? could you also tell me which one (s) are at top and which one(s) would be at the bottom and why?

Will the economy affect your decision as to which school you will decide to go to? I'm asking this in CS and not other forums because I wanted to get other CS people's views. For instance, the state of California is a big mess right now. Will this affect funding at state schools in CA? Even Berkeley? Not to mention the state of Michigan, whose economy is hurting quite a bit due to the automotive industry doing poorly. Major state schools relied on the automative industry. How about Stanford? Their business school had layoffs because they rely so much on donors, who aren't contributing like they used to. Will this affect all of Stanford? It surely must. How about schools where advisors fund you (versus the school itself)? Given the option of full-funding by a school or full-funding by a professor's grants, would you make a decision solely based upon this? I don't think our government would let our top universities fall into bankruptcy, so well-known schools are probably safe as far as all around funding and security... But those whose professor's fund them through grants - well, that could be a different story entirely. One could find himself without funding mid-way through his studies. I think this is one of the harder years to apply to graduate school because since budgets are tight, and thus, so are acceptances. But what I want to know is - will you base your decision upon monetary security? How seriously will you consider this?

i was JUST coming here to ask that. what's up with penn. anyone? strangely quiet over there. i think it's bad news, however, to not have gotten an interview. i'm not sure i'd want to go to penn. i'd like to be accepted, but that area doesn't particularly appeal to me.

WHERE is not important. the point is that succumbing to despair so early will make one miserable. it just takes one accept to change everything and it's too early to tell what's going to happen. by the way, i'm not sure why everyone's freaking out about hearing from MIT. we all pretty much know it's a rejection, so i've realized there's no point in getting anxious. this one is a no-brainer for me. of course, let me add, that i will probably oscillate between being super cool about it and then freaking out... i think mit should sent out reject letters to everyone and then do a backwards admit for the 1-3 people in each specialty everyone should expect to get rejected from mit.

i just got an acceptance from a school everyone had seemed to already have heard from (a good one that i am happy about!!!). with aid, obviously. the only reason why i am posting this is to remind those feeling down that it's not over until the reject letter comes in. good luck!

for five days i have done nothing but side on thegradcafe.com. it's been driving me crazy. seeing the crazy credentials of some people... and there are fewer spots than ever right now. i don't want to be ungrateful. i'm glad i got accepted to the schools i did, so i should just be happy and accept already. i was happy because today was the first day since i found this site that i was able to do some schoolwork and get my focus back on. schools really should inform people uniformly about acceptance or rejection -in fact, i think it's more merciful to tell students we are on the waitlist than give us no word. just my two cents.

i don't think it's impolite. i think it's annoying as hell to the schools, but you're just a person on the phone and they don't associate you with your application - as in, you're either in or not and their decision is not going to change based upon a phone call. if it's that bad, just call.

is he in new york? pending means they are still considering him, as i know quite a few people that got rejects from columbia already. i also know a few people that got accepted and that is not how they did it. those people get interviews and they got accepted shortly thereafter.

this is what i just read somewhere: Some departments won't make their final decisions until very late in the game, sometimes as late as when the NSF awards have been announced (usually around April 1). Only when they make their final decisions will most departments process the rejections. So not hearing from a department by mid-March doesn't mean that you've been rejected, but it's not exactly a "no news is good news" situation. from : http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rap/grads.html i guess that's why so many programs don't send out rejections right away. if you get rejected from a department but win an nsf, will they take you?

i asked this elsewhere but no one answered. anyone have any clues?: what i want to know is... so many schools made their offers in january and the first few days of february this year. only jhu and penn are lagging behind (from the schools i'm tracking). anyone know why they started so early? last year cmu made offers mid february and now it looks like they were making offers in january.

umich is located in a way cool area. maryland? i don't know about that. plus, umich is an all around very highly regarded school - grad, undergrad, whatever.

probably because of its location. uiuc is a GREAT school but it's in the middle of nowhere in the midwest. you can actually smell the manure from the fields if you are outside some of the dorms. i kid you not. that's just my two cents. what i want to know is... so many schools made their offers in january and the first few days of february this year. only jhu and penn are lagging behind (from the schools i'm tracking). anyone know why they started so early? last year cmu made offers mid february and now it looks like they were making offers in january.

how come no one ever mentions the essay? maybe that person wrote a killer essay. it's odd no one wrote that or even considers it. the schools i interviewed with said the essays were huge.

my fear was - when they asked waht schools i was applying to, i named top 10. they seemed pleased with that. i didn't get accepted to top 10, nor interview with top 10. so really the question was what do you say when you're asked what schools you talked to/got accepted to and none of them were the top 10? sorry if i wasn't clear. i'd really not like to announce that i didn't get any good offers or that i didn't get accepted to top 10, especially since this particular school is right up there with top 10? i know it's not a big deal, but there's a specific reason i asked this question, which i'm not willing to disclose on here.

i think it's good news that you haven't heard from berkeley and stanford - sort of. it's better than bad news. MIT - most people haven't heard from them. i was surprised to see rejects on the results page , but only just a few of them. what are your stats? i wish i had an almost-fellowship opportunity to dangle in front of a school's face.

LostInTranslation - I think you are absolutely right. Why WOULDN'T people emphasize GPAs? It's ridiculous to say it's not emphasized. During my interviews, I was told under a certain GPA (with considering improvement), immediately applications were dumped. GPA definitely matters.

cumulative 2.80 here. i got accepted to a few top 20 schools. i am fully funded. my last two years i maintained pretty much a 4.0 and it was at a different school. look, this is the way i see it. the stuffy schools will dump my app in the trash because i'm not an ideal student and i didn't win any major prizes. but schools that really looked at my application noticed the other accomplishments on my application. i KNEW i would get dumped immediately from princeton, yale, harvard, stanford, mit, penn. i felt they are looking for the cookie cutter applicant. plus, some of them lumped my grades all into one category - all my schools for one gpa instead of looking at each institution separately- so they probably only saw my 2.80 and never took the time to see my 4.0. plus, it probably doesn't bode well for them to have 2.80-ers at their school, particularly so because they can choose whoever the hell they want. i don't find those five schools to be diverse at all. however, i knew that other schools would give me a chance and remember that i paid a LOT of money to apply to their damned schools. i really appreciate those schools that really looked at my application. those are the schools i would want to be at anyway. just my two cents.