belowthree

I don't know if this is field specific, but from what I've seen in mine there's no way they'd prevent a fellowship student from TAing if they wanted to. There's just no way at all a fellowship can be a bad thing from what I've seen. They may not guarantee you a consistent TA slot for the next several years, but at least the department I'm in always has extra TA positions around and can always slide students who want teaching experience into TA gigs. Professors in my department give these things to undergrads sometimes... there's no way you're not going to get them as a grad student on a fellowship if you want the experience. Also in quite a few places you can try and get the university to appoint you to actually legitimately be a full instructor on a summer class if you really want the teaching experience. Those usually aren't things that just get allocated to people because they're slotted in as TAs for funding.

Well of course, and if we were talking about an applicant that had extensive research experience then the helpdesk stuff would just get ignored and people would move on with their lives. But so far everyone seems to be in a consensus that this applicant doesn't have enough research experience. In which case, the helpdesk experience, far from being something that should be used as a strong point in the application in my mind, can only hurt. Look I would say the same thing if the applicant was talking about working a cash register or being a low level tester in a big company. They're both just jobs for money... and while that's perfectly fine if you need the money and aren't in a field where job prospects have been nothing but stunningly and amazingly good over the past several years (up until only the last few months) then this would be fine. But he's not, we're talking about someone who has, in the one of the hottest job markets for his field in its entire history, chose to take a low paying job just to get by instead of one where he could learn, stretch himself and if you've been paying attention at all, get paid even more. (Which means that if you really did need a job to get by, there's still not an excuse to not do interesting work, it even pays better!) Overall, if I was asked to assess the candidate's research ability based on this, I would assume lack of motivation or ability. And yes, I understand this is a very harsh judgment, but... what do you think these schools employ? Favorable judgments with kittens and ponies? Of course it's harsh, these schools are harsh with your applications and they can't be any other way. They have to take a look at candidates skeptically, the OP was asking for indicators on his application that would be factors that might not be beneficial to him, this is one very small one of many. It's not absurd to wonder why a candidate just didn't get a job in a research lab if he needed the money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's no honor in working a job to get a paycheck, but if you've been in CS and you're doing that over the past four years in this job market? It doesn't show much motivation because you could be getting both a larger paycheck and be doing vastly more interesting work. Interesting jobs have been falling out of trees for anyone who can string two lines of code together... of course a good graduate program would want to know why the candidate hadn't done this. If there was a bunch of stuff in the app that showed the candidate had done a bunch of other interesting work, no one would care, but I'm not looking at the file, so based on what I've seen, that would be my first question. Of course not, it's a very minor point and almost any other compelling factor will outweigh it. However, if it turns out the OP wants to reapply again later, when someone asks him why his application is distinctive, his helpdesk experience shouldn't be in the list. I'm not saying it shouldn't be on his CV, but by no means should it be emphasized, because it doesn't help his application and could, in some contexts, hurt it.

Working at a helpdesk begs the question of why you weren't doing something more interesting. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's true. Either you weren't good enough to get a more interesting job or you just don't care, neither of which shows your potential for research in a particularly good light.

I don't think you can state you're getting killed when you've only received rejections from the top 10 schools in your field... I'll join the consensus opinion that it's lack of research. What math research was it that you said you did and who are you working with on that thesis of yours? The fact that you were manager of a helpdesk can't help and might hurt. How were your LoRs? Are you trying to go into the theory side of CS? That seems to be the closest match with your background. Did you try applying to math departments too?

Yes, if you do searches through the history you'll see that at least Georgia Tech has a fairly steady history of doing decisions pretty late.

Calm down, sometimes schools reject students if they think the student is unlikely to actually accept admission there because they're likely to get into somewhere better. So getting rejected from your safety schools either means the application process was wonky (always possible), you misjudged which schools were safe (always possible), or you're too awesome. Tell yourself it's the latter until you have real cause for worry!

Oh man I'm so terrified about the idea of snow. I've lived in California my whole life and am really disappointed that I may end up having to deal with actual seasons. I really am not sure how much I can give up going out to the beach in a t-shirt at the middle of the night in January.... you know, not to overly support a stereotype of California. I just happen to actually live in a part of California that this type of thing is actually possible. (UCSD is really nice.)

Applied to JHU, haven't heard from them except on 4 Feb when they inquired about a late rec. (Which thankfully has now finally been finished and submitted to the appropriate schools.) I would guess this means they're now shifting or have shifted into full scale file review. History on the results page indicates they usually start sending out information the first half of march.

Ooops, sorry. How magnanimous of you. Stories shall be told far and wide of your humility and kindness.

Don't most programs factor in the attrition rate before e-mailing out accepts/rejects? You know, not to rain on anyone's dreams, but I imagine most departments past a certain size get pretty good at this and the statistics don't vary that widely from year to year. (I know at my current institution they don't, the school keeps a public dataset. )

Oh man if you had such an excellent GPA in your last two years I wouldn't worry so much! They do take that kind of thing into account from what I understand. As someone who's applying without the benefit of an upward trend, I can assure you not all is lost even if you don't have this benefit.

Ugh, you should see the process for full grant proposals. It takes 6 months between submission and panel review and that's only the target panel review date, sometimes it takes longer. Then after the panel reviews it, the funding decisions are made a month or so later by a slightly different body that takes into account the panel's recommendations but isn't just a rubber stamp. Grants definitely sometimes get recommended for funding by the panel and then not get funded. Frustrating! And then there's the actual process where the NSF does decide to award you money, at which point they then go through another round of negotiations about exactly how *much* you might get. This means that budget you so carefully allocated gets slashed and burned and distilled down the even more barebones than you thought was possible. This process can take some time too. Remember, this is what happens for a wildly successful grant proposal. (NSF's funding rates are not high, if you get to the point that you are negotiating over the amount of the budget your proposal was a resounding success.) So actually... in comparison the GRFP process is quite fast and friendly! I'm not sure if this makes you feel better, but maybe it'll help! To say nothing of the differences in writing a full grant proposal and writing a thing for the GRFP.

Cheers! By no means should anyone be discouraged. It's just a lot of work to overcome a bad GPA, but it certainly can be done, as people have proved in years past and hopefully we'll prove again this year. Thought I'd make a thread for folks to gripe about it on. Or just to say hi. Whatever seems most interesting. That should be fine. The same thing happens in undergrad with a 2.0. (Although arguably there's a lot more leniency?) Grading in graduate courses is suitably adjusted. Anyone who avoided getting kicked out of undergrad should hopefully be able to avoid getting kicked out of a grad program. To say nothing of the immense difference that comes when you're actually taking courses on topics you enjoy along with the immense differences in evaluation metrics and teaching styles that most graduate courses provide. Ah careful, it's not quite as brave as it appears. Usually I use my real name on forums and I haven't done so here. You'll also note I mentioned I lurked for a bit before joining and waited until I had an acceptance first. It's not like I just stumbled upon these forums and decided "alright let's go dive in and tell everyone my stats." It took me a bit. Anyways, anyone who's lurking or in the same situation but hasn't mentioned it yet, here's a thread to do so. It's cathartic or something!

I've been lurking for awhile. I'm new to actually posting to the board though, so hi. My way of saying hi is to make a thread for folks who have GPAs under a 3.0 but are applying to programs anyways. You'd be surprised how different things are applying with a GPA this bad. Not necessarily terrible, just different. Anyone else in this situation? Unfortunate and probably not very funny but related comments that we'll generously refer to as humor: [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when someone asks you what your safety schools are and you stare back at them unsure of what those two words together might actually mean. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you don't meet the minimum requirements for any of the programs you applied to. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you can't take getting recommended for admission by the department for granted as getting approved by the graduate college can actually present a challenge. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you describe your transcript as "colorful." [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when, in a desperate search for safe schools, you catch yourself wondering if your local community college is a PhD granting institution. (You quickly realize that even if they were they wouldn't have funding for you anyways, then you remember they don't even grant four-year degrees.) [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you realize that as much as you'd like to stay in a certain geographic area, all those schools are too hard to get into and so you need to apply more broadly. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when your "what are you going to do now" fantasy simply consists of you walking around for an entire day uttering no words other than the phrase "I did it." [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you know for certain that all of your friends will know exactly what that means. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when you actually start to believe that any acceptance letters you receive are more likely to be mistakes than legitimate offers for admission. [*:21esys8v]You know you have under a 3.0 when whenever you tell someone you got accepted somewhere their first words aren't "Congratulations" but "Really?" [*:21esys8v]And how could we forget the classic: You know you have under a 3.0 when you wince every time someone online comforts another stressed out applicant by telling them "well at least your GPA is over a three so things won't be that bad."

Hi from San Diego, been lurking for awhile, figured it was finally time for me to get an actual username... Not to be terribly pessimistic, but I'm losing my mind waiting for the flurry of rejection letters I'm expecting to hit from Washington, Berkeley and Princeton this next week or two. It's odd how programs notify accepts then wait a week and notify everyone else... I hate situations where no news is bad news, it just makes you wait and wait. Oh well. Anyways... thought I'd say hi and join the conversation.

I guess most of the ones I applied to weren't on your list: Dartmouth, JHU, Princeton, UCSB, UCSD, WUSTL, UIC and Wisconsin From the ones on the poll I applied to Berkeley, UWashington and Georgia Tech.