belowthree

I think her question was more related to whether or not it was true that academia was so cohesive a beast as to blackball an individual if they did in fact unknowingly do something rude in their field like crash a course. The assumption was that crashing a course is in fact rude in this field. (Which indeed it seems to be, unlike in my own... your questionable implications that my field is just about information transmission and doesn't involve discussion aside...) Anyways, I believe the question was about how connected academia was and how uniform the reaction to rudeness might be. How much it would cross institutional barriers, etc... Then again, I could be missing the point here too. I seem to be doing that a lot in this thread, perhaps I should shut up.

I did not assert that Berkeley doesn't look at the GREs. They do. I did assert, quite explicitly, that MIT doesn't, since they don't. You swore up and down that you were sure both schools weighted this portion of the application heavily. Given that one of the schools doesn't even *have* that portion of the application, can you not see how your assertions as to its heavy weight are utterly absurd? And really? You link me to the FAQ for an application I already filled out last year for facts that I never disputed? Are you even reading my posts before fluttering on to misinform the next person about your mistaken ideas on how GREs are weighted in graduate applications?

Well nothing in your profile would rule you out of a place at a decent computer science program. It sounds like it'd all depend on your letters. Ask your professors what they think. As for waiting a year... it probably depends on what you would spend the year doing. If you think you can get a first author top tier paper accepted and published in a year then yes, that'd help... but not something I'd ever want to gamble on. I'd apply this year and then, if you're not happy with the results, apply again next year.

Again, given that one of these schools does not accept GRE scores or offer a place for you to put them on your application I think it's safe to assume that your assumption that these schools weigh these elements heavily is incorrect. That you continue to assert it in the face of these facts is nuts. Exactly how do you suppose they weigh something that isn't in their application and they don't know?

There seems to be two types of programs that help prepare people for a career in the computer game industry. One type of program is a computer science department/school that offers a specialized game design program. Another type of program is an art school that offers a specialized program in game design. These two types of programs, while both being targeted towards the game industry, come at things from a very different way. The first tries to nurture talented game programmers while the second tries to nurture talented game artists. I'm not sure which type of program would be better for you. It might be worth it to call up a recruiter at a game company you'd be interested in working for and talk to them about what types of positions they might have for a person of your skills. Then figure out which type of program would be more appropriate.

Normally I'd say this is spot on, but the experiences of a faculty member and the experiences of an undergraduate student applying to a school differ widely. Sections a faculty member would never dream of listing on their CV, like a listing of classes they took as undergrads and what they felt they got out of it, seem to be standard sections for the CV the OP is talking about. So I would definitely include any sections you find on a faculty member's CV in your field, but also include additional sections that highlight your own experience. This means things like industry work experience, which may not always show up on an academic CV, are perfectly acceptable on your own.

I've been living in Princeton, NJ for the last three months as part of a summer research thing at a local research lab here. (Unaffiliated with, but literally across the street from

1) It doesn't follow that because they accepted good people who happened to have high subject GRE scores, those people were helped by their GRE scores. One would hope that anyone accepted to Berkeley or MIT's graduate computer science program would do well on the CS subject GRE, so the second sentence lends no support to the first one. 2) MIT, one of the schools you cited where taking the subject GRE would be important, does not require, ask for or use GRE scores in the admissions process.

The game industry is hardly my specialty but usually doesn't require beyond an BS or maybe an MS. Almost all of the ground-level creative positions are programming positions or artist positions. I think it would help greatly if you elaborated on exactly what role you saw for yourself in this industry given you don't like programming... I also think you'd be fairly hard-pressed to find a computer science program that would accept you without decent programming skills. I mean I guess there's some theory folks, but it would be an oddity and you would need to be looking at a well-defined role. Which is something you seem to lack.

In theory, yes. But they probably wouldn't care if you didn't... You probably should unless it's a big deal to do so for some reason?

Certainly isn't in my field. Quite a few mavericks. It *is* a small community though and word does get around. It doesn't mean it's uniform but if someone doesn't like you they can always make times difficult for you because then you'll be restricted to working with the people who don't respect that person's opinion. Really as a graduate applicant you have very little clout to throw around, so anyone with any clout who don't like you can throw your chances off. But guarantees? No.

Stay above a 3 and you have a much easier time than if you go below it. If you're doing well in your primary field you can make a good case on that in your SoP.

They are, which is why professors actually tend to start caring. Most domestic students can struggle through giving a presentation or writing a paper without encountering basic language issues. A foreign student on the other hand, will sometimes be completely unable to give an understandable presentation the first year or three and will need extensive editing on all their papers. It's something you hope improves after a year or two, but a lot of professors are looking for students that can dive in head first. To say nothing of the potential funding hiccups for the first two years if the student is disqualified from TAing because of language issues. That would force the professor to fund them another way during a time their research output is going to be substantially lower and even if they're brilliant, may require considerable time and effort to help them communicate their ideas. A lot of schools have so many foreign applicants that it's easy to be picky. Not wanting to invest the time in a brilliant student with language issues is easy when you can chose a different brilliant student without language issues.

Maybe "due to her important contributions" you could get the second prof officially added in the secondary supervisor role? It sounds like she was willing to be doing that anyways and hopefully your supervisor wouldn't object to sharing the supervision duties? I wouldn't frame this as something you're trying to do to get her to continue supervising your work so much as something you'd like to do to recognize the contributions the second professor has already made.

The UC schools will take into account whether you're in-state or out of state. In-state students are dramatically easier to fund and UC schools are generally supposed to serve in-state students. As for using GRE scores to determine funding, that's extremely uncommon in computer science from what I know. I've heard it's common in disciplines with limited departmental funding, but in CS that just usually isn't how funds get allocated. (And many CS departments believe in funding *every* PhD student they admit, with a few notable exceptions. There's some places that simply will not offer you admission without funding.) However, if you're a foreign student or have been educated in a foreign university during any stage of your education, a 490v may raise an eyebrow. Usually CS doesn't care about the verbal score at all, but if you're a foreign student, that changes. (Or maybe even if you have an asian last name, unfortunately. It's not fair, but sometimes it's how the perceptions work.) I'd say you probably don't have to retake if you don't want to, but retaking and getting better scores wouldn't be a terrible idea either.

I had to look it up. Apparently classes start Sept 24th, but I will be living on campus starting on the 6th and will probably start meeting with my advisor starting on the 8th. So I imagine I'll start showing up into the lab periodically around then, though I plan to wring a bit more vacation out of summer and take some last trips around to different places before classes start. I guess officially the quarter starts the 19th and I think I start getting paid then, so that's as close to a start date as anything...

Usually the schools that offer spring MS admission tend to be less competitive as a group and therefore won't be too terribly hard even in Spring. Depends on the school.

Ah yes, the department's resident academy award winner. (The CSE department I think has the school's one and only, but there might be one elsewhere?) The vision lab does enough graphics where you can generally get away with it. Talk with the profs you're interested in and check. I know Serge works pretty closely with one of the teams at Caltech.

No you're probably fine, especially if you bounce between two independent state systems, and not even just separate campuses within the same system. (Which may also be fine, depending on the system.)

I just finished up my undergraduate work there. From what I know of their admissions system the best way to get in is to convince a professor that they want you as a researcher. If you do that you will get in, (one professor can pretty much ensure a student gets admitted if they're willing to put money behind it) if you don't you still can get in, but it's more difficult. I was confused at why Stanford was on your list if you were pruning stretch schools. Your explanation makes a lot more sense now. I'm not sure how competitive Caltech CS is. They're a good program, but their CS department doesn't seem to be as good as most of their other departments, so it's probably much easier to get in to than say... a Caltech physics program. Does anyone on this board know how competitive this program is? I'm guessing it might be easier than most people think given the relatively high prestige of the school in other areas.

Caltech has a very good graphics group. Might not be the right fit for your goals, but it seemed odd to me that it's not on your list.

I think it should also be noted that a lot of December application deadlines don't necessarily expect LoRs and scores to be there until early January. The early deadline is just to do some preliminary sorting and have all the files open and ready to go for when the school comes back from its break. At which point hopefully the break will have allowed all the files to complete and everything becomes groovy. You should never, of course, rely on this, but you should be at least aware of it. Only one of my professors turned in LoRs on time and I don't think that affected my applications from being fully considered.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you wouldn't be one of those people who ask questions they already know the answer to as a poor substitute for simply stating your objection to someone's behavior. Don't ask cutesy little questions and then get angry when you get straightforward and honest answers. If you have a problem with me, say so. Preferably in detail and preferably in PM where there's enough room for both of our personalities where we don't crowd out the other participants in this thread who can help with the OP's questions not relating to the GRE.

No, I don't apologize for that part.

*waves* Hello! OP: Yeah, you have a chance.