csphd

the person on the phone this morning said the goal was to get the results out this friday.

i have seen the three rating sheets. the first thing that i learn from them? the reviewers don't read the application very carefully all of them make inaccurate statements about my application. for example, one says i started research early as an undergraduate, but i actually started research during 2nd semester as a senior. another says i got an award paper in an IEEE workshop, but it was an acm conference. another says i am currently a TA at school X (undergraduate institution), but i am a currently a TA at school Y (graduate institution). i got an HM with these ratings: Intellectual Merit: Excellent, Excellent, Very Good. Broader Impacts: Good, Excellent, Very Good. they mention my weaknesses are the vague research plan and broader impacts. for the research plan, i knew it was vague (did it last minute, so had a couple days of writing the research plan), but i thought being 1st year, it wouldn't hurt as much. guess im wrong. none said anything about my undergrad GPA (~3.5 from a top 5 CS school) or my low verbal GRE (<500), so it appears they didn't affect my chances.

dang it, i only got honorable mention. i was actually feeling good about my chances. congrats to awardees.

oh i was asking if anyone was pulling an all-nighter solely to wait for the notification emails

so who's gonna pull an all-nighter tonight?

well, i think you don't want that either because it means they might have to hurry through the apps.

i just saw this now: GRFP will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET Monday April 5th - 5:00 AM ET Tuesday, April 6th for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

finally (not that it matters), also just was rejected for phd but accepted for ms. maybe thats why it took so long: because after being rejected for phd, my app was being considered for ms. any way, it's all done now.

me still waiting but going elsewhere. has any other school sent out decisions (either way) this late?

you know, april 2nd in 2007 was monday, so it could be this coming monday or it could be tomorrow. doesnt matter though. im gonna attend illinois anyway.

i laugh at myself for screwing up my undergrad gpa and getting rejected by ucsd (i assume gpa is my weakest "hard" factor). but it's a carefree laugh because i got into uiuc... somehow (last time i applied 2 years ago i also got rejected by uiuc.)

im more like 'what the', not 'lol' heh

last time i applied 2 years ago, my rejection letter was dated april 2nd, so now im expecting the same.

email dated march 28 5:40pm: Application review has concluded for both MS and PhD applications and most final decisions have been sent. However, there are still PhD applications the committee will be sending decision letters for soon.

yea, the waiting hadnt bothered me, and i was assuming reject. that was why i started looking for apartments at the other places, and only after i noticed some decent apartments near the other schools did i want to know (i was assuming reject anyway) sooner. i dont know how they work: (1) immediately notify when decision (either way) is made, or (2) needs to get paperwork done before notification. so if they are (2) and the decision is reject, then i'd like to know sooner rather than later. but yea, it could be they havent decided yet.

sure will. i did get the automatic reply immediately.

heck, here's what i wrote to them: I applied to the PhD program, and I am wondering if the committee has reached a decision on my application? If so, may I know what the decision is. I understand though if you cannot share it with me. I hesitated asking, but knowing earlier is better for my planning, particularly getting good apartments before they are rented out. yea, i think the only possible negative for asking is that it might negatively affect their decision (like, "we're debating whether to admit this guy, but now that he shows immaturity by bothering us, let's reject him" although my guess/hope is that it's unlikely that they let your asking them one question be a factor in their decision. on the other hand, if that risk is actually real, i have other good options, so i guess i dont mind the risk

has anyone here asked ucsd directly if a decision has been reached on his/her app? i don't mind the waiting game, but im concerned that the good apartments near my other school choice might be rented out.

i got the 2nd letter, too. the difference is the first one was sent from, in my case, remzi's email address, and the second one was sent from grad@cs address.

sorry, i can't answer that because i don't know whether uiuc has a waiting list.

in the email they said they did not maintain a waiting list. (i got rejected btw, despite withdrawing my app 3 weeks ago

yep illinois=uiuc overall, the visit was wonderful. the hotel was a one-minute walk from the siebel center, so that was nice. the siebel center for cs opened in 2004, so it's quite nice. faculty mentioned it was a "live laboratory," citing an example where they put sensors and cameras near the stairs to help a civil engineering (?) project studying how walking patterns affect vibrations in the stairs. also, there's a coffee shop right in building, on the first floor. (http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/about/siebelcenter.php) a prospective student told me one of the organizers told him 28 students visited, which was in the same ballpark as my estimate. many people (faculty and current grad students) mentioned that some grad students could afford their own houses. 4 miles from campus is considered far. -------------------------------------------------- a little bit on the schedule: thursday evening to saturday noon. thursday evening was mostly social events. friday and saturday were presentations, panels, area sessions, one-on-one meetings with faculty, etc there was a 30-minute grad student panel, off limits to faculty and staff, which was a little short. on friday, there was a panel with directors from "cross campus collaboration initiatives," including among others the directors from krannert center for the performing arts, the information trust institute, and the national center for supercomputing applications (a stone's throw distance from siebel center). (there was excitement about the blue waters project, scheduled to come online in 2011. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/BlueWaters/) there was one-hour campus tour, led by the graduate student hosts. i did not go on this tour, so i cant say anything about the rest of the campus. that night, we dined at a local restaurant downtown champaign, with my estimate of 15 faculty dining among us. concluding friday was a scavenger hunt also downtown champaign.

hmm that is interesting. that is fewer than 3 grad students per faculty? is that really low? i just got back from illinois, and iirc they have 57 faculty and ~480 grad students (though i dont know if 480 counts both cs and ece).

i generally agree with belowthree, but let's even suppose the applicant never mentioned the job and let's not even consider his otherwise strong application, and consider this question: what is the most important thing a phd student does for average 5-6 years? research right? (there are course-based masters programs, but i believe all phd programs are research-based.) if the applicant has no research experience, the schools will have no idea if he/she will succeed as a researcher. on gpa/recs basis, there are many other similarly-qualified and even less-qualified applicants. but they are able to prove that they can publish or if not at least can do research (1 year or more), and so they will be more-qualified overall. you can see that explanation implied at many of the schools admission FAQs: "most successful applicants have 3.7 or higher gpa, but some have lower gpa." i am in fact one such example, my undergraduate in the last 2.5 years (i was a transfer) gpa is 3.4 ish (even had a b-), but i had two publications (one was second of 3 authors at a ~10% conference). that said, as someone said before, you have been rejected by only 2 of the top-10 schools, so hopefully it's not going to be destroyed. good luck.

maybe a lil off topic. i dont know much about the admission process, so i wonder, the schools that do not have rolling admission, what causes them to not be able to send out all decisions at the same time or within a few days? (i do assume that before making any decision, they will have to have reviewed all applications.) perhaps, the obvious admits or rejects are notified early? and then, say, out of 100 similarly qualified applicants, the committee take time to debate which 10 to admit, which is why these decisions come later?