anacron

Well, it depends. Have you been admitted already or is this phone interview part of the admissions process? Already Admitted: Typically these are very informal. When I had one of these calls it was with a Professor who wanted to welcome me to the department and talk a little bit more about his research. We talked about my prior research (again, informal and no grilling) and potential projects I can work on. I asked questions about interdisciplinary research and how easy/hard it would be to start collaborative research projects with industry, national labs and other institutions. Waiting for Admission: This conversation will almost exclusively be about your research experience and publications (if any). If you have lots of research then they will most likely select a handful of projects to talk about and ask you to explain them. Your explanation may lead to more technical questions. If you have publications they will ask what your contributions were. After these you may get questions about future direction like: "If you are admitted what could be your first project?" These questions will vary quite a bit based on the interviewer's style. You should always assume the worst case and aim to answer very specific, in-depth questions about your background. I can't really suggest questions you should ask.... the point is to ask anything you want answered. Obviously funding and research opportunities are high on the list. I was interested in collaborative projects so I asked about those opportunities.

Congrats, this great news! See you at the campus visit (top choice I assume?)

Thanks, congrats to you too. If I may ask - what are your research interests? Thank you! Cumulative GPA: 3.851 GRE: {Q, V, W} = {167, 159, 4.0} Publications: 1 Journal Publication Letters: 2 well known Professors (strong) and 1 Post-Doc (strong) Reseach Experience: REU at UIUC (worked on 2 projects) and 2 years of research at undergrad. Teaching Experience: TA for a CS course and TA for an EE course. I believe research fit was the main factor. There were about 5-8 people at Berkeley who could be my advisor. I also think my research interests came across during the interview, especially when talking about my research ideas.

Just received my admit email. Hope you guys do/did too.

Quick update, just received an admit to UC Berkeley. Admitted: UC Berkeley with funding. Admitted: UIUC with funding. Admitted (unofficial): Rutgers with funding.

Great idea. I'll go- Admitted: UIUC with funding. Admitted (unofficial): Rutgers with funding. Rejected: UW Seattle

From what my interviewer told me... All short-listed candidates were interviewed. The final decisions should be out within the next two weeks.

@zep Congrats on your profile, the admission to Urbana and the interview from Berkeley. I was contacted by a Berkeley Professor to discuss my research experience, interests and specific professors I'd like to work with. I did not list the interviewer as a potential advisor, so we did not discuss a whole lot about his research (not sure if this was good or bad). Otherwise, I'm still waiting for official admit/reject news.

If I understand the application correctly, the "suggested reader" selections will help the adcomm in forwarding your application to the correct research area. I don't think that it - in any way - binds you to those professors or that research area. You should make these selections to fit your SOP and research experience. For example, if you did AI research then select an AI professor. The AI professor can relate to your work better than, say, a Systems professor. You can always change advisors and research interests after you're admitted. Good luck!

Absolutely; research experience, and by extension, publications are a great way of convincing ad. comms that you are a strong candidate. Your entrepreneurial background would definitely help at Stanford. The caveat is that you still need experience in CS either by doing courses or by doing well on the CS GRE. Do these, and you will be very competitive - assuming you can get great LORs. Are you applying for a PhD or a Master in CS? If you go for the MS then you may have difficulty getting in because you already hold a masters degree. Of course, this depends on how they view the MBA.

Its good that you have research experience and have already published. However, SEDE and INFOS are unknown conferences so they may not carry as much weight. Your chances will also depend on the recommendation letters, especially how well known the supervisors/head of department are and whether they are able to write (in detail) about your ability to do research. I can't comment on how Cairo University's grading scheme (i.e. your GPA) compares to universities here. With this in mind, If you factor in the competitiveness of admissions for international students, I would say that your chances are small. However, you should still apply to because a lot depends on (1) strength of this years applicant pool, (2) Number of faculty in Cloud/Distributed looking for students, and (3) How the admissions committees view your publications in SEDE/INFOS and your GPA. You should look at colleges like: University of Tennessee Knoxville, Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Indiana University. These universities are active in Cloud/Distributed and may be worth a shot. good luck!

We probably need more information about your research activities, strength of recommendation letters, etc. before giving you advice. In this context, GRE Scores are not very important - but it really depends on your other qualifications. I'm also interested in Cloud Computing... so we can discuss this if you'd like.

CMU, Georgia Tech, U. Washington, ETH Zurich, U. Toronto .... There are several, so it really depends on your interests. Having said that, the best way to find universities is to do a literature survey on the field and see where these papers are coming from. This will help you find prominent researcher (or potential advisors) in the field and get you thinking about interesting ideas and directions. An alternative, quicker method is to look at the program committees for workshops/conferences in wearable computing. ISWC 2012 maybe a good start.

Unfortunatly, I think your chances at a Top 4 are small given your non-technical background. Keep in mind that very strong CS undergrads get turned away every year due to the competition. I second starmaker's question, why are you chasing the Top 4? If you plan on pursuing only an MS in CS then there really is no need to study exclusively at Top 4. Sure - having that label is going to give you more opportunities/interviews but you still have to convince people to hire you. Your employability will not decrease if you steer outside of the top 4 and given your entrepreneurial/business background I'm sure you can network well enough and open doors without it.

No, mine does not say that. For me it says: "Most programs require the general GRE exam for admission, and some programs require relevant subject tests. Please check with the department to which you are applying about which standardized tests are required.

That's weird... my application doesn't say anything about the GRE test. It does have a "Self Reported Exam Scores" tab but only the usual disclaimer about sending the official ETS scores. Perhaps the application was in the process of being modified for Fall 2012 when you gained access?

I think that might be from the 2011 application season... I do recall seeing the same message last year. Here is what I see on the Graduate School website: "GRE (general test) required, advanced subject GRE suggested in either Computer Science (C29), Math (M67) or Physics (P77)" source: http://grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/list.shtml#c Here is what the EECS department has to say: "Computer Science applicants are advised to take the GRE Subject test in Computer Science, Math, or Physics, although it is not required. The subject tests are offered only 3 times a year." source: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Gradadm/RequiredData.htm#gre

Thanks for sharing the link. I'm actually interested in studying in Germany, aswell. How was your time doing research there (I assume your research was CS related)? Has anyone else had similar experiences and would like to share?

The 10% statistic could be for a number of reason right? For example if you take on a PhD student you do so for 5+ years, so you can't expect a high percentage just by virtue of that fact, some people take longer and some people take shorter amounts of time, which is different from a 4 year undergrad program. Some admissions cycles have a lot of admits while another has almost no admits. In addition to this you have students who drop for reasons out of their control (i.e. family pressures, financial issues, relocation, etc), some who can't make it past their quals and some who go ABD. Another factor is the school, if the school is not a well known research institution then you're going to have a really hard time trying to find the right advisors, the right amount of resources and the right amount of guidance and thought provoking work. So it stands to reason that you'd stagnate very quickly at a lower ranked school. This is one of the main reasons people opt to do a Masters and then a PhD rather than enroll at a less than decent school. Personally, I wouldn't read too much into the graduation rate because the reasons vary from individual to individual. However, I don't think this is because the school accepts students who are not motivated (although they'd have a better chance at getting in). Funding is very hard to come by and they will not waste it on someone who isn't genuinely interested.

The admissions process is the weed out process and they do reject potential drop outs. Why do you assume otherwise? The only places where a school would take the risk of admitting potential drop outs is at lower ranked schools. There are way too many overqualified students being rejected at Top 20 school for the adcoms to even glance at potential drop outs.

How would you know if someone is high risk? If they say so in the SOP or anywhere in the application then they would not be admitted, outright. Remember there are a lot of qualified people who are rejected so they would benefit from the leftover funding, not the person who says they might drop out. If you do not say so on your SOP/application and do not have just cause for dropping out then you basically lied on the application... You may as well not apply for a PhD if you plan to mention the master's degree in the application.

The OP's situation is not a spur of the moment, unavoidable situation. He/she intends to deliberately deceive the advisor and the adcom in order to get a free ride for something the OP does not plan do. Clearly this is unethical... I don't see how you could say otherwise in you previous post. What the OP does with the money is irrelevant. The fact is that they are going to waste upwards of $50,000/year in tuition, fees and stipend of the ADVISOR's money (not the OP's money) with the promise to do research for the next 5-6 years. The act of submitting a PhD application means that you intend to do research in the field for the long term, in fact your SOP should precisely document this. Note that all good SOPs are essentially research statements therefore the OP's plan would clearly undermine those exact statements which will gain admission to the program. I have just taken a look through one PhD application at a Top 10 school. The application happens to have a "I certify that all statements are truthful, to the best of my knowledge" checkbox. So... the ramifications are clear. If you do not show them justification for dropping out with just a master's they could easily get you for lying on the application and intentionally misleading the committee. It doesn't mean that the university will act on it but they certainly can (and have) if they believe you are misleading them. By the way, many companies encourage higher learning and do fund employees for master's and PhDs, so the best option would be to gain employment for a year or two, show them you're worth it and then go get the master's. The question is why would you want to risk lying and getting caught when you can get way more money immediately (by getting a job) and then letting the company pay for the degree. A PhD stipend does not pay very well compared to a full time job. To the OP: If you still intend to follow through with your plan, I would suggest that you stop and enroll in an MBA instead (seems like this would be your cup of tea).

Hi guys, I am interested in getting some information about doing research abroad once I enroll in a PhD program. I have the following questions about the process: 1) Is it even possible to do research at universities other than your own for a summer? Not like internships in industry or at national labs, but simply go to a different institution where you have the opportunity to work with experts in the field. 2) Are there formal study abroad programs that do exactly this for PhD students? If not, would you say that its very difficult to convince your home institution/advisor to let you do something like this. 3) Have any of you done something similar, where you have done research abroad? 4) Would I need to have a contact at the remote institution to make this happen? This should be a little simpler since I know a PhD student who is currently doing research at Delft this should help open doors (for Delft at least). 5) If research abroad is common, will I be funded for the duration of my stay? Motivation: Obviously it seems a little crazy that I would want to do research abroad when the main source of contributions (in HPC and Cloud Computing, and much of CS for that matter) have been here, in the US. However, the reason I would like to do this is because there are several (prominent) researchers in Europe and elsewhere who have made significant contributions to Cloud Computing (from Delft, EPFL and University of Melbourne, Australia). It would also be nice to travel for the summer and experience a different culture Any advice would be much appreciated.

Even if the OP got admitted where would he/she find the time to do research? Assuming an RAship is awarded, a full course load (in this case an overload to finish in 1 year) and a full time software development job where will the OP find time to make a significant contribution to research without the PI seeing the lack of motivation and progress? Also wouldn't there be red flags when they see a PhD student taking course which go towards a master's degree? I have looked through several master's vs PhD curriculums and I find that most schools have different requirements. The PhD courses have more flexibility and are chosen based on research area while the master's courses are more rigid. There are even some seminar requirements (PhD only) at higher ranked schools. It would be very hard to con the department since your course list would betray your intentions (especially if the course requirements differ). Assuming a TAship is awarded, it becomes even harder since you have a full course load/overload, a full time development job, TA'ing a class AND research with your advisor... So there really is no opportunity for you to juggle all of these things, in addition to hiding the fact that you are not here for the PhD. Something is going to suffer and given your posts, it will be the research. Since a PhD is all about research, you tell me whether this is a give away or not... in fact its almost too easy to spot the signs. (I should probably mention that professors aren't stupid) I should also mention that you would need write convincing SOPs talking about past research experiences and what work you'd like to do, just to get in.. You might get away with this at smaller institutions but I doubt you'd be able to pull this off at MIT,UCB,UIUC, etc. where PhD positions are so competitive and prestigious.

I'm not sure if this is actually the case...it may be beneficial to find who the potential advisor might be but its probably better to focus on the subject of interest. For me at least, my current advisor is set to leave my university for a permanent position next Fall. Add to this the likelihood of senior faculty taking sabbaticals or spending more time managing the department etc. you may not have the same advisor that you started with or, at least, not with the level of involvement you expect. If you find a school that is well known/established in your area of interest then they would be more likely to add faculty immediately in order to keep up the standards thus lessening the impact on dependant PhD students. So I wouldn't narrow down the departmental search to only one professor but rather focus on a research group (which is most often comprised of several professors in the same area). I'm currently an undergrad so faculty changes affect me very little at this point, but some of the PhD students in my group now have to bring the new faculty member up to speed and hope he/she is interested in their project. Although this may not be a problem since they do screen the faculty candidates based on which department and corresponding research group opening the college is trying to fill. This was most of the information/advise my advisor gave me, hope it helps. On a related note, do adcoms differentiate between BS and MS students when they review applications? or review them separately and have allotments on how many MS vs BS applicants they will take?