hungryhungryhipster

Whatever. I ask a question, even if it was a bit tactless, and people jump down my throat. And no, I was initially quite excited about going to the UofA, then I got that magical letter from my dream school and with my dream professor, so I no longer had any reason to consider UofA. Meanwhile, they already had booked my flight, so it would have looked bad to turn them down and make them eat a non-refundable plane ticket. Do you think I enjoy missing a full week of school and then having to pretend for the whole time that I'm interested in them? It hardly matters, though, as I can see I'm not welcome on this forum, so adios.

WTF do my dietary preferences have to do with you? I simply don't like them, and I get by just fine without. Would you call out a vegetarian like that? I hope not.

It's the government after all. Is anyone really surprised? Just out of curiosity, since I'm already going to get a stipend from UofT for $25k per year, would this be on top of that?

Honestly, I wouldn't feel too bad about backing out later even if you accepted before their arbitrary deadline. This is a very common tactic among lower-ranked schools to try and trap students they wouldn't otherwise have much of a shot at getting. When they see people like you, who are probably overqualified to some degree for their school, they figure they'll give you a really tight deadline, knowing that there's no way you'll hear from the bigger schools by then, and try to get you to hurry up and sign on the dotted line before the big boys come and scoop you up. Personally, if I got even one other acceptance, that would be one of the deciding factors in favour of the other school.

I don't see why it matters if you've already been admitted. Of course, don't look like a slob, but I can't see them revoking an already-offered admission for anything short of blatantly lying about your qualifications. Luckily enough, my first visit is in Edmonton, so my coat and several layers of sweaters will conceal anything nice I wear anyway.

Just saw an admit for my program (computer science), but not sure if troll. These troll posts tend to pop up shortly after someone posts a thread about X school. Of course, most of the results survey is about Ph.D. applicants. There's hardly anything on MSc.

Nope, but I had an interview on 01/27. Didn't go very well though.

And I sure hope you brush up on your english skills if you want to get into just about any university here.

I just wore my black Reeboks, especially since it was snowing. If they're gonna reject you because of your choice of shoes, why did they even waste their time inviting you for an interview in the first place?

It's not lies anymore. It's reality.

No problem! I know I can be a little... harsh with my opinions, but sometimes that's what's needed. Trust me when I say that there will be plenty more startups to jump into later on. They're like locusts in the CS world lol. If you like, I'd recommend this paper I just finished reading (written by my current advisor) on linear dimensionality reduction. Between LDR and SVM methods, you should have most of the machine learning covered, as well as HMMs. Neural networks are also very interesting, but have fallen out of favor lately, as most people use HMMs instead. There's also a book called Pattern Classification by Peter Duda (sp?) that gives a good overview. http://janus.newcs.uwindsor.ca/~lrueda/papers/ChernoffLDATwoJnl.pdf

Well, you did have a choice in the matter at some point along the line. You can't really expect a history degree to leave you swimming in cash. No offense, of course.

I've gotten that before. Then I happily remind them that I'll make more than they do while I'm in school.

But the thing is I can't stand Windsor, lol. I long for the hustle and bustle of downtown TO. Alas, time will tell.

You may be better off just getting a head start on your masters research. That way, you can graduate in less time.

Personally, receiving such a letter would pretty much guarantee that I would not be accepting their offer. Honestly, it makes them look terribly shady.

Well, we don't. Though I think spouses of Canadian citizens might get preference or something. It's entirely possible that he won't be able to get in. Not everyone who applies is allowed to immigrate.

Well, if you're dual there should be no problem, but be advised that your husband might not even be able to immigrate. We don't just take in anyone, lol.

My advice: get a good lawyer to handle it. Yes, it'll cost a few hundred bucks, but if you're an international student you must be pretty much loaded to even think about going to school here, plus it will cost you a lot less in the long run cause if you make any mistakes in the process you'll be screwed.

I agree wholeheartedly. Thankfully, though, if you went to a Canadian undergrad school and are applying in Canada (which is all my applications), GRE/TOEFL/etc are not required.

Awesome! I got in to UofA a while ago, with full funding (but that's pretty much standard in STEM fields). Did they offer to fly you over there for the visit day on Feb. 28th, or are you local? If I don't get into Toronto, I'll probably go to UofA, but I took a look at the campus on google streetview and it just looks so boring... I mean, I'm sure it's a great school, but so is every other school I've applied/been accepted to. I'll have to see what it's like in person, but for me it's gonna be the city itself that is the deciding factor.

Be careful with your course selections, if you do go that route. If it's obvious that those courses were taken simply because they were easy, that will hurt you even more.

I always think of it like this: Education is the single best investment you can ever make (well, in a real field, anyway). Unlike a car, a house, or any other physical good, it cannot possibly be repossessed if you default on your loans. No-one can take it away from you once you have it.

It is good that you're thinking about it instead of just rushing into it. Startups in particular are very risky. You probably have better odds of getting into that dream school than the company taking off. Keep in mind that over half of new companies fail in the first year or two. Also I think you will very much enjoy machine learning. I do a lot of pattern recognition and classification as part of my bioinformatics research, and in order to understand the theory behind it you need a good understanding of calculus and especially linear algebra, along with probability (particularly from the Bayesian perspective). Depending on what courses you took in undergrad, you may want to brush up on linear algebra before you start in September, because (at least at my undergrad) we only took basic linear algebra in first year, and nothing after that. I was absolutely floored the first time I saw the equation for linear dimensionality reduction. It takes up three lines of a page!

I would tend to disagree about the job offer. As soon as I see the words "start up" I tend to run for the hills. Being a start-up, the very first thing you should do is make sure they're gonna pay you in cash, not "umm well you can have a percent of our company that's gonna fail in a couple years anyway". I've just seen too many people who just learned PHP or whatever and think they're gonna make the next Facebook or something. I'd say if they can't wait what is a fairly reasonable amount of time for you to tie up some loose ends that, in all fairness, existed long before they offered you a job, then to heck with them IMO. They need to recognize that you had other things going on before they popped out of the blue and offered you a job. Also, it's always good to keep in mind what university is and isn't, especially at the graduate level: it is an opportunity to enrich yourself, to pursue research that presumably you are very passionate about. It is not just another two years of job training. Ask yourself this: would I go through with my masters degree even if I knew that it would not make me do any better in the job market? If yes, then you are doing it for the right reasons. I think too many people merely see this kind of education as a means to an end, rather than evaluating it on its own merit.