intirb

If MIT has more professors that you liked, I would choose MIT. Having a good choice of potential advisors is extremely important, and it seems like the department would be a better fit in general if you thought you could live with 7 of the professors (vs 4 at Stanford).

For engineering, that sounds about right. Obviously cost of living is pretty cheap in those areas, so that's a huge bonus. Nice! You can find baseline MIT graduate student stipend information here, for comparison: https://gsc.mit.edu/programs-initiatives/col/ It's a range from 25k to 36k, though admittedly in a much highest cost of living area.

I don't know this, but I agree this would be difficult. In theory I guess you could skype interview with multiple professors. As long as they get a chance to compare you to the other students, it should work. But I have no idea, personally, how they handle this situation.

The UPenn interview is pretty serious as well. You meet with several professors, and afterwards the students and professors both rank their preferences. If you can't find a professor willing to fund you, you don't get accepted. P.S. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has about the HST interview or the program in general. Feel free to send me a PM.

Hey AxyC, If you haven't seen it already, you should definitely check out the results page! That would be the primary place to get up-to-date information. I did the RISE program when I was an undergrad too! It's always awesome to see a fellow RISEr. Last year I responded to some questions about the so you might want to check that out. Alternatively/also, you are very welcome to PM me with any questions. For everyone else, I should also add that I interviewed at UPenn, UW, and Brown - so if anyone is interested in how those interviews worked or what interview weekend was like, I can try my best to recall the process. Good luck everyone! I know the waiting is a very anxiety-inducing, ego-crushing experience.. just consider it emotional practice for your PhD .

Are you from the New York Metropolitan area? My experience everywhere outside of there has been that the Jewish community was very small. You'll usually be able to find one or two temples (in some big cities, a handful). In Cambridge MA, you can't even find a good bagel (but I've recently gotten a recommendation for a place in Boston). The Boston JCC is not even in Boston, and you can't get there by subway. There is a Chabad House though. Most Jews I've met here were atheist, but there is a secular Jewish congregation, so that's pretty cool.

I did a mixture of both. First, I explained my overall vision for my POS, how the courses all fit together, and how I chose them. Then I went into more detail for each class explaining why I thought it was a good choice.

Huh. Well I never bothered to list any "other planned courses", personally.

You can apply to CSGF in the same season you're applying to grad school. That's what I did! Edit for clarity: if you're applying to PhD programs in Fall 2014, you should apply for the program in Fall 2014 (/Winter 2015). If you're applying to grad school NOW (like, you already sent out those applications or are sending them out in a few weeks), then you should apply for CSGF this cycle. Edit again, because I realized it might still be confusing. If you want to start graduate school in Fall 2014 (as in, take your first classes, enroll) then yes, apply for CSGF this cycle.

1. As a first-year graduate student, you only get two years to complete your POS. So if you got the fellowship, your first semester would be Fall 2014, and you'd have until Summer 2016 to finish your POS. 2. You need to take math courses in the math department and CS courses in the CS department. It's alright to take theoretical classes or application-based classes, as long as they fit in line with the spirit of the POS. 3. I would read DEIXIS, the computational magazine for the national labs. It's linked on the CSGF homepage, and they sometimes feature fellows. Plus, it'll give you an idea of the kinds of things you could do for your practicum. I didn't have a lot of HPC knowledge when I applied either, so don't worry too much about that. Just try to think about how much more you could accomplish, if computational power weren't a limitation.

Yep, I saw that too. Whoops! Definitely post there

Yes, I would definitely recommend getting a research job at a lab first. It'll be pretty hard to get admitted to a PhD program without any research experience. There are lots of labs out there that could use some math expertise, so I'd start emailing professors or looking for job openings in labs, especially those nearby. Assuming you want to work with Hugh Herr, you're probably a lot better off applying to HST MEMP than BE, since the latter is more cells and molecules and synthetic biology.

By MIT BME, do you mean the HST MEMP program or Biological Engineering? Edit: also, what was that unrelated field?

Hello everyone. I'm a 2nd year DOE CSGF fellow. Applications have opened, so I just wanted to encourage scientists and engineers who do or are considering doing computational work to apply! Feel free to ask questions (or check out last year's thread for an overview and some general tips on applying). Good luck!

I know some people who have deferred the fellowship - either because they got Rhodes or had some other plan for a year before grad school. Especially if you're on medical leave, I think Krell would work with you. If you're a fellow, Krell really has your back and does everything they can to help you succeed.

Ditto Ghanada - my rejections didn't come until after march, well after people had heard about interviews. If you didn't get an interview and others have, you're probably not getting in. Sorry Also, you guys are using the results page, right?

If you are an incoming student (meaning, you'll start the fellowship when you start grad school), you can take classes from your POS in the 3rd year of grad school. If you are a first year grad student, you need to finish your courses in the next two years (so your last class for your POS should be completed BEFORE Fall 2015). I think this smaller timeline is made up for by the fact that you can list some classes you've already taken or will take this year. Edit: but within those parameters, just take the classes whenever they make the most sense for your own program requirements and research goals. If you dropped or failed a class, I think you'd probably seriously risk your renewal for the fellowship. Renewal is not automatic, and it depends on how well you're progressing in grad school, including how well you're doing your POS. Of course, if there were an unexpected life event (illness etc.), I'm sure you could work it out with Krell. I definitely copied the description from the course catalog .

True, but participation in the council is voluntary, and there's likely little consequence if a member decides not to follow the guidelines. Like I said before, the agreement isn't legally binding.

So I'm not really sure what I put, but I THINK that department is the official department, and academic discipline would be your concentration or area within that department. For example, Department: Neuroscience and Academic Discipline: Computational Neuroscience. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful.

In general, schools will allow you to wait until April 15th to respond to their offers, following some guidelines most schools have agreed to follow. However, these guidelines are not legally binding, and in reality a school can do whatever they want with their admissions. I would talk to the school openly - they know you are applying to other schools - and ask if you can make your decision after all the other offers are in. As for invitations to "all-expenses-paid open houses", this really depends on the school. Every school that gave me an interview last year paid for my expenses, but some of those events were serious interviews whereas others were clearly just recruiting events.

Well, first: I also had very little formal training in computer science, though I had taken a decent amount of math courses and programmed a lot for lab. I'm not sure how much background they expect. They do like to bring in people who are primarily domain scientists or engineers and introduce them to computational science. Just tell them about the training you do have, even if it was informal. Second: I think the more important question is - do you care about your lack of foundation for the courses you're signing up to take? If you get the fellowship, you will have to take them and submit your grades back as part of the renewal process. Are you confident you can take the courses in your POS as you've scheduled them and do well? If you think you can handle it, I'm sure they'll be fine with it.

I would only use this space if you really have something additional that's important to add. I wrote something small because I was having technically difficulties filling out one of the boxes with the department name, so I just wanted to make sure it was correct. Don't feel the need to fill space just because it's there Uh... I forget. Do you have a screen shot or something (you can blur out the details) to jog my memory? Yes. They take this VERY seriously. Obviously, if a class gets dropped or moved around a semester, you will have to change, but that's pretty much the only allowable excuse for changing courses once you've accepted the fellowship and signed the POS. Your math courses can be Mathematics, Statistics, or Applied math, as long as they are in one of those departments. Different schools have different department names. I'm not sure, but I doubt they'd accept a fluid dynamics course just because it's cross-listed in a math department. You should really try to follow the spirit of the POS and find two relevant math courses. Yes. Are you an incoming student or a first-year graduate student? If you're an incoming student, you can take the fellowship to any school you get accepted to - no worries about that. If you're a grad student, you can transfer, but they'll probably want to know that your research will stay related to computational science.

I don't really think there's such a thing as a safety school for graduate school. Do you have a research topic you're passionate about? Then you already know which labs are involved in that topic, so you know which schools to apply to. If there are more than six labs for your area of interest, I would pick based on fit. Your stats are good (don't worry about the GRE!). So you'll probably be more likely to get rejected from a "safety" school without a good research fit than a competitive school with a great research fit.

More popular fields also tend to have more funding and more spots. At my school, EE is much bigger than BME, in terms of number of students accepted each year.

Yes, this! As an undergrad, I told my academic advisor that I was interested in research and gave him a general field. He arranged meetings for me with professors in the area, which was FAR less painful than emailing them myself.