ssk2
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Posts posted by ssk2
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Hm, that's tricky. My organisation is very nice about these things and the occasional person does leave to go back to university. It really depends on how well you know your letter writer.
I have asked my manager whom I get on very well with. He's more than happy to write me a letter and he was glad that I gave him almost a year's notice of my potential departure.
I would personally give them plenty of notice, and ask them informally first if that's something they'd be willing to do. Phrase it like it's not a definite thing (which it isn't) - to lessen the impact. After all, you don't know if it will work out or not. I gave my manager a heads up in our last one-to-one a couple of months ago and told him that I'm thinking of applying. Later on, I confirmed that I was applying, gave him an idea of timescales and so on.
Mention it to your big boss only once you have an offer in hand, and ask your letter writer to be discrete if you think it might cause friction in your workplace.
Don't worry about 'retaliation' as such - although you might worry about getting a bad letter of recommendation. Again, it depends on your relationship with your letter writer.
Also, it's worth preparing some sort of briefing for your writer - especially if they've never done it before. These links were helpful in guiding my writers:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mernst/advice/write-recommendation.html
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Memos/Grad-School-Recos/
http://www.fulbright.org.uk/media/pdf/PGStudy/sampleletter.pdf
http://gradschool.about.com/od/askingforletters/a/refletchargood.htm
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Just make sure you're consistent - whatever you use in the end. This should be true of your application essays too.
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Cornell, Brown, UIUC all take spring applicants but you need to rush to get your application submitted in time.
Why not apply for fall admission instead? You've got more than enough time to prepare your application for fall 2013.
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What are you applying for? A PhD or a Master's? It's OK to be less focused in your application for a Master's course - not for a PhD.
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I have no idea how admissions committee work but I have a similar-ish problem - we get given raw percentages for our exam marks. These are normalised year to year though, so it's incredibly difficult to get above 70 unless you're some sort of genius. This obviously doesn't compare well to the US system, where it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that 70% would be a B/C grade?
Anyway, I contacted a few departments to ask what they think - they said that at most big universities, the admissions commitees will have experience dealing with foreign grade scales. They suggested leaving the GPA field blank and letting the committee decipher your transcript themselves. I would suggest doing this so that your GPA isn't mistakenly categorised as poor.
I have additionally included a page long appendix to the transcript that explains in more detail the degree structure and how grading works.
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Why does it have to be a 6 month internship? Could you not do a 3 month internship after graduating?
Also, are you not going to work after graduation? An internship in the last few months of your final year may not be the correct path here - why not just go straight for a full time job?
It's not a very bad thing to not have any internships but it is bad. Hopefully you have valid reasons for not doing any - but be aware that a lot of undergraduates will start accruing internships after their first year of study.
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Also - CMU's MS CS degree is open to undergraduates without a CS background.
http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/education/master/index.html
Finally, just noticed your GRE score - you should be aiming for near 800. It's not so important if you have a CS background and research experience but as someone trying to break into the field - you'll need to make the other parts of your background stand out.
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Core courses for CS - yes. I'm not sure how it works there as a special student unfortunately.
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Assuming you can cover the pre-requisites well enough then yes - it will help greatly. However, it might be pretty tough to cover everything necessary within a year! I'd advise a hybrid approach - take as much as you can this year and then apply to courses which are aimed at both those with and without a CS background.
I don't know many but Georgia Tech is an example-
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/future/masters/mscs
UPenn also has a course-
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I've not seen a US style transcript but from what I can infer, these usually contain course level information along with a grade for each course.
My undergraduate transcript (from a British university) only lists exam marks for each year and gives no course information. Assessment was via these overall end of year examinations which contained numbers of questions about each course - proportionally weighted to the length of the course.
Would it be beneficial to add an appendix to my transcript listing the courses that we did each year? What other supplemental information would be useful?
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You might wish to do a little more research. MIT doesn't offer a MS only program - you would have to apply for their PhD program and pick up a MS on the way. Harvard takes a handful of CS Master's students every year. Stanford takes about 150 but between 5 and 10 times this many apply.
Neither of these courses are suitable for someone without a CS background. You would need to either take the CS GRE Subject Test and do well on it or demonstrate other background in CS through college level courses, as emmm says.
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Thanks Usmivka and amlobo - will try this out. I've already prepared a briefing pack for each based on what I've read online but there's only so much you can summarise!
Great idea regarding my dissertation supervisor - he actually studied in the US, so he should have a better idea of what is expected.
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I'm applying from the UK - I've been out of university for three years, so two of my letters will be from managers (previous and current) and one from my dissertation supervisor who is currently a lecturer.
My two managers are not used to letter writing - whilst I've linked them to as many resources as possible online, it is difficult to know what an ideal letter should look like, in terms of formatting, content and style. Has anyone seen any good examples online which they could share?
Secondly - is there anything my managers can include to strengthen their letters? I understand that academic letters carry more weight - so this puts me at a disadvantage. However, I have very good relationships with both managers so these are likely to be far stronger recommendations than nearly all of the lecturers (or professors) that I know.
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Probably not? I think GREs are only used to filter out poor applicants - once you've made the cut it has little relevance.
That said, I have no idea what the threshold is but I would imagine 163Q should be sufficient in the majority of cases. That's a pretty decent score. Perhaps one of the more experienced forum members has a better idea of this.
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Do you have any publications? From the research I've done so far, I think that's what distinguishes successful top tier applicants.
Your GPA and GRE score look great. Will the recommendation letters be strong?
Also, what area do you want to do your PhD in? Computer graphics?
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A question, as someone who is applying for Masters courses - what kind of chance would anon1 stand if they were to apply to MS programs at those universities?
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Just to add to Azazel's post - our company does a lot of 'big data'. One of the most useful skills to have with that is a good understanding of statistics - something which I'm guessing nearly all forms of academic research will involve. We have a PhD on our team who did his PhD in machine learning - he's very valuable to the team because of his extremely good knowledge of stats. It's not so much the subject you did as the skills you learn.
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No - once they're sent, they're sent.
Are you taking the paper test? On the electronic test you are shown your quantitative and verbal scores before deciding whether to send them (not AWA though).
If you're concerned about sending through weaker scores just wait and send them afterwards. It will cost you a little more but in the overall context of graduate school applications. it's a minimal extra cost.
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I don't know about your profile or how competitive admissions are but very many of my friends have studied Economics at, and speak highly of British universities such as-
- Cambridge
- Oxford
- London School of Economics
Perhaps to your professors in the US PhDs at those universities are worth less but certainly within Britain (and to employers) they are quite highly regarded.
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Hey snit,
I think I'm in a similar boat to you - I've been working for a couple of years now, and am mostly going for the professional Master's track where possible. That's not to say I'm writing off a PhD but I think it's highly likely that at this age and stage in my career, I'd head back to industry after graduation. (I'd be 32 or similar by the time I finished my PhD!)
The top end of my list is very similar to what you've listed there - from reading around it seems like Princeton and Harvard have a more research based focus. I'm applying to UBC too, if you're not averse to the idea of applying to some Canadian universities, I think they are reputable departments, possibly not as competitive as many of those you've listed and often better with financial aid.
(Another thought, related to your third point - if you want to find a non-technical co-founder, perhaps you should apply to some universities with strong business schools too.)
I've sent you a PM with some additional questions too :-).
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I don't think there's any harm in putting it on your resume. All the better if you have a good rank at completion! (This depends whether you've taken similar courses during your undergraduate and whether you are currently studying or working. I think it is slightly impressive to have done them while working because of the time commitment required. Certainly I've found it almost impossible to get enough free time to complete the few courses that I've started.)
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I'm applying for MS CS courses too this coming application round. I've been out of university for three years now, and so getting more than one academic reference will be tricky. I've emailed several of the departments that I plan to apply to and they say that it is not a problem if I only have one strong academic letter.
I think it's better to go for whatever makes your application strongest - I'm going for two professional (current and previous employer) and one academic (dissertation supervisor).
(Anecdote: I applied last year with good GRE scores, a reasonable transcript and SoP. Two of my letters were written by academics and one of those I'm certain was weak (I received emails when he started and finished writing the letter. He spent less than 15 minutes on my letter and forgot to submit it to one of the universities in time. I didn't get a single admit.))
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Ah, right - perhaps contact Imperial and find out which might be more suitable. I don't personally know enough about the courses there to give an opinion.
Recommendation promised but no reply--what would you do?
in Letters of Recommendation
Posted
Call her - text messages can be easily missed.