hahakk

For CS PhD admission, how do schools choose interviewees? (all short-lists, those on border-line only, exceptional applicants to attract them, or not at all) It would be very helpful for me if you could specify how certain schools do it. I don't see many interview offers on the result survey except Berkeley, so I was just wondering about interview process. Also, do grad schools generally interview students from their own undergrad? I thought about it and it would seem weird to be contacted by a professor whom I already know in person...

I meant the former. There are really many good applicants for such top schools that I don't think anyone can be assured for admission unless he or she is truly extraordinary. But I think you are as good as some applicants I know who got into those schools. At the end it seems to depend on the quality of the recommendation letters and the overall impression of your application than anything else. If I were you (applying for PhD), I would mostly apply to schools in top 20 and maybe one or two big public schools below them for safety.

According to what I know, you have a good chance. That being said, for such top schools that you mentioned, it is also quite possible to get rejected by all of them. I think you will be certainly admitted by one of top 20 PhD programs (especially big public schools) though.

Hi, I got CS GRE 81 percentile.I already sent it to all schools because I thought I did pretty well, but turned out that I did a little worse than I expected. Such score seems to be an okay score, but I am wondering whether it could hurt in any way, especially for top schools where I believe a lot of applicants who choose to submit CS GRE scores will have very high scores. Based on my knowledge, I wouldn't have needed CS GRE anyway since I am from a well-known school and majored in CS. After all, I am not sure what options I have at this point other than not reporting the scores on the application (although the scores have been sent by ETS). Thanks!

Thank you for the response. But I just wanna let you know that I am not looking at brand name. I guess you will know better than me that most good computer science schools are either big public schools or ivy schools with small departments.

in AI field btw, if this will make big difference.

I hope to know how selective they are (considering how strong applicants are as well). In my opinion, strictly talking about admission difficulty and very roughly, there are 3 tiers in top 20: tier 1: top 4 tier 2: UW Seattle, UIUC, Cornell, etc. tier 3: UCLA, UCSD, etc. Ranking-wise, it seems Princeton fits to tier 2 and Harvard fits to tier 3, but since they have really small department, I wonder whether the admission difficulty will be higher than (bigger) schools in the same tier? I know this is a rather dumb question, but need some info to choose reach / safety school stuff...

I see. Thanks a lot!

(Attended college in the U.S.) I asked for recommendation letters for 6 programs and got all of them submitted in 3-4 days. The recommender was my ugrad research advisor so he is essentially the one who can talk about my research potential. I mean, I could expect a short and fast letter from a professor who taught class since there is not much to say about, but from a research advisor, this seems "too" fast. Anyone experienced such fast rec letter from an important recommender? I fear that this indicates he doesn't much care about me...

btw, of course one will have high chance if he has high gpa and good research experience, but I am especially talking about whether there exists some relationship between the undergrad honors program and the grad school admission.

Is it true that if you are in Berkeley EECS honors program, maintain good gpa (i.e. >3.9/4.0), and successfully complete research requirement, you will have very high chance of getting into Berkeley CS Phd? I know Berkeley CS Phd is extremely difficult to get in, as much as MIT or Stanford, but I heard some of my friends (I go to Berkeley) saying this, and also it is shown on the website that many of the EECS honors program alumni do go to Berkeley grad school (although it could be masters or EE program...). Does anyone know about this?