Pauli

The annual National Science Foundation's East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI) program has been cancelled for 2018. https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2018/pdf/10_fy2018.pdf For EAPSI alumni from 2016 and before, we were all notified that the program would be cancelled for our individual host countries, and the NSF budget report confirms that it is cancelled for all host countries for 2018.

Ah, it's that time of year again.

1) Do we have to know our exact research area when applying to top CS grad schools? Or do they want us to go into grad school exploring topics/advisors? Seconding on the "No." If you haven't chosen one already or been connected to a research lab already, you usually have a year to decide after taking specialized courses of the research areas in that program and familiarizing yourselves with the research labs there. 2) No. Research experience is research experience. I did undergrad research in AI and Robotics, but my grad research is in HCI.

Aspireperspireinspire, it's because of the application's second deadline for the Pre-Doctoral and Doctoral for the supplementary deadline on January 9. I know that for Doctoral students, they have two items for the supplementary materials deadline: reference letters and verification of doctoral candidacy. I'm guessing the pre-doctoral applications have their own supplementary materials.

There are three types of Ford Foundation Fellowship awards: Pre-Doctoral: For incoming and first-year doctoral students. Doctoral: For doctoral students already in candidacy and finishing their last year. Post-Doctoral: For post-doctoral students. The applicants discussing in this thread have primarily been the pre-doctoral ones. They tend to be optimistic and energetic. The applicants in the other other categories have not been as talkative because the spark in their eyes have already disappeared from the devastating battles they fought throughout their PhD years.

In case people haven't started or are confused about getting started on the final report and outcomes due on December 1, here's the quick start steps: Go to Research.gov (http://www.research.gov) and log in as NSF user with the same credentials as your FastLane credentials. On the Project Reporting Dashboard, click Project Outcome Report. Click the Reports Due < 12 Months tab. Outcomes Report Click on the Create/Edit link. Fill out the text form and submit when done. Final Report Click on the Create/Edit link. Complete each of the seven sections and submit. Some quick notes: I'm too lazy to see if the online document guidelines for the EAPSI Final Report and Outcomes is updated to match the items for the contents on Research.gov, since things can change every year. Therefore, it might be a better idea to write the report directly from items explicitly shown on Research.gov. Disregard the deadline about when it's due. The deadline listed is the government end-of-fiscal year date, which is not the actual December 1 deadline that is specific to the NSF EAPSI program.

The Japan program guys had similar discussions in their Facebook group last year, and pretty much people had similar confusions for the final report. You can check out the EAPSI 2012 thread for these discussions (I don't remember if it was in that thread or in the corresponding Facebook group discussions), but to summarize, basically just fill it out to the best of your ability. I recall last year that most fellows didn't really start working on the final report until about a day or two before deadline.

Reminder that final reports due next week on December 1.

It's not work if you enjoy it. I don't remember when was the last time I didn't work less than 60 hrs/week, probably half a decade ago or something. But I absolutely love the research that I do and it's very rewarding. But things are much more different nowadays. The world is more competitive, there are more advanced scientific methods to pore over, technological equipment to utilize, etc. It's very hard to do good science with just a bachelor's since we're cramming more knowledge that we're expected to know nowadays compared to in the past.

Well, I've met way more people in grad school that applied to more than 10 programs compared to less than.

Unfortunately not.

Could be either. Some offer it as a specialization, some offer it as a major. It depends on the university.

Unfortunately, CS grad school isn't learning about programming, just that it happens to use it as a tool. It's like that famous saying about astronomy not being about telescopes, only that it involves uses it. If you really want to focus on programming in grad school, then you should instead consider programs that have software engineering disciplines. Programming languages isn't about programming. It's about the theory involved in programming languages. If you want to do programming, you will not find it in a programming languages program. It's analogous to trying to learn English by taking English literature instead of English as a Foreign Language. If you want to focus on programming in grad school, don't do programming languages.

There is no "programming" program in CS grad school, because programming itself is not a research discipline. Do you mean something like software engineering? Or is there anything specific in CS that you want to do that involves programming? CS grad school involves programming, but it isn't its major focus.

It's stated in the Uploads document at the application website: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/FordFellowships/PGA_046607 You might want read all the instructions material, since everything you'll need to know is listed. If you don't submit it in the correct way, your application won't be reviewed.

You may want to not include this journal publication on your resume. If the review committee checks more closely, they may disregard this publication since it wasn't formally published, or in the worst case, consider it unethical to include it since it isn't officially published or on track to be published.

This is not an unusual situation for pre-dissertation applicants. What you need to do is provide candidate reference letter writers your resume/CV and a report describing your academic situation, such as classes you took, your academic relationship to the reference letter writer, any research you've done, what your future plans are, your research interests, etc.

In that case, 'Algorithms and Data' and 'Robotic Science and Systems' is fine. 'Database Design' makes sense for computational biology, but probably less so for your minor.

CS degree holder here. Here's my remarks. [Yes] Algorithms and Data: A good fundamental course to get you up to speed on the technical stuff behind programming. [No] Robotic Science and Systems: A specialized course that seems more like an elective gears towards the more narrow and unrelated field of robotics. [Yes] Logic and Computations: A nice complementary math course that strengthens the important logic stuff that comes with programming. [No] Computer Organization: A fundamental prerequisite course for an introductory computer hardware course. Not ideal for non-computer engineers. [No] Database Design: An elective course that caters more towards IT people. [No] Theory of Computation: An advanced theoretical CS course. Not ideal for non-computer scientists.

First, message the prof to say that you are a researcher visiting the country to attend a conference, and that you are interested in visiting the lab for a research cultural exchange. Then, if the professor accepts and hasn't already made the suggestion, then inquire yourself about the possibility of doing a one-hour research talk of either what you are presenting at the conference, about your dissertation research work, or an overview of your research lab (or maybe a combination of the three, up to you). This not only shares yourself and your research to that lab, but also shares the types of research they are doing outside of their lab. Lastly, if the visit is approved and you have your research exchange, return back to your home institution and then e-mail the professor to inquiry about possible post-doc opportunities. It's a good idea to do it after you have left and gave it some time to simmer after you have left, since the professor can give some thought of the impact of your visit. Doing this gives a sort of informal "interview" to the professor, and also allows the professor to more comfortably respond to you over e-mail instead of in-person.

If you want funding as a Master's, your best chance is through a well-funded research lab, but you'd have to be a pretty top-notch applicant, and even then, Master's students are not as worthy an investment to any lab director compared to a PhD student because they're just too short-term in comparison.

I've actually done this throughout this year, and it was a very valuable experience. Made some many valuable contacts that way.

Supply and demand. There are only so many seats in the classroom, buildings to hold those seats, qualified instructors and professors to teach those courses, etc. With many applicants, the admissions committee has to carefully consider the best fit applicants. If they just accept anyone, then lower-quality students will degrade the program since on-going and emerging research would have less chances to succeed (so decreased opportunities to fund future projects from funders) and less successful students graduating (so less companies willing to donate resources). That might not be the right question to ask. The better question is whether you are willing to learn something useful in grad school. Grad school is where you have to learn to take the initiative to learn while there. They're not going to spoonfeed you should and should not know; that would be what trade schools do.

Don't list Coursera courses in your application. Better to state the skills that you have from taking those courses without mentioning that it was through Coursera. It's relevant for your application to be considered, but not to be accepted. It'll have to be balanced from the strengths of the other application components. You can mention it as prior research experience. They'll care more of what you actually did in the group, not that you happened to be in the group.

Hmm...my university had 16 new NSF GRFP this academic year, and several of them who I know never mentioned having any issues. Does your university have an NSF representative? When I had questions regarding my NSF funding, I would talk with the rep at my university.