Pauli

I honestly think it really is field dependent. Computer science papers, especially those in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction papers, are published more often because sometimes authors release publications that are incremental improvements over their previous iteration. Furthermore, it's a waste of energy for those authors to try to reword content when the reviewers familiar with the previous work already know that they're incremental, but crucial, changes. Just because it's not accepted in one field doesn't mean it's not accepted in the other. Edit #1: Actually, self-plagiarism is especially a very common (and accepted) practice for full-length papers that extend workshop papers, and journal papers that extend full conference papers in my field (especially in like the introduction and previous work sections). It's just like using library packages in programming code; why re-invent the wheel when you can incorporate it and focus on the ideas which improve it. But I agree that self-plagiarism is definitely frowned upon if you self-plagiarize from, say, a full conference paper to another full conference paper. Edit #2: Oh, Eigen is in chemistry. Yeah, I'm familiar with how publications work in your field. Self-plagiarism is definitely a no-no for the natural sciences.

Well, to be honest, I guess it depends on the field. I see self-plagiarism often in computer science papers, but it seems accepted in the field due to higher publication rates (that's just a quirk about computer science).

They're found in the Proposal Status section on NSF FastLane, but the program coordinators haven't posted the review up yet. It's still showing up as pending for this year (I can still see my reviews for my rejected proposal from a couple years ago though). You could bug Elena to see if you can get those reviews directly from the program reviewers.

Go ahead and keep contacting potential professors. I also recommend that you first contact the financial aid office (http://financialaid.tamu.edu/) and send an e-mail to a finaid advisor on possible funding revenue (e.g., on-campus university job). Additionally, contact your department's advising office and inquire about any available TA and non-TA positions that are available to you for possible options. It basically all comes down to contacting people to locate possible options. Since Texas A&M is such a huge school, available positions that waive tuition and offer financial assistance frequently change. Edit: I stress that you do contact the ECE advising office for more information, too. Funding and financial assistance is usually first-come, first-serve, so if you contact soon, you'll be ahead of the other new ECE students that are looking for financial assistance as well.

Congrats on admission to ChemE at TAMU! Unlike in Asia, rankings mean very little in America. Americans believe that people are defined by their tangible and intangible skills and their previous accomplishments and merits, not by a single number such as some test score or some university rank. That's why rankings mean crap in the long run since you're going to grad school for its research lab, not for its university prestige. But well-respected professors is a very important measurement because that means that professor is great to work with, has many connections, collaborates with other great minds, is very helpful in pushing acceptance rates of publications, etc. I'm not in ChemE (I'm a PhD student in CompSci), but the department has some great people and have some friends there. And I think you get to work at the awesome building that is the Jack E Brown building?

I'm not in the ECE department at Texas A&M, but I'm nearby in the CSE department. If you aren't receiving guaranteed funding from the ECE department, you must start e-mailing ECE professors right away and try to promote yourself as to your interest in working in their lab and reasons why you would be a good fit to receive funding. This is a crucial stage because you're officially competing for funding spots with other new ECE graduates who may not be receiving immediate funding. And don't "cold contact" the ECE professors. They receive those kinds of contacts all the time and usually delete those messages. Sell yourself soon and sell yourself well. ECE at TAMU is nicely funded, but they're not throwing money around unless you have the merit.

Fluid Interface? Who's the director in that? Is that the pioneer of the LilyPads?

That's funny what you mentioned about UCLA having a weaker ML program than UT. Isn't at least one professor in the UT program (Dr. Miikulainnen?) a UCLA graduate?

My first advice is to never choose a computer science program based on its department prestige/rankings unless you really have no clue what field you want to specialize in and want to have plenty of options available to you. That's because you're automatically pigeon-holing yourself to a limited range of subfields. For example, if you wanted to do robotics, you're neglecting amazing university programs in the states of California and Texas where they do much better in some robotics subfields like you mentioned. You also mentioned computer architecture, and you didn't even mention programs such as Wisconsin, which does much better in that field than in Yale or MIT. Pick a field you're interested in first, THEN pick the university. Then work your way up from there.

what_ever_, it's very difficult to gauge your question since those universities are really like comparing apples to oranges. What were you aiming to specialize in? The difficulty of finding a faculty position is all determined in what field you're interested in. For example, were you interested in doing theoretical artificial intelligence or robotics research work? Then you would receive pretty decent training for obtaining a faculty position in those fields. How about human-computer interaction or machine learning? Perhaps UCSD would be up your alley. The strength of obtaining a faculty position is dependent on the strength of the fields offered by those program. Basically, if you're judging which grad school to attend in order to get a faculty position, you might need to be more specific on your needs.

Congrats to y'all for getting accepted to grad school at TAMU! There's a bajillion grad students here, but everyone seems to keep to themselves in their part of campus depending on what college they're in. But it's always nice to hear from fellow American grad students (I'm one of the rare ones in engineering, lol).

Texas A&M is really popular for international students because of its great value: the tuition is very low and the programs are very strong, especially its business program. In other words, it's a great value school. Northwestern has a more prestigious program, and you can't go wrong if you can afford it or if you are willing to pay back loans for a long time.

Oh, hey. Just came across this thread now. Looks like I'm the only one replying from the Taiwan program. For those of you who got accepted to the other programs (e.g., Japan, China), have you guys already created your online communities (e.g., Facebook group)? The Taiwan group already set up their Facebook group and Google custom map. I'm pretty interested in how the other programs are group coordinating. Edit: BTW, for those at the orientation, I'm the brown dude with the black cap wearing the "Taiwan" sign to rally the troops from the Taiwan program, lol.