Pauli

It's very risky to submit scores for the subject GRE, and you really have to score well in it to make it worth your while to the adcomms. It won't. Adcomms aren't concerned about what school you attended, but how well you did during your time there. This is especially true with the adcomms at UT Austin, because I had lunch with one of the members during one of their lunch with a professor events when I was an undergrad there, and he said they don't focus on that since they treat candidates on an equal standing.

I'd ignore the rankings. Better to do your best with the hand you're dealt with.

Professors almost always give A's and B's in grad courses. If you check out the grading distributions for grad courses, they're almost always all A's or B's. It's mostly because grad students already do well in classes, and also because professors simply give those kind of grading distributions. You have nothing to worry about with your GPA. It's the qualifying and preliminary exams that grad students worry about.

Many computer science grad programs do offer intro programming classes to grad students who are pursuing computer science graduate students with little or no prior programming experience. Also, there is a decent list of computer science fields listed on Wikipedia which gives a crash course on the types of things the field has to offer. I glanced over it and it seems pretty comprehensive of what fields are described, and is a great start to narrowing your interests.

Grad school makes you nerdier, causing increased usage of glasses.

I split mine into teams of two or three.

No one cares about grades in grad school. EDIT #1: Ah, I see that you're not in engineering or science, where grades don't matter. Most universities in America actually do increments of 1.0 for courses (i.e., A = 4.0, B = 3.0, etc.), so that may sound even more inflexible to you, but those details are irrelevant in the long run. EDIT #2: Are you an international student? American employers don't view grades at American schools as intensely as those from overseas schools, because they don't judge people from a single number but instead from their overall portfolio.

@ANDS!

lol, no

I want to warn you that you should also base your decision on whether you will be a good fit in your lab and to see if you will be able to contribute. If the program or lab of interest is already top-heavy, you might end up being pushed to the side or given lower priority as compared to one which is looking for people to fill in.

Aaaaaaand that! Average application fee: $50 Typical # of schools applied to: 10 Total application fees: $500

EDIT: tl;dr Meh, thesis helps, lol.

It's not that they care about whether you wrote a thesis or not, but the fact that it's a core differentiating factor that distinguishes masters students. As there are more masters students applying, recruiters are now using thesis vs. non-thesis to separate the two. It should also be noted that non-thesis masters can generally fulfill the degree from solely coursework, while a thesis masters has to be reviewed by a committee of qualified faculty with strong credentials to determine whether the student can earn the degree. From the eyes of a recruiter, the masters with thesis looks much better for the sake of the thesis masters going through a more rigourous route to earn the graduate credentials. What you're saying makes sense for less competitive positions or for internships, but it does not hold for the general case of more competitive positions. In other words: what if you had two candidates that had simiarly strong background in the area and simiarly strong showing in the interview for a single opening? For more competitive positions where there is a field of strong candidates, there will be some criteria where recruiters may need to differentiate between the applicants. Before, it was a bachelors. It's getting to be a masters nowadays. Now recruiters are expecting it to be a masters with thesis. I've personally seen this trend firsthand as more of my grad student classmates are switching from non-thesis to thesis due to increasing requirements. EDIT: It's important that people see this through the eyes of the recruiters, and to understand why recruiters are starting to put more focus on applicants that have masters with thesis, just because there's a growing trend of more masters applicants applying and the need to differentiate from the pack.

Let's say you're a recruiter that is hiring for a program manager or software engineer, etc.. You have two candidates: one has a masters, one has a bachelors. From that information alone, who has the advantage? This is how recruiters felt whenever they visit university campuses. I just had that same conversation recently with a batch of recruiting representatives from various tech companies. And the anecdote about masters being the new bachelors and that master's with thesis is the new master's? That's not my words, but the words from Google recruiting reps. I'm not saying this from information that I picked up from hearsay or from a course, but from actual recruiters and friends who work in those tech firms.

Recently, industry has been pushing the requirement to having a master's in order to be hired for positions that used to require only a bachelor's due to factors such as more candidates having bachelor's and positions requiring wider skill sets and experience. Recruiters have also told me that with the masters being the new bachelors, this has shifted the masters w/ thesis to be the new masters (w/o thesis). Food for thought.

Yes, I'm always impressed at how students at smaller schools connect with their profs! That's rare for the bigger state schools for undergrads.

Do you mean applying to just one school? No, that's rare. I also applied to only one school, but that's because I had a back-up plan of going to industry if I wasn't accepted (I eventually did).

Nope, never had that problem at all. Did my undergrad at a large state university (approximately, fifty thousand students). Social connections came from diverse range of people at my school who shared similar experiences with me (e.g. similar interests, same major, shared classes, or lived in my dorm). I benefited from finding decent-sized groups that I could strongly associate and not have that kind of drama, especially in regards to things like applying to grad school. Seems like the situation you're experiencing is common from people who went to smaller schools, judging from my high school classmates who also went to similarly-sized universities.

Fenders! Be sure to get your bike some fenders! They will keep you cleaner for it. Also, rain pants would be good as well. I just use a poncho for the top part of my body.

What? Who's spreading around these myths that the reputation of a university matters? That's so shallow, and very unrealistic as its not the reputation of the university, but instead on a much broader range of factors such as the specific strengths of the program's specialization, the reputation of your advisor, the list of your publications and the strength of that conference or journal submitted to, and your overall academic package. Whoever tells you that the faculty selection is decided on the prestige of a university is ignorant, as no decent faculty selection committee would be that shallow.

I found them randomly at my university's bookstore while initially looking for Pilot G2 pens, but I resorted to Amazon when i couldn't find them in the office big box stores.

More applications due to higher demand from market upswing for advanced CS degree holders.

Doesn't matter in the long run for schools with similarly strong strengths that rank subfields very broadly in those categories mentioned. It's better to pick a grad school based on the level of interest in a research lab, not on a numerical prestige of a university's specific department or program. Unless you're undecided on your subfield interest, then a certain department's perceived quality usually offers more options to narrow down your interests. Pretty much an excellent employer is not going to look at your CV or resume and say "oh, that other candidate went to a higher ranked school, so we'll choose him". They'll be deciding on how you spend your time there.

Boo to you Pilot G2 gel pen lovers! Zebra Sarasa gel pens are way better (I converted a year ago, lol)! Plus I usually take notes on a sketchpad or thicker paper, so the ink doesn't bleed while I enjoy the joys of inky silk smoothiness. /drool And boo to people who stick with free school supplies! Your equipment is bad, and you should feel bad!

For what subfield? If you don't care about what subfield, then either is fine.