Pauli

Why did you post this here?

Agreed. A good percentage of my classmates here in grad school sharpened their skills from industry experience, and a few of my labmates would not picked up their technical prowess, team skills, and strong ability to adapt to diverse topics.

Do not take it unless it's required, and very few programs really require it.

That is such BS, and my profs in both undergrad and grad would disagree to those statements to varying degrees. It's certainly and especially very untrue for certain fields such as HCI, graphics, machine learning, and information retrieval, where research and industry work overlap (some very strongly like in HCI, others less so like in graphics). Of course industry experience is not the best substitute for valuable university research, but you make it sound like nothing value is taught from industry experience when going into research. Furthermore, a couple years of industry experience offers many things to the original poster that directly applying to a PhD program doesn't offer: strong material to put into the essay portion of the app and possible interview on how that experience relates and tie to research interests, improvement of technical skill sets that would have probably needed to be acquired through taking foundation courses or self-study, more opportunities to network with others, etc. Computer science research isn't just a monopoly of the ivory tower mentality of grad school, but can also be found each decade in great quantities in the industry experience. Regardless of what one professor says at some university, I'm relying on the experiences of my fellow grad student classmates at my university and who I meet from conferences, as well as from professors who I've talked with that also hold positions in adcomms from both my undergrad and grad school when I say that a strong and valuable couple years of industry experience couldn't hurt at the worst, and has many great benefits to compensate lack of undergraduate research experience and weaker academia when applying to grad school at the best.

I would have to totally disagree with you on that point that a couple years of industry is useless, because industry experience is still highly valuable to adcomms for engineering fields and some science fields. This is especially true in companies that provide similar research training that is similarly done in a grad program. Additionally, you can get a great reference letter from a superior in the industry field that is also an alum, which does go a long way. When I sought advice from the people I received my reference letters from and who provided guidance to grad school as well, they also offered this same advice to me. Basically Zoop, industry experience is totally a legit option.

Agreed with above. I didn't know if it was possible to get IRB approval from a research institute without an associated principal investigator from that research institute.

I can think of a couple options you can do: Apply to a master's program from a university and boost your credentials there to hop to a more admissions-competitive university. Apply directly to the PhD program while contacting potential advisors to see if you can garner interest. Do a couple years of industry to boost your professional experience and use that as part of your portfolio material in your grad school app. Not pursue a top 20-ranked PhD program and go to a PhD program while achieving strong credentials during your time there.

No difference. American employers don't differentiate between the two if you do very well during your time there, especially since both programs are comparably decent. Choose the one which offers the better financial package.

There's nothing wrong with that, and it appears that it doesn't seem to make a huge difference on how one is funded in liberals. Many grad students in, say, the science and engineering fields -- especially those who have the option to be funded by their family -- may just end up having their education funded from external sources like directly through the university, research institutes, or academic foundations for a variety of reasons. This includes boosting their academic portfolio, CV, or resume (e.g., by listing awarded fellowships) or as an effect of working in a research lab to gain research experience (i.e., since working in a research lab usually waives students' university tuition and fees).

I recommend a regular laptop and just take it with you to use it for what it should be used best: writing research papers somewhere comfortable at a coffee shop Since anything that requires high-performance or sensor recording will be done on a lab machine.

I mean, it also depends on what your field is. In computer science, casual is totally the accepted norm (even in conferences! O_o).

Or a bike! Oh man, our campus is stupid huge...

I'd recommend that you do some research in finding a subfield of computer science that interests you to determine what would be a good fit. It's not apparent to many outside of CS, but CS is a very broad subject that can be as technical as computer architecture and robotics, as theoretical as computational theory and algorithms, as interdisciplinary as human-computer interaction and machine learning, etc. Narrowing down your possible CS interests will make it easier to pinpoint the range of programs that would be up your alley. There's a lot of cool subtopics in CS, and it can be daunting to try to narrow down the possibilities, but it's definitely a valuable process in completing that first step.

Based on your academic credentials and your professional work experience, I highly encourage that you attempt to apply directly to an HCI program. Some universities offer HCI as part of the CS curriculum, while others offer HCI as its own major, but the CS programs with HCI focus and the purely HCI programs have varying degrees of similarities (most specifically, more technical requirements for those CS programs). In those cases, I would recommend that you not take the GRE subject tests unless it's a strict requirement at the CS program. Additionally, I also suggest that you emphasize on a strong application and great reference letters from professional contacts vouching for you, as they go a long way to alleviate academic weaknesses (e.g., low GPA). I had a low GPA myself (sub-3.0), but I got into a strong program because I had stellar reference letters and a diverse academic portfolio. If you wish to further advance your portfolio, you could also try to locate some HCI-themed courses at a local school and earn credits and academic experience there. It would be also beneficial to contact prospective HCI professors at programs you would like to apply to in order to gauge some direction in gaining their interest and improving your admission chances.

I'll just add in my two cents and say that these comments are great, and that ranking don't really matter in the long run. I think that the focus should be on the research lab and research area.

I feel ya, Tsujiru. I really want to see the reviews too so that I can liberally "borrow" the working sections into another NSF grant propsoal. :/ Oh, right! I'm so used to Facebook that I forget about that part. I heard that Google services like Google Groups are also rendered useless in China? I totally understand, PhDiddy. This seems to have been a recent thing, as previous years didn't have such a delay. The first reason was that there was a lot of applicants who applied, and the second reason is that I believe one of the main coordinators for the program this year is relatively new and is still trying to figure out the ins and outs, so has been delayed in sending out responses. People who got in only knew due to tentative offers and orientation trip details. Is this your first time applying to EAPSI? I know that many people who applied didn't get in until their second attempt, or only got in their first attempt due to factors such as connections (e.g., advisor knew host researcher) or had research area specialized only to a specific host country (e.g., New Zealand). Hopefully, the NSF EAPSI 2013 thread will give opportunities for those applicants to hear from how the NSF EAPSI 2012 awardees did their apps, and I'd be glad to help out in that thread.

That's what I've been pretty much doing, wheatGrass. If I really like a section in my previous published works that nicely sums up something, I repost it in another research work submission with the appropriate citation.

Don't. Like what the others have said, it's highly discouraged and I like the term "academic imbreeding" that anthropologygeek used, since it perfectly describes what it pretty much is. When I asked my profs in undegrad on their thoughts about doing grad in the same department, they told me that they didn't like that and preferred that students seek a "wider worldview" in pursuing grad at another institution. It really is true, because if you stay in the same school, you end up being one-dimensional in your field.

Which USC?

So true. I know for a fact that professors that get generic requests for join their labs have led to those professors automatically deleting those e-mails.

2.7 GPA and got into a decent grad school. The university also had a minimum 3.0 GPA requirement, but that was overlooked because... Reference letters from world-famous professors Double majored Rreasonably high GRE score Diverse and tough course load Active participation in student organizations Fluency in a second language Several years of study abroad A year of undergraduate research (Okay, fine. I'm a Pacific Islander too) Anyway, I don't buy into that stereotype that low-GPAers can't get into decent grad school. If you have the academic portfolio, then you have the credentials. EDIT: I <3 this thread.

Actually, I've used a sketchbook a lot, which has been using for practicing coding concepts in isolation and for also planning design stuff. Great investment and gives me flexibility that line-paper notebooks annoying lack.

quinquenion and Eigen hit it on the nail with their comments. I also heard that graduate school admission committees use fellowships as a huge factor to accelerate acceptance in their programs (i.e., if a prestigious fellowship program awarded you a fellowship, they did the work for us, haha!).

We But we doooooo have one! http://www.facebook.com/groups/186522478131456/ We've been lazy though since we're only roughly half membership now (only 15 out of 25 joined so far). Hope your Facebook group's faring better, lol.

Totally true, Eigen. To be honest Vito De Saint Urbain, you should listen to Eigen. The graduate school norm really does follow that self-plagiarism in general is a no-no.