weninger

Most have been admitted... but many have not.

By... not terribly difficult, I mean, if you meet the stated requirement (GPA, TOFEL, SPEAK, GRE or whatever) and you seem like a serious candidate, you are likely to be admitted (same with Stanford, Berkeley, etc. MCS from what I understand). PhD and MS with thesis is identical admissions process, that is, very very selective (source: I review applicants (now that this cat is out of the bag... I shall not be answering specific questions.) )

The most important thing that you should understand is that at UIUC, MS in CS != MCS. MCS is a professional masters program. Coursework only, no thesis, no research. MS in CS at UIUC (and probably Purdue) is admitted and treated exactly like the PhD (with obvious MS != PhD differences). Many PhD students get an MS on the way. So, this is incomparable... sorry :-)

MS and PhD have the same admissions process and requirements.

The first few rounds of admissions are out. The next rounds will come as folks start figuring out their funding sources and graduation rates, etc. I don't think I'm allowed to say more than that ;-)

Its not terribly difficult to get into the MCS program at UIUC. As a current PhD candidate at UIUC, my understanding is that if you have reasonable grades, GRE and SPEAK score, then you stand a reasonable chance at admission. There is never funding given for MCS students, and they don't receive an adviser, so its the department is more comfortable to open the doors :-) Same at Stanford and Berkeley from what I understand. However, this is not to be confused with the MS in C, i.e., MS != MCS. MS has the same admissions standards and process at PhD.

To follow up on my last post, more to the point. You've got a good list there. I would certainly add CMU and UDub. Depending on what you are interested there are really great researchers a WUSTL, UPenn, and UNC-CH. For PhD students my advice is: find a list of professors first, then consider the school. For MS/MCS students: always pick a top 5 school if you can.

The Microsoft Academic Search is great for some things. But this is not one of them. H-index and paper numbers are not the best indicators of research quality. Most salient point -- People can write lots of papers in crappy conferences. A much better indicator is funding amounts and sources. That is, NSF funds are competitive and very rigorously reviewed by top scientists. If a university (in America) has 3 awards for ML research vs 1 or none, then its obvious where the quality research is.

Its tough to say because at UIUC MS/PhDs are evaluated together, and as you can expect, we are highly selective. We try take to take the top few students from each country. For example, in the last four years my research area (5 profs) have admitted one student from IIT bombay who had a paper in a top conference. I can't say for sure without seeing your full application... but I will say that its tough even for the top students at IIT etc.

I am a PhD student at UIUC, and while you're correct that admission is competitive for PhD/MS, its not so bad for MCS. MCS is also not funded at UIUC, probably not funded anywhere. If you like research topics why not consider MS/PhD?

You'll have no problem getting into a decent grad program. Maybe Stanford, maybe not. But I would certainly apply for top 5 with your credentials. If you like Jure's stuff, we'd be interested to have you at UIUC. Why don't you email me and we can talk about it. Google can find me. :-)

Folks, As you guys already know, you are an awesome community. I used theGradCafe as a resource when I was applying and now I suppose I should make a donation: I won the NSFGRFP and NDSEG fellowships (Computer Science). My essays are available online for your use. My essays address many of the opinions that you guys seem to have been debating (references, broader impacts, etc). http://www.cs.illino...1/research.html (at the bottom) Also, I'm on the admissions committee at my school (Top 5 in CS). Let me know if you have any admissions questions.

The goal here, reiterating my point from earlier, is that research publications are meant for an audience. It is often the case that researchers will write papers to venues they believe they can be accepted, and thats fine; I think that its best if you submit your papers where interested people will read them. These two often go hand-in-hand -- but not always. If you read the related work, which I assume you did otherwise you'd have no business writing a research paper, it follows that people of similar interests will read the same venues. Therefore, succinctly, you should submit to the venue where the majority of the related work appears. Good luck!

I am a PhD candidate in Data Sciences at a Top 5 CS school. Most of the researchers here write their code in Matlab or C++/Java. For our purposes there is no need for software engineering, language semantics, arch design, etc. Math Theory and stats is important, but the Bachelors CS stuff isn't necessary so long as you have a cursory understanding of programming. While I didn't read everyones post before mine, I would tend to say that you can apply to Data Sciences PhD without a CS degree. My office mate has her BS in Math, and she does fine. Good luck to you!

I have posted my winning NDSEG and NSF proposals on my Web site. Enjoy: http://www.cs.illinois.edu/homes/weninge1/research.html