weninger

CMU is in Pittsburgh Yeah CMU too. Faloutsos, Ziv-Bar, Lafferty, Mitchell are all great. I think they are all mostly geared to ML and not data mining so I didn't list it. But no doubt CMU is great.

As a PhD student in Data Mining I would recommend Stanford, Illinois, MIT, Cornell, Berkeley, and so on in that order. I am at Illinois currently, and the researchers from these schools seem to be at the top of the game.

Some of you have expressed a desire to read previous winning essays. I won the NSF and NDSEG last year, my essays are at http://www.cs.illinois.edu/homes/weninge1/research.html Enjoy. And good luck to you all.

Yes, fellowships are taxed at the normal rate. For example, I have the NDSEG, which pays (say) 1000 dollars per month (actually quote more). My pay check is 1000 dollars but at the end of the year I will owe about 10% of my wages to the federal government and about 8-9% to my state. Make sure you make estimated tax payments or (in my case) have your wife deduct extra amounts from her paycheck to make up for it. Good luck.

Regarding UIUC, they make no distinction between the MS program and the PhD program (like other top schools). And you will get full funding. The only question is whether you will work as a TA, RA or fellow. I, fortunately, received outside money and am not funded by the university, but my unofficial perception is that everyone is funded here. The hard part is getting in. Good luck.

Hello newms, You seem to have a great record. The one thing that stands out to me especially is your ICDE paper. That is an excellent db conference. Your scores seems high but I am not familiar with your institution. The DAIS group (that I belong to at Illinois) is pretty competitive, and pretty full at the moment. I'd say you have a decent shot assuming you've a well written application submitted on time. Good luck!

You're too hard on yourself. You seem to have a great record. Nix the subject GRE though.. those don't mean anything. Your GPA is a bit on the low side, but not enough to keep you out of anywhere. The most important thing is the show your research aptitude. I am a PhD at Illinois and you seem like you have a shot here, (depending on the strength of your research). Regarding your list, for your research area (not my research area) you may check out UPenn. I'll talk to my languages friends and get back to you later.

The CS GRE is not important at all. In my opinion, the only use for the CS GRE is if you are coming from an unknown country with an unknown computer science department or your undergraduate degree is in an unrelated field. Basically, if you have a CS degree from an accredited university, don't that the CS GRE. Your general GRE is plenty high, but UIUC (where I am a PhD student) doesn't look at the GRE at all. So, it may not matter. In general, my experience is that the GRE does not help you get in to any institution, all it can do is provide an excuse for someone to keep you out.

Got it! Congrats to all of the others fellows and honorees.

Congrats! Now I guess I'm not going to bed tonight.

You mean... you just received this tonight?

I just called the 800 number hoping to edit my primary field of interest after I reviewed my application and realized I put down the wrong damn field (FYI: Comp Sci. AI != Database and Information Sciences). They said that this was impossible because the reviews have already been done, they're just looking over the rankings now. She also said that they hoped it would be done by the end of this week. I thanked her for putting up with all of the calls.

I'd talk to your main letter writer and see what he/she thinks. In my opinion, its best to find out the exactly consequences of your actions rather than imagining them. If your letter writer says that he'll ruin your career or some other nonsense then you can worry about the decision's consequences. But until you ask, you can't know for sure. Good luck.

I just posted my entire app on http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~weninger/research I hope that will suffice.

Yup, I just put them up on my research page on my web site: http://people.cis.ksu.edu/~weninger/research.html The links are at the bottom of the page. Enjoy. And let me know if you have any critiques or suggestions.

Mine said: "2009 NDSEG Fellowship Award"

Well I got the award. And I am no grad school stud. I got a 730Q/580V have a 4.0 GPA, never took the CS Subject GRE. I did have a Top Secret Clearance and several publications. See http://www.cis.ksu.edu/~weninger if you are interested. I can post my essays if anyone is interested. Good luck to you all.

I just received the fellowship. My guess is that the emails are going out at the moment. Good luck everyone. Tim Weninger

Hey. I'll be there for Data Mining and Machine Learning. Welcome aboard! I'm from Kansas State University. Hometown is in central Kansas.

I was admitted to UIUC and five others (including Minn, Wisc, Purdue (Big 10 schools) ). Although I did not apply to UMich. My understanding is that UIUC is a fantastic program, especially in machine learning. Several of the UIUC professors are the worlds best in Machine Learning and they are flush with cash. Although I have not been to UMich. I would say that this is an easy decision: go to UIUC.