yaey

that's not cool.

YAEY!!!

seems like you could solve a lot of your problems by being flexible on your choice of topic why don't you talk to all the professors, not just the ones interested in what you're interested in? you don't have to pigeonhole yourself into one area. you like climate modeling but maybe you'd like other stuff too, i think personality fit is more important than research fit so you should select for that first

Do they ask you to program things? Explain concepts? Do tricky math on a blackboard?

What month? I fucked up this term and I want to know if I can make up for it next term.

Or do you have to keep checking the website?

Do they?

I took the math subject GRE in November, and my scores won't be available online until December 10th! How can I make sure grad schools see my scores in time? (I figure there must be a way, or else why would they offer the test in November?)

Seems counterintuitive...but cool

^See title

Will it get me into Stanford?

So now I'm terrified that the NSF people will read my proposal and be like "HAHA YOUR PROPOSAL SUCKS" I didn't actually ask anyone to look at it. I probably should have, but I finished it the day it was due.

I only became a CS major third term of junior year, so I don't have a lot of the background necessary to do well on the GRE. I took the practice test and scored at 67th percentile. Should I bother to write my GRE score on the applications? Does it spell doom for my application? I'm applying to MIT, Stanford, etc Also I think I could get a much higher score on the math GRE, so should I take that too?

For the PhD degree, you're usually supposed to write about your research experience, but master's candidates often have ambitions in industry. What do I say if I just want to get a job? Somehow that doesn't sound like a noble pursuit that will shape the future of humanity. (In my specific case I want to pursue a Master's because I haven't taken enough CS classes and want more background before throwing myself into the working world, but somehow I don't think they want to hear that)

Hello, You guys were very helpful on my last thread so I thought I would post another one. Yesterday I decided I wanted to work on artificial intelligence in grad school. My friend told me that since I have no experience in AI I should try to find a part-time research position for the academic year. There are only about two professors who do AI at my school (Caltech). If I can't work with one of them, should I work with someone in a different subfield of CS, or email professors at other schools and ask to work remotely? MIT, for example, has a much larger department. Thanks!

Thanks! Now I have to worry about getting into grad school... If I apply to CS departments, do biology and math papers have any meaning? Or are they looking for publications in my field of interest? I'm starting to change my mind about computational biology because I'm taking a machine learning class and it's really fun.

Actually, it's not too late for me to major in computer science. I think I'm going to do that.

Thank you for the advice! Quite honestly I don't really care what I do as long as the day-to-day experience is tolerable. Like I would be fine working in almost any field or profession where - The work is challenging but not impossible - The work is concrete and not too open-ended (I tried doing pure math research and had no idea where to begin) - The work involves math and/or computers (I like programming, and I majored in math) I've worked on five research projects since 2006 and they were all mildly enjoyable (except the math one), so really I would enjoy working in almost any field. To be honest I'm just thinking about computational biology because most of my research experience is computational and biology-related. So I think I'd have a higher chance of getting a position there than in a lot of other fields. Also, I think what I really enjoyed about my projects was the programming. Which is funny because I'm not very good at it. And it's too late for me to major in Computer Science.

That's a good idea, but there are so many professors! How do I narrow down which ones to check out in the first place? Even if I just take the top 10 schools in applied math, the top 10 schools in CS, and the top 10 schools in biology, that's still around 30 schools, and each one has like ten professors... Another good idea! Unfortunately, my favorite articles are about psych experiments or the social sciences...which are cool and all but I don't think they involve that much math. Also, my current school has very few classes in the humanities. I really liked my anthropology class, but I can't see myself going to Africa, learning a new language, and trying to fit in with the locals. Well then I have to decide what kind of job I want! I read this post and considered becoming an actuary. It looked interesting but they said you had to have actuarial internships first, and of course I don't have any of those. To be honest if I could be a software engineer at Google or something I probably wouldn't even go to grad school, but I don't think they would hire me because I have limited CS experience. How can I get to know my professors? Do I just go to their offices and chat about random stuff? I already have plans for this summer (an internship doing protein design for a startup), so I don't think I have time to work with them more. By the way, can I get a letter from the guy I'm doing an internship with? Right now I only have two research mentors who I can really ask for references. Thanks for the good ideas everyone!

So I have a broad background and would be fine with doing pretty much anything...I'm thinking computational bio or some other form of applied math but I'm pretty flexible. What field should I go into, and if it's something interdisciplinary like computational bio, what departments should I apply to? (it doesn't seem like most schools have a comp bio department). Also, what schools should I apply to? About me: I'm a junior majoring in math at a top 10 school. I haven't taken many math courses because I didn't take a lot of classes my first two years and my school has a lot of graduation requirements. Also, I spent junior year taking a few CS classes (and one biology class) because I thought I might want to go into computational biology or become a software developer. So basically I just have analysis and algebra (so far) and a couple of side classes. Next year I should have topology and (maybe) a graduate analysis course. I feel like my lack of math classes rules out applied math, and my lack of CS classes and biology classes rules out CS and biology. But I don't know. I have a 3.9 GPA. I should score well on the General GRE but I don't know how I'll do on the subject tests. Actually I don't even know what tests to take. I'm kind of confused...I think it depends on what departments I apply to and I don't even know which ones to apply to... I've done a lot of research, but I kind of hopped around from lab to lab (spending a summer in each). They were all in different fields, but all my work was computational or involved math or mathematical modeling. I have six publications (none first-author). Three high-impact publications in biology, two low-impact publications in psychology, one arXiv paper in pure math. I won't be able to take many non-math classes my senior year because I'm behind on math major requirements. So how should I apply? Thanks