zecone13

Ahh, yeah. I suppose I am sort of lucky. I have two classes at the moment, and neither have tests/reading. Each one has a pretty involved homework due once every two weeks, and then a big project due at the end. So far, I have been taking a full day each week to do the homework and get back to the lab. The next homeworks look a little bit more lengthy though, so I bet balance will be shifted a little bit as this semester goes on. That was half the reason I joined the lab so early in the first place

Pretty good... Joined a lab on the first day of classes and have been working in it double time 7 days per week since the start. Got my name on a paper 2 weeks in, and am now running with my research. Very cool lab, and classes are quite interesting, but I will need to change my habits and start taking 1 day off per week to do something else. So far I don't mind since the work is very exciting, but I'm sure the stress will creep up on me!

Headed there for robotics in fall. I was out of the country for the month of march during visits and never got a chance to go. I think my only chance before I actually come in fall semester will be late May, so I guess I will have to check out apartments then. If anyone is looking for roommates PM me! I'm trying to find a place close enough to campus that I can bike, and I don't know anything about the town yet.

It's risky, of course, but CMU is leaps and bounds above other robotics programs to the extent that the risk is worth it. Of the ~20-25 MS students per year in the past couple of years, roughly 50% apply to the PhD program after their MS, and roughly 60% of those are admitted. I'd bet the other 40% have few problems being admitted to other top 10 schools. Of the other 50% headed to industry, a good chunk are picked up by Google and Microsoft who are willing to pay some hefty starting salaries. Not bad options in the least. Especially for such a short program.

I'm in the same situation. Admitted to MS robotics at CMU vs. funded PhD at Gatech. I'm headed to CMU because, honestly, summer internships with companies that hire out of CMU will make back whatever crazy debt you get into before you finish a PhD 6 years down the line, and CMU is THE leading robotics research school. That's what I want to do with my career, and money isn't going to stop me from that. In addition, the program is short (1-1.5 years) and has given out tuition waivers in the past. Worth it IMO

Yeah def. I have not heard from Stanford yet. I'm not sure what's taking so long but I'm leaving the country with no internet for 1 month in another 3 days, so hopefully they respond soon!

Just got waitlisted :/ I'm the "asdljfasdkfl fingers crossed!" post.

I don't think any of it means anything. The first one sounds like they just want to make sure people don't get tossed out because they forgot a letter or something, so they probably check with everyone to get all components of the application before even beginning to review. The second email sounds like a generic email to the whole applicant body, stating that they are taking longer than expected. I don't think either email means anything significant about your application in particular.

I don't think it's a preliminary round thing; my acceptance to the same program was a different letter. I think this is a waitlist, but I'm not sure why they wouldn't just say that. To me it sounds like "if anyone else doesn't accept, professors will look through this list that we just put you on and find someone they like, which may be you!".

Wait list at MIT is a sad place to be. 99% of people with offers will take them I fear, meaning the wait list might not matter. D'oh well, I'm happy with the other schools I applied to anyways.

Well they haven't even released waitlists yet. I think they've done their individual student reviews and are going through them as a committee one day at a time now, so each day we will see a few accepts and then a lot more rejects for that day. At least I hope that's what it is... maybe I'm just blissfully ignorant about the whole process.

I don't know what to think :/ It seems strange that 4 troll admits would pop up on results at once even if it is 1 person posting them. I hope that's the case though. I don't think I can wait another week to hear!

Probably headed to Pittsburgh at this point. I'm from central California, so the biggest change will be the weather. Time to buy a jacket and throw out the flip flops :/

Weird! I was about to post this exact same thread in another day or two, but about robotics and for a master's degree. All of my friends and parents are recommending that I go to Stanford because it's close, has a big name, has good weather, and will look great for finding jobs. On the other hand, all of the people from the robotics place I interned at last summer (who actually know about CMU) suggest I go to CMU, and that it is far better than any other school for CS/robotics. I've heard Stanford has some difficult quals (they aim to make it so that 50% of students pass their first time, and 70% of students pass by their second time). After all of the research I've done, I'm leaning towards CMU because they have more professors dedicated to the topics I want to study, but it's really hard passing up the name, prestige, weather, and entrepreneurial spirit of Stanford. In any case, this is the biggest 'first world problem' I think I've ever had.

I applied for robotics/adaptive control/computer vision. Did not hear yesterday, so hopefully they'll release the remainder today or Monday. I think our interest lie more on the side of computer science, when most of the acceptances yesterday looked like they were EE side.

Here's my favorite: "Oh, dude you'll get into Stanford for sure. You have a sweet GPA!"

Ahh that's good to know. I guess I am in that 60%, which brings my chances/hopes up a bit!!! Good luck to you!! The anticipation is killing me. I'm leaving the country and will have no internet pretty soon, so I hope the results come out before that or else I'll have to wait a month to hear

Someone else on here said they asked their friend to go visit the graduate coordinator, who told him that only a small fraction of the AA admissions were sent out on Jan 23/24. This is a very indirect reference, but I'll believe it. I have a feeling they would like for everyone to attend visit day, but their planning is less than ideal due to the GRE score matching screw up. I think that is also the reason that we see so few admits on the results search. My application just changed from incomplete to complete 2-3 days ago, so there has to be some sort of activity going on behind the scenes still.

Wow, we're the same person! Yeah, I'm not too fond of the debt, but Stanford is arguably the best place you can go to school for our discipline. Aside from the academics, it's the only school of the top 4 in robotics that is based in Silicon Valley, so there is an alleged sense of entrepreneurship permeating the campus. That's worth the debt to me.

I went in and talked to a few people in the aero department last year about just that. One prof told me that both the aero and ME departments at Stanford made you get an MS first because generally they liked the assurance of knowing that their Ph.D students had a high quality education before they start. They don't know the quality of your undergrad curriculum when you come in. Because of this, they rarely take MS students from other schools into their Ph.D program, and make incoming undergrads get an MS first. In addition, they admit a lot of undergrads into their MS program but only have a few slots for their Ph.D program. He told me that if I didn't check the box saying that I'd like to continue to a Ph.D on my application for MS, there was no possible way to continue on to a Ph.D later (you can't petition in after 2 years of MS if you don't check this box on your application at the start). In addition, to do a Ph.D you have to have an adviser that wants you to continue on under them before you apply to a Ph.D 2 years down the road. You will want to have done research under that adviser for the 2 years of your MS, and even after they sign the proper forms, you have to pass your qual exams (which I've heard have gotten easier for aero in recent years). Apparently those have somewhere around 50-75% pass rate and you can take them twice. If you get past all that and are able to fund yourself for 2 years of MS tuition (somewhere around 80k), you may begin your Ph.D at Stanford's aero dept, which is generally funded. It sounds like a lot of hoops to go through, but they want to make sure you're dedicated. I also talked with a Ph.D student who said they awarded very few fellowships each year, so while there is a slim chance of getting funding for an MS, most students pay their own way through it. He said the EE department was notorious for admitting MS students who want to continue to a Ph.D, making them pay 80k, and then flunking them on their qual exams and not letting them continue to a Ph.D even though that's what they set out to do when entering grad school. Also, question for you: Did they say anything about how big the entering class is this year or if admissions are done? I didn't hear back yesterday and I'm a little nervous now. I don't know if they sent everything out or not but I applied for robotics/computer vision also. What is your profile like if you don't mind me asking ? Edit: for others who didn't get acceptances yesterday, grad coordinator just sent me an email saying that my application was currently under review (so there's hope for us!)

While he has a good opinion of you, it's a letter that suggests that you did well in class, but does not provide any mention of research potential. Depending on what your lab wants to hear this could be good or bad. An admissions officer from CMU has this to say about letters of rec: "Which letter do you think is stronger? It turns out that Letter 2 is very strong. Letter 1 actually counts as 0. At CMU we mark all letters like letter 1 with the acronym D.W.I.C.. This stands for “Did Well In Class” which counts for 0, since we already know from the student’s transcript that he did well in class. By contrast, student Y’s letter gives us a lot of information. It explains that the reason student Y didn’t do better in class was that he was busy doing research. It also tells us that student Y started doing research on his own initiative, and that he is quite good at doing research. The professor was impressed enough with student Y’s ideas that he took him on as a student researcher despite student Y not having high grades." http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf It depends on what you're applying to, since you're going for an RA spot in a lab and this post was about Ph.D admissions.

Well for the past 2 years, the results on this website indicate that they send out acceptances on Feb 7th - Feb 9th. It doesn't look like there have been many interviews in the past either, so I'd assume that they've made initial selections and are interviewing the people who are on the edge of the cutoff right now, after which time the committee will review whether they have made the right decisions and then send out letters. That's just my take though. Very few schools have made engineering/CS decisions as of yet, so I think it's the norm to not have heard anything back from any schools at this point if you applied to those fields. Usually early acceptances are given to superstars or people that look good enough but will not be offered funding. I got accepted to Georgia tech for a Ph.D 10 days after sending in my application, but I'm pretty sure I was only accepted that early because they didn't have funding for people applying to robotics programs, and that I would need to find an adviser to get myself an RA or TA position - hence the easy decision to admit me early. Long story short: don't stress now. Wait until Feb 10th-15th. If nothing comes in the mail and you haven't gotten a call or email then start stressing

Just rejections ? Also, it looks like last year's rejections (and previous years) came out in early March, with acceptances in early Feb. Did (s)he hear that it was different this year or something?

Hah, these are tough to do but knowing nothing else about your application, I'll bet that you'll get into 3-4 states and 1 private. I applied to robotics Ph.D. programs. Undergrad: mid-teir undergrad only. well respected engineering program Major: Materials Engineering GPA: 3.9 GRE: 170Q/154V/4.5AW Research: Lots and lots and lots of projects. 2 publications in review LORs: 2 of 3 said they'd be the best LORs they had ever written. Last one (I think) was strong, and talked about research. All 3 come from top 5 schools. Applied to: Carnegie Mellon GaTech (got in for ME Ph.D!) Stanford Caltech MIT Berkeley Good luck everybody! I don't even know you but I feel like we're a family due to this whole ordeal.

Since submitting 1 month ago, all I can think about is whether I'll be in or not. "If I get in here, will I get funding? Well.. maybe I can see what some of the CVs of current Ph.D. candidates in that program look like to compare against. Wow, all of these people went to Caltech or MIT for undergrad, had a 4.0, and had 5 first author publications by the time they got accepted. Shit, I'm not getting in anywhere. Might as well start training to be a plumber." Then, 20 minutes later, "I think I'll read this guide on graduate school applications for the 80th time, EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY SUBMITTED ALL OF MINE. Wow, this says that letters of rec are the most important part. Mine all went to top 5 schools and say I was the best student they've ever had. I'm getting in everywhere!" Rinse and repeat. It's a roller coaster, and it's not going to stop for the next couple of months. Like most of you, family, friends, and girlfriend think I am going insane. I'm not arguing with them either