Caltech, Gatech, UT Austin. Which one is better for theory?

[magicfoo]

Dear all,

I applied for CS PhD in theory and have got admissions from Caltech, Gatech and UT Austin. I cannot decide which one is better. Any suggestions?

[rrs]

Dear all,

I applied for CS PhD in theory and have got admissions from Caltech, Gatech and UT Austin. I cannot decide which one is better. Any suggestions?

I would say GaTech, unless your advisor at UT Austin is Adam Klivans.

By the way, when did you hear from CalTech CS? Did a faculty member contact you? Did you status on embark change? Was there a visit day?

Thanks,

[magicfoo]

The faculty sent me a brief notification email yesterday. Seemingly the official admission with details will come soon.

[MrRoboto]

I would say GaTech, unless your advisor at UT Austin is Adam Klivans.

By the way, when did you hear from CalTech CS? Did a faculty member contact you? Did you status on embark change? Was there a visit day?

Thanks,

As a current UT student, I would say that there are many great theory profs. I'm AI, so I've only taken classes from them, but our theory dept. is a very tight-knit group. If learning theory is your thing, then Klivans is the man. But we also have Zuckerman, Gal, Ramachandran, Plaxton, Waters, etc. All these profs are doing theory, but they all have their own specialties. It's quite important to visit the places if possible, so you can get a first-hand look at the dept and meet the faculty.

Good luck!

[malmadur]

Dear all,

I applied for CS PhD in theory and have got admissions from Caltech, Gatech and UT Austin. I cannot decide which one is better. Any suggestions?

I applied and was accepted to GaTech and UT Austin as well (but did not apply to Caltech), so here are my thoughts.

Caltech - top-notch faculty, but the department is extremely small (both the theory group and the overall CS department -- on the theory group website, apparently there are only 4 grad students!) so I would not even consider it UNLESS you are interested in quantum computing (since Caltech has Kitaev, Preskill, Schulman, and perhaps others, while I don't believe anyone at GaTech or Austin does anything quantum-related).

GaTech, UT Austin - similar in many ways: good weather in mid-size towns, overall large schools, similar prestige levels, great theory faculty (though GATech has a larger theory dept, so maybe is a little better in this respect), GATech has a new CS building and UT Austin is building one soon. Personally, I would choose UT Austin (since I liked Austin the city a little better, I thought the other prospective students were a little stronger, and UT Austin gave me a higher stipend), but it seems really to be a coin toss.

[zer0]

Dear all,

I applied for CS PhD in theory and have got admissions from Caltech, Gatech and UT Austin. I cannot decide which one is better. Any suggestions?

I am not familar about Caltech coz they're so small. I didn't apply UT Austin but I did some survey before. The theory group there is quite strong, but mostly are complexity/crypto people. So if you like either one of the two, that's definitely the place to go. I got accepted by GaTech and decided to go there coz they have a very large group that covering almost every subfields of theory.