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[Trung Nguyen]

Greetings everyone!

I'm very happy to have know this 4rum via my friend who was admitted to a PhD program in Texas A&M.

I'm applying for Fall 2011 intake for both Master and PhD program, preferably in the US. I really appreciate if you could take a look at my profile

and give me some advices on the suitable target program and what to prepare next.

I'm a 4th year student in CS at KAIST (It's in the top 2 engineering and technology universities in Korea).

Overall GPA (7 semesters): 3.76 / 4.3. (This is mainly due to my low GPA of the first year. My major-based GPA is around 3.9).

English: I'm preparing for TOEFL although some programs might waive the English requirement because our language of instruction and examination is English.

Working experience: 1 internship at a company in Vietnam, 1 internship at Google Korea, participation in one open-source project.

Research: research assistant at a lab in CS dept.

I've been working with the same professor from Oct last year which means my professor will have worked with me for almost 1 year by the time of my application.

At the beginning I worked as an assistant for a master student, but last semester and this summer, I'm working on my own research topic.

As a result of this research, I had 1 poster & 1 workshop publication at MobileHCI'10 as first author. We expect to submit another full-length paper this summer on the same topic.

I'm pretty sure that the professor whom I am working with will write me a decent letter of recommendation.

Another letter I intend to get from my advisor whom instructed one high level course (recognized for both undergraduate & graduate level) which I took when I was a sophomore. We had one individual research-related project in that course which I did pretty well although I only got an A for his class.

For the 3rd letter, I'm considering to ask my mentor at Google Korea because I have no other professor in my dept that knows me personally.

I also got the 3rd prize in a National Informatics Olympiad in high school (in Vietnam) and several other scholarships.

My target programs are: PhD in Human-centered Computing at Georgia tech, PhD in Technology and Human Behavior at Northwestern, PhD in HCI at CMU, PhD in Instructional System at Indiana, PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology at Stanford, MSc at British Columbia, MSc at Waterloo.

What are my chances of being admitted to those programs? And given the remaining time, what should I do to best enhance my profile? Right now I'm preparing for the GRE exam.

Thanks!

Edited June 14, 2010 by Trung Nguyen

[OH YEAH]

It appears to me that your background is in CS. Is there any reason you don't pursue any PhD programs in Computer Science? For instance, I would think that Stanford's CS program would be more appropriate than the one you selected, especially if you want to work with their HCI group.

[Trung Nguyen]

It appears to me that your background is in CS. Is there any reason you don't pursue any PhD programs in Computer Science? For instance, I would think that Stanford's CS program would be more appropriate than the one you selected, especially if you want to work with their HCI group.

You're right, I'm majoring in CS.

I'm very interested in interdisciplinary research, that's why most of the programs I'm targeting is in HCI.

But my focus is more on the applications of CS to education such as learning technologies or instructional system.

Actually, the PhD program in Stanford is coordinated by both the school of education and computer science, that's why it really attracts me.