PhD CS Fall '12 Need some help

[vision15]

Hi, I am Sandipan Banerjee, now a final year undergrad student in the CSE dept at National Institute of Technology,Durgapur,India.I want to get into a PhD Program in a US Uni which has a good vision group.Am posting my credentials here:-

1.Currently working under the head of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Dept. at the Indian Statistical Institute,Kolkata on text extraction and recognition.Working towards a publication.

2.Research intern at Jadavpur University's,India CSE Dept during summer and winter 2010 on document analysis.Publication pending.

3.Working at my college on clustering.Trying for a publication.

4. GPA-7.9/10.Mostly due to the dismal grades I got in the first year,after that have got straight 8's.Topper's grade is about 9.3.

5.GRE: 800Q,720V,AWA-4; TOEFL-yet to take

6.Was ranked among the top 0.8% in my country in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination 2008.

I have shortlisted some universitites on the basis of my research interests and the reputation of the faculty there and also after talkin with some of the Grad students there,and here they are:-

CalTech, UW,Madison,Rutgers,,NCSU(Sent my GRE score for free to these first four graduate schools),JHU, Northwestern,UC-SB,UC-LA,UC-SD,UC-Davis,SUNY Buffalo,Duke,UMCP,OSU,UT-A.

If you could grade these uni's into ambi,mod and safe schools for my profile it would be great.Also suggestions for any other university I have missed out are most welcome.

Thanks.

[newms]

Welcome Sandipan!

I think you have a pretty strong profile. Of course, getting your paper published (especially if it is at a well known journal or conference) will help your application a lot. I'm not in vision, so I'm not 100% sure on the strengths of those programs in computer vision, but my best guess of the schools you have listed in

Ambitious:

UT-Austin

CalTech

UW Madison

UCLA

UMCP

Moderate:

UCSB

JHU - they might have a very low admit rate though (I'm not sure)

UCSD

UC Davis

Duke

OSU

Rutgers

NCSU

Northwestern

Safe:

SUNY - Buffalo

I don't like calling schools 'safe' because there is no sure thing with graduate school admissions and you could easily get into your 'ambitious' school without getting into a 'safe' school.

If you put together a good SoP and have good letters of recommendation, I think you should be able to get into at least a few of those schools that you have on your list. I would suggest that you trim your list a little since 15 schools can be a lot to apply to. Good luck!

[vision15]

Thanks newms for such a quick reply.

Yes, I know how much a publication can do for you,especially for PhD admits,and believe you me,am trying for it. Can you help me out regarding a thing? I have heard that for PhD admits,a student should mail his/her professor(s) of choice personally with research proposal,how do I go about it?And should one mail only to one professor in a research group for the same university or multiple ones are okay? I hope you can help me out here man, am really in a soup right now.

Thanks,

Sandipan

[the poisoned pawn]

Thanks newms for such a quick reply.

Yes, I know how much a publication can do for you,especially for PhD admits,and believe you me,am trying for it. Can you help me out regarding a thing? I have heard that for PhD admits,a student should mail his/her professor(s) of choice personally with research proposal,how do I go about it?And should one mail only to one professor in a research group for the same university or multiple ones are okay? I hope you can help me out here man, am really in a soup right now.

Thanks,

Sandipan

No. There's no need to, or I can say it's not a must. You can try to email your favorite professors and ask about some of his current work and share with him/her your favorite area. That may do the trick. They don't have time to reply to a lot of emails.

If you have time to have a reasonable look into the projects/papers of the professors that you want to work with and mention how it matches with your background/interest in your SoP, I think it is just as good.

[newms]

No. There's no need to, or I can say it's not a must. You can try to email your favorite professors and ask about some of his current work and share with him/her your favorite area. That may do the trick. They don't have time to reply to a lot of emails.

If you have time to have a reasonable look into the projects/papers of the professors that you want to work with and mention how it matches with your background/interest in your SoP, I think it is just as good.

I agree with the poisoned pawn. There is no need to email professors a research proposal - most applicants don't as this can be risky (What if the prof isn't interested in your narrow research proposal?) What you can email profs about, is if they are looking to take on new students in their groups/labs or as the poisoned pawn says, about their research.

Prof David Evans from Virginia gave a good outline of what you can say at his page here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/advice/prospective.html The example he gives is a bit intimidating I think, since most applicants wouldn't be able to write something as specific as the email he suggests, but he also gives some advice on what you shouldn't do.

[vision15]

Thanks both of ya for helpin me out here and boy was that article from Prof.Evans daunting! I don't even have my own webpage But anyways got some idea on how to approach professors and will do so definitely.But when to start mailing them,ideally?

[newms]

Thanks both of ya for helpin me out here and boy was that article from Prof.Evans daunting! I don't even have my own webpage But anyways got some idea on how to approach professors and will do so definitely.But when to start mailing them,ideally?

Yeah, the example he gives is a bit daunting since that email would be from the *perfect* candidate, which no one is. So just use it as a guide. I would think that you could start contacting them between now and the summer. The summer might be the best time since they wouldn't be as busy with classes. You should try to contact them before October since then it might be too close to the application deadlines. So you have some time.

PS. Putting up your own webpage is easy with google sites. Here's an example one applicant from last year did: http://www.ashwinisy.co.cc

Edited May 25, 2011 by newms

[yamamotomiechan]

Hi I also applied to OSU, UW-Madison, NCSU, UCLD, and UCMP the last year.

My profile was GPA:3.7, GRE(Q:790, V:310, A:3.5), and TOEFL-ibt:86.

I had one publication(the first author).

I was accepted at UW-Madison as Ph.D(without funding) and at NCSU as Master(without funding).

I was rejected by all other schools.

After applying the universities, another paper was accepted by an international conference (the first author).

As soon as I told this information to UW-Madison and NCSU, I got accepted.

I hope that this is good information for you.

[vision15]

Hi I also applied to OSU, UW-Madison, NCSU, UCLD, and UCMP the last year.

My profile was GPA:3.7, GRE(Q:790, V:310, A:3.5), and TOEFL-ibt:86.

I had one publication(the first author).

I was accepted at UW-Madison as Ph.D(without funding) and at NCSU as Master(without funding).

I was rejected by all other schools.

After applying the universities, another paper was accepted by an international conference (the first author).

As soon as I told this information to UW-Madison and NCSU, I got accepted.

I hope that this is good information for you.

thanx man,it really was helpful.did u mail any prof beforehand?and whr r u frm?Japan?I think you dint get any funding coz of your low verbal n toefl scores,getting funding depends a lot on those (at least my seniors say so!) otherwise your profile is very good...what do u thnk my chances are?

[yamamotomiechan]

>did u mail any prof beforehand?

I sent e-mails to each professor (mentioned in my SOP) in each university beforehand for once. However, I could not get any reply. I think that sending e-mails is usually not so important. I saw sometimes that some people contact with a professor beforehand, but I think that it is in a situation where a professor knows an applicant. But, I think it is better to do anything you can do.

But some professor's homepage says "Please do not send any e-mail before acceptance". In this case, I think it might be not good to send an e-mail.

>whr r u frm?Japan?I

Yeah! I am from Japan

>what do u thnk my chances are?

It is very difficult to say your chance to get accepted. But I think you have enough chance to be accepted at universities you listed. For me, your profile looks very good.

If you can publish a paper you are working on , you have good chance of acceptance at most universities you listed. But it is still difficult to estimate.

In UW-M, there were 1200 applications the last year.

I think UCLA, UT-Austin, UCSD, UMCP, CalTec have the almost same number of applications or much more. This is just my guess. I do not know actually how many applications they got the last year. So it is very competitive.

[csKid]

Your profile is good. One point, there are no safe schools. If you're applying to Vision, consider RPI, UVA,WUSTL too.

I got rejected by UBoston. And lots of indians apply to UC colleges. I see you've put all of them , in your list. Why not diversify? Selecting universities smartly will give you choices on where to go. On emailing profs, you can consider mailing graduate students also, about get info on the research more than you can see on the website.

Having seniors from jadavpur univ in the places where you apply to, definitely helps them benchmark you, and you'll have better chances.

[vision15]

Your profile is good. One point, there are no safe schools. If you're applying to Vision, consider RPI, UVA,WUSTL too.

I got rejected by UBoston. And lots of indians apply to UC colleges. I see you've put all of them , in your list. Why not diversify? Selecting universities smartly will give you choices on where to go. On emailing profs, you can consider mailing graduate students also, about get info on the research more than you can see on the website.

Having seniors from jadavpur univ in the places where you apply to, definitely helps them benchmark you, and you'll have better chances.

Thanks Bro r u from JU urself?n about diversifying my list,yes I have been doing it.I have gone through each of the University's website and found Profs of my liking and here goes the new list:-

Sure Schools:-

SUNY, Buffalo

UMD, College Park

Johns Hopkins University

U of Wisconsin-Madison

NC State

Maybe Schools:-

California Institute of Technology

Texas A&M U

UC-San Diego

UC-Irvine

Rutgers, New Brunswick

NYU

OSU-Wenger

UMass-Amherst

Northwestern University

Lehigh University

Columbia University

The Sure Schools are the ones I have made my mind upon,the Maybe Schools need some pruning. Anyways am still in the process of making the final list but would definitely like to hear your opinion about it.And I'll start mailing Profs. once I finish the greater part of my internship,say around mid July.

@rejectmenot:RPI n UVA are gud fr vision?I checked deir website but dint find any substantial research goin on dere,maybe I missed it

@newms,OH YEAH,poisoned pawn:whatsay?

[frenzydude]

@Sandipan, I think I have replied you already elsewhere, haven't I ?

[vision15]

@Sandipan, I think I have replied you already elsewhere, haven't I ?

@frenzydude:yup u hav n man ur a killjoy!(no offence dude) so wt do u think abt d new list? like u said back then,i hve spread it out...n congrats on USC btw my sister lives in LA btw

[mewtwo]

@rejectmenot:RPI n UVA are gud fr vision?I checked deir website but dint find any substantial research goin on dere,maybe I missed it

No clue about UVA, but I know RPI has a dedicated vision person (see here). I have no idea if he's well-known in the field or not. Based on the one vision class I took with him, I'd be slightly disinclined to stay at (or, in your case, attend) RPI had computational vision been my field of choice. I couldn't quite understand his thought process/expectations/etc, and felt as though there were some type of constant disconnect with him.

Edited June 9, 2011 by mewtwo