Fall 2012 evaulation - updated info

[DaniMetroplex]

I posted here several months ago asking about my prospects for Fall 2012, and I received some helpful replies. Now that I have a clearer picture of where I am and what my goals are, I'd like to ask for your assistance in helping me put together my short list of programs to apply to. Current stats:

Current program: MS at North Texas

GRE: 630 V/760 Q/5.0 AWA

GPA: 3.8

I've had a TA-ship for the last 2 semesters, and apparently my work has been well-received. For the record, I'm not just grading papers; I handle a lab section for our beginning programming class.

I have some research experience, as I am going the thesis route, but unfortunately, nothing is publication-worthy at the moment. Also, I will almost certainly be switching specialty areas between my MS and PhD. From what I've read on these boards, that doesn't seem to be unusual, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My master's work is in compilers, but for a PhD, I think I'm gravitating more toward security (I have at least taken a security class; this isn't out of nowhere).

The first two LoR's will come from my advisor and probably another professor who is also the graduate coordinator for our department. I haven't decided who to ask for the third letter and would appreciate your input on that as well. My possibilities are probably a professor who could write me a did-well-in-class letter, or someone who can speak directly to my teaching abilities but is not a professor (I think his title is Senior Lecturer or something similar).

Let me know if anything needs clarification; otherwise, fire away with your recommendations!

[Amogh]

I posted here several months ago asking about my prospects for Fall 2012, and I received some helpful replies. Now that I have a clearer picture of where I am and what my goals are, I'd like to ask for your assistance in helping me put together my short list of programs to apply to. Current stats:

Current program: MS at North Texas

GRE: 630 V/760 Q/5.0 AWA

GPA: 3.8

I've had a TA-ship for the last 2 semesters, and apparently my work has been well-received. For the record, I'm not just grading papers; I handle a lab section for our beginning programming class.

I have some research experience, as I am going the thesis route, but unfortunately, nothing is publication-worthy at the moment. Also, I will almost certainly be switching specialty areas between my MS and PhD. From what I've read on these boards, that doesn't seem to be unusual, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My master's work is in compilers, but for a PhD, I think I'm gravitating more toward security (I have at least taken a security class; this isn't out of nowhere).

The first two LoR's will come from my advisor and probably another professor who is also the graduate coordinator for our department. I haven't decided who to ask for the third letter and would appreciate your input on that as well. My possibilities are probably a professor who could write me a did-well-in-class letter, or someone who can speak directly to my teaching abilities but is not a professor (I think his title is Senior Lecturer or something similar).

Let me know if anything needs clarification; otherwise, fire away with your recommendations!

Well, from what i have seen changing specialty is not uncommon. Most people enter Grad school with one thing in mind and come out having done work in something else. The same can be said of startup founders too.

About LORs, i think the second option of getting a letter about you teaching ability will serve you better as it is substantial and not one of those DWIC lors which count for absolutely nothing. Even though he is not a professor, i think that doesn't matter much because your other two recommenders are and he is in a position to describe something that will contribute to who you are and this is what adcomms look for.

[starmaker]

My possibilities are probably a professor who could write me a did-well-in-class letter, or someone who can speak directly to my teaching abilities but is not a professor (I think his title is Senior Lecturer or something similar).

As long as it's positive, almost anything is more useful than a DWIC letter.

You might be able to supplement the teaching letter by providing a summary of your research activities, career goals, and so on, for your Senior Lecturer. That way, while he can speak best to your teaching activities, he can at least touch on the other stuff in some positive way.

[DaniMetroplex]

Thanks for the replies so far! I figured that the letter from the Senior Lecturer would be the better choice, but it never hurts to ask around.

Any ideas regarding target schools? I'm going to guess that the top 10 schools won't talk to me, even as a female US citizen. What are some decent security programs that I'd have a reasonable shot of getting into?

Also, I forgot to mention this earlier, but my advisor knows somebody at Virginia. Any thoughts on that program?

[starmaker]

I don't think you should count yourself out of the top 10 - I certainly wouldn't rely on getting into one of them, but your profile seems solid, and you might as well apply to at least one of them.

Boston University and Northeastern University are both mid-rank programs that do a lot of security stuff.

[OH YEAH]

I don't want to come across as a jerk, but I wouldn't have any expectations of getting into a top 10. Maybe not a top 20 school either. Might as well apply for shits and giggles, though.

It doesn't sound like you have a lot of research experience. Most likely, your LoRs will be from people who are unknown to the adcomm. This is salvageable, but it doesn't sound like your LoRs are "best student I've had in a really long time" material, and you are having trouble even getting enough LoRs. The most damning thing though, is that masters students are held to a higher standard than students with just a B.S. With all of that extra time in school, adcomms expect a lot of research experience, and I get the impression that most of the contenders will have more research experience as undergraduates than you have had as a masters student.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about your situation. You didn't really give much information about yourself. However, I'd aim for smaller programs that have faculty you are really interested in working with, and wouldn't underestimate how difficult it is to get into a top program without known LoRs. For comparison, the vast majority of students admitted to Princeton this year graduated from an Ivy league school/Stanford/Carnegie Mellon/Berkeley/Indian Institute of Technology/Peking University/Tsinghua University. It is possible to beat this bias, but you've really got to have spectacular research experience and LoRs.

Good luck, though! If you want someone to read your SoP feel free to PM me.

Edited June 29, 2011 by OH YEAH

[barber5]

I don't want to come across as a jerk, but I wouldn't have any expectations of getting into a top 10. Maybe not a top 20 school either. Might as well apply for shits and giggles, though.

It doesn't sound like you have a lot of research experience. Most likely, your LoRs will be from people who are unknown to the adcomm. This is salvageable, but it doesn't sound like your LoRs are "best student I've had in a really long time" material, and you are having trouble even getting enough LoRs. The most damning thing though, is that masters students are held to a higher standard than students with just a B.S. With all of that extra time in school, adcomms expect a lot of research experience, and I get the impression that most of the contenders will have more research experience as undergraduates than you have had as a masters student.

Of course, I could be completely wrong about your situation. You didn't really give much information about yourself. However, I'd aim for smaller programs that have faculty you are really interested in working with, and wouldn't underestimate how difficult it is to get into a top program without known LoRs. For comparison, the vast majority of students admitted to Princeton this year graduated from an Ivy league school/Stanford/Carnegie Mellon/Berkeley/Indian Institute of Technology/Peking University/Tsinghua University. It is possible to beat this bias, but you've really got to have spectacular research experience and LoRs.

Good luck, though! If you want someone to read your SoP feel free to PM me.

I pretty much agree with all of this.

[DaniMetroplex]

Thanks for your honest feedback, OH YEAH. This is pretty much what I'd figured to be the case.

That said, I want to clarify a couple of things. My bachelor's is in a completely different field, and I didn't just want to get another bachelor's degree. I don't know if that mitigates the situation, but I wanted to put that out there. If there's any other information that would help you understand my background better, let me know.

This next issue I was hoping I wouldn't have to get into, but here goes: I've noticed among some on these boards a "top 20 or bust" mentality. I understand wanting to go to the best program you can get into, but it seems like even Ph.D. graduates outside top 20 schools still get decent jobs. This isn't the humanities. While I'd love to be a hotshot professor at the University of the Fancy Pants and have the DaniMetroplex algorithm for Something-or-other taught in textbooks, honestly, I think I'd be ok with collecting a decent salary to do research and maybe teach somewhere. My understanding is that I should be able to do this even outside a top 20 school. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Five years ago, I had a BA in music history and was working as a permit clerk for the state of Texas. Almost anything is an improvement over that.

[DaniMetroplex]

I don't think you should count yourself out of the top 10 - I certainly wouldn't rely on getting into one of them, but your profile seems solid, and you might as well apply to at least one of them.

Boston University and Northeastern University are both mid-rank programs that do a lot of security stuff.

Boston and Northeastern are already on my medium (not yet short) list. Hopefully this means I'm on the right track picking programs.

Anybody know anything about UVA's program?

[edvolkov]

As for security field of research (excluding cryptography) I can recommend you the following universities that are outside of top-20 or on 20-th place:

UCSB (but their security group is extremely strong and it's very hard into it), Purdue (these guys don't like to give funding for incoming students), WashU, UC Irvine, Stony Brook, UNC, Rice, JHU. All these universities have strong research in the security area and they are stronger that some from top-10 such as MIT, Princeton or Cornell.

Also there are some universities with very low ranking, but with strong security groups. For example UTSA or Northeastern.

[DaniMetroplex]

Glad to see that most of the schools mentioned here have been on my radar. I'll look into the ones that haven't.

Funny tidbit: I mentioned that five years ago, I was working as a permit clerk for the state. Ten years ago, I was working at UTSA as a secretary. It was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life, but I chalk that up mostly to the particular people I shared work space with. I certainly don't hold it against the university as a whole, much less the CS department.

[edvolkov]

Glad to see that most of the schools mentioned here have been on my radar. I'll look into the ones that haven't.

Funny tidbit: I mentioned that five years ago, I was working as a permit clerk for the state. Ten years ago, I was working at UTSA as a secretary. It was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life, but I chalk that up mostly to the particular people I shared work space with. I certainly don't hold it against the university as a whole, much less the CS department.

UTSA gained positions in security just recently. They built new cybersecurity center in 2007, invited some great profs (including Ravi Sandhu - the greatest one in area of access control). Also San-Antonio is considered as future capital of cybersecurity.

Edited June 29, 2011 by edvolkov

[barber5]

Glad to see that most of the schools mentioned here have been on my radar. I'll look into the ones that haven't.

Funny tidbit: I mentioned that five years ago, I was working as a permit clerk for the state. Ten years ago, I was working at UTSA as a secretary. It was one of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life, but I chalk that up mostly to the particular people I shared work space with. I certainly don't hold it against the university as a whole, much less the CS department.

I was working for the state 5 years ago as well. Don't make the mistake I did and leave out a very brief (don't dwell as ultimately it's mostly irrelevant) accounting of your non-PhD-in-CS-pursuing past.

Several people advised me against mentioning much of my non-research past (did radio for a while, worked for the state for a while) and I was told this gap of accounting for my time was the sole reason I didn't get into CMU.

[DaniMetroplex]

I was working for the state 5 years ago as well. Don't make the mistake I did and leave out a very brief (don't dwell as ultimately it's mostly irrelevant) accounting of your non-PhD-in-CS-pursuing past.

Several people advised me against mentioning much of my non-research past (did radio for a while, worked for the state for a while) and I was told this gap of accounting for my time was the sole reason I didn't get into CMU.

Noted. I'm used to having to explain how I got from my music history degree to where I am now, as pretty much every job interviewer I've had has brought it up. It's not as strange a transition as it might appear on paper. Do applications still have a "anything you'd care to explain" section, or would this go somewhere else, like the SoP?

[csperson]

Noted. I'm used to having to explain how I got from my music history degree to where I am now, as pretty much every job interviewer I've had has brought it up. It's not as strange a transition as it might appear on paper. Do applications still have a "anything you'd care to explain" section, or would this go somewhere else, like the SoP?

I can't remember... But you can certainly write anything you want in your personal statement. However, in your personal statement, you should focus on talking about computer science research, like cs research you did in the past, and cs research you want to do as a PhD student. If you are getting a MS in CS, then maybe you don't need to talk about your music history degree.

[DaniMetroplex]

Holy condescension, Batman!

Of course I'm familiar with the US News rankings. When I mentioned top 10 schools in previous posts, where did you think I was getting my info? From David Letterman? On a related note, I am a bit surprised that security isn't one of the subfields they have rankings for, but that's another topic for another time. I'm also familiar with the NRC rankings, and Microsoft's nifty Academic Search tool, as well as the criticisms usually leveled at ranking methodologies. North Texas may be a not-particularly-well-thought-of state school, but it's not a cave. We haz teh Interwebs.

I'm also well aware that my SoP needs to answer the question, "Why should we let you into our program?" and that the main thing adcomms want to know is, "Can this person do research?" Of course the bulk of my SoP will address those issues. If I do address my, ahem, nontraditional background there, it will only be because there's no other space in the application to do it, and in any case, it will only be a few sentences. Riveting tales of my globetrotting experiences as a musician impersonator will have to wait for my thinly-veiled, gossipy novel on the subject.

And yes, I am getting my MS in Computer Science. That's what the GPA I cited in my original post is for.

Sincerely,

State School Thug

[csperson]

Wow, I am sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I just thought you were asking for school suggestions, and I was trying to suggest some of the 30ish/40ish ranked schools, which still do good research and allow you to get decent jobs later.

By the way, I have nothing against North Texas or any state schools. I went to a similarly ranked undergrad state school myself.

For security rankings, look for theory rankings (if you want to do cryptography, etc) or system rankings.

Ok, I deleted my previous posts (let's just say it's best to ignore them).

Holy condescension, Batman!

Of course I'm familiar with the US News rankings. When I mentioned top 10 schools in previous posts, where did you think I was getting my info? From David Letterman? On a related note, I am a bit surprised that security isn't one of the subfields they have rankings for, but that's another topic for another time. I'm also familiar with the NRC rankings, and Microsoft's nifty Academic Search tool, as well as the criticisms usually leveled at ranking methodologies. North Texas may be a not-particularly-well-thought-of state school, but it's not a cave. We haz teh Interwebs.

I'm also well aware that my SoP needs to answer the question, "Why should we let you into our program?" and that the main thing adcomms want to know is, "Can this person do research?" Of course the bulk of my SoP will address those issues. If I do address my, ahem, nontraditional background there, it will only be because there's no other space in the application to do it, and in any case, it will only be a few sentences. Riveting tales of my globetrotting experiences as a musician impersonator will have to wait for my thinly-veiled, gossipy novel on the subject.

And yes, I am getting my MS in Computer Science. That's what the GPA I cited in my original post is for.

Sincerely,

State School Thug

Edited June 30, 2011 by csperson

[DaniMetroplex]

Wow, I am sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I just thought you were asking for school suggestions, and I was trying to suggest some of the 30ish/40ish ranked schools, which still do good research and allow you to get decent jobs later.

By the way, I have nothing against North Texas or any state schools. I went to a similarly ranked undergrad state school myself.

For security rankings, look for theory rankings (if you want to do cryptography, etc) or system rankings.

Ok, I deleted my previous posts (let's just say it's best to ignore them).

Fair enough. I apologize for reacting the way I did.

My main tools for finding security schools have been looking through Microsoft Academic Research (which does have a specific area for security) and seeing where the papers at top security conferences are coming from.

UTSA is probably the biggest surprise so far, but it might be in my interests to catch a rising star before everybody else hears about them.