octav1an Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 To those going to visit weekends, could you provide info/likes/dislikes? Many of them conflict, and we can only go to one! :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michigantrumpet Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Just finished with the Carnegie Mellon CSD/ECE visits. I was supposed to split my time between the two, but the scheduling was such that I missed most of ECE. So, everything I say below is about CSD specifically, not other SCS programs or ECE. Overall, I was extremely impressed with everything! There's a real philosophy here on collaboration, open doors, and grad students being considered a valuable and scarce resource. Every grad course is pass/fail so that you focus on research, not GPA. There are no quals. You're guaranteed funding for AS LONG AS IT TAKES by the department, not individual faculty members. There are never issues of specific projects or professors not having funding and having to do research that you didn't want to do. The new Gates building should be open over the summer (I have my doubts), and it's gonna be really cool. I thought Pittsburgh was gonna be terrible, but it's a decent city! The residential areas are very nice, and I'm strongly considering accepting my offer! Deciding in a few weeks could prove difficult... stay tuned for more visit reactions. Here are some admissions stats that are probably useful on these boards: Applicants: ~1500 Admitted: ~70 Visited: 53 Target number of incoming students: 26 Current PhD students in CSD: 177 Current MS students in CSD: 9 Faculty members in CSD: ~80 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csphd Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Current PhD students in CSD: 177 Current MS students in CSD: 9 Faculty members in CSD: ~80 hmm that is interesting. that is fewer than 3 grad students per faculty? is that really low? i just got back from illinois, and iirc they have 57 faculty and ~480 grad students (though i dont know if 480 counts both cs and ece). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bernard Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 I guess I will start the second visit report. School: University of Toronto Visit days: Feb 27-28 Likes: location, convenience, right in downtown, very close to Chinatown, and there are a loooot of good restaurants in the city. Food is cheap. There are weekly festivals in the city over the summer, and it is a surprisingly clean and friendly city. Subway system is really really good. There were a lot of students on the visit days. Approximate number is about 50. Department was very strong. From the information session, the admission chair (who happened to be the very famous Graeme Hirst) said the school ranks high in total publications, and is among the best in the world. Turing Award winner Steven Cook also gave a talk. Graduate students seemed very happy. MSc program is 17 months, and Phd program is 43 months on top. So one could finish a Phd in 5 years. Dislikes: probably the weather. It can get windy at times, but it's not too bad. You can't really see any snow on the ground at this time. Financial aid is not too much for international students: 24K/year plus you have to pay tuition, which is about 6k. Other information: admissions offer will be made starting March 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximKat Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 i just got back from illinois, and iirc they have 57 faculty and ~480 grad students (though i dont know if 480 counts both cs and ece). illinois=uiuc? can you share your impressions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mav3rick Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Thanks michigantrumpet for such a great review. This is specially helpful for international students like me, who unfortunately are not able to make it to the visit day Waiting eagerly for others' reviews too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod_beeblebrox Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Great review michigantrumpet! I second mav3rick---I'm also an international student and would love to hear info about more schools, in particular Berkeley, and Stanford. Here are some admissions stats that are probably useful on these boards: Applicants: ~1500 Admitted: ~70 Visited: 53 Target number of incoming students: 26 Current PhD students in CSD: 177 Current MS students in CSD: 9 Faculty members in CSD: ~80 Well, the thing that surprised me (more than the ~ 5% acceptance rate) was the fact that they expect 2/3rds of the invited students to decline the offers? Sounds a little too risky? Or is that the norm? I'm reminded of what my friend told me about Berkeley (I read it elsewhere in the forum, I forget where); basically in the theory group at berkeley, they gave 10 admits last time around, expecting only around six to take it. But no one dropped it, and that meant that this year, they could take only about 3-4 students :-( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tedjj Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Anyone going to UR this week for Visitor's Weekend? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
octav1an Posted March 1, 2009 Author Share Posted March 1, 2009 hmm that is interesting. that is fewer than 3 grad students per faculty? is that really low? i just got back from illinois, and iirc they have 57 faculty and ~480 grad students (though i dont know if 480 counts both cs and ece). hey, can you give more info about UIUC. unfortunately, i couldn't make it to the open house because of a conference. how many people where there? how was the overall atmosphere (competitive or collaborative)? thanks! thanks everyone else for their wonderful reviews. CMU sounds amazing! unfortunately, i couldn't make it in there :cry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michigantrumpet Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 hmm that is interesting. that is fewer than 3 grad students per faculty? is that really low? It is low, yes. Part of the reason CMU CSD has to keep its enrollment so low relative to the number of faculty members is their perpetual funding guarantee. Their approach is a bit communist... some of the professors' money gets pooled so that if a given professor is low on funds for a semester or two, they don't have to drop students, projects, etc. This safety net limits the number of students. It's weird... CMU feels both big and small. In terms of the diversity of projects, it's huge, but 2.2 students per faculty is really small. A LOT of the students are co-advised too, in the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration. Well, the thing that surprised me (more than the ~ 5% acceptance rate) was the fact that they expect 2/3rds of the invited students to decline the offers? Sounds a little too risky? Or is that the norm? I'm reminded of what my friend told me about Berkeley (I read it elsewhere in the forum, I forget where); basically in the theory group at berkeley, they gave 10 admits last time around, expecting only around six to take it. But no one dropped it, and that meant that this year, they could take only about 3-4 students :-( I would imagine that it is a little risky, but CMU has been doing this for years, so their estimates must be pretty accurate. They hope for 26, which I assume means they have funding for a few more. I think they also assume that people who get into CMU also get into a few of the other top schools. So if you assume 75+% of the people who got into one of the top 4 schools got into at least one other one, the numbers start to average out. As far as international students coming, there were a couple IIT students (one from Bombay, and one from another campus I can't remember off the top of my head) and one South Korean student. Visa permitting, you should really try to visit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csphd Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 illinois=uiuc? yep illinois=uiuc overall, the visit was wonderful. the hotel was a one-minute walk from the siebel center, so that was nice. the siebel center for cs opened in 2004, so it's quite nice. faculty mentioned it was a "live laboratory," citing an example where they put sensors and cameras near the stairs to help a civil engineering (?) project studying how walking patterns affect vibrations in the stairs. also, there's a coffee shop right in building, on the first floor. (http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/about/siebelcenter.php) a prospective student told me one of the organizers told him 28 students visited, which was in the same ballpark as my estimate. many people (faculty and current grad students) mentioned that some grad students could afford their own houses. 4 miles from campus is considered far. -------------------------------------------------- a little bit on the schedule: thursday evening to saturday noon. thursday evening was mostly social events. friday and saturday were presentations, panels, area sessions, one-on-one meetings with faculty, etc there was a 30-minute grad student panel, off limits to faculty and staff, which was a little short. on friday, there was a panel with directors from "cross campus collaboration initiatives," including among others the directors from krannert center for the performing arts, the information trust institute, and the national center for supercomputing applications (a stone's throw distance from siebel center). (there was excitement about the blue waters project, scheduled to come online in 2011. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/BlueWaters/) there was one-hour campus tour, led by the graduate student hosts. i did not go on this tour, so i cant say anything about the rest of the campus. that night, we dined at a local restaurant downtown champaign, with my estimate of 15 faculty dining among us. concluding friday was a scavenger hunt also downtown champaign. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bernard Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Just curious, what sorts of questions do you ask faculty members and graduate students? Some questions I asked faculties were: 1) what projects could I join (I had one prof who introduced me more than 5 of his projects to me!) 2) where do graduate students go after Phd 3) have students published papers yet The questions I asked students were things like courses, how difficult they were, where they live, and how many hours do they work in lab. What about you guys? Also should you tell faculties your other offers, so that they will be forced to tell you what is bad about other schools and what is good about their own school? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximKat Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 overall, the visit was wonderful. thank you for the info what is your area? what do you think about faculty, atmosphere (collaboration, openness... this kind of stuff)? what do grad students say? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p0limorph Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Anybody going to Cornell CS dept this weekend for their visit day ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heheman3000 Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 Just curious, what sorts of questions do you ask faculty members and graduate students? Some questions I asked faculties were: 1) what projects could I join (I had one prof who introduced me more than 5 of his projects to me!) 2) where do graduate students go after Phd 3) have students published papers yet The questions I asked students were things like courses, how difficult they were, where they live, and how many hours do they work in lab. What about you guys? Also should you tell faculties your other offers, so that they will be forced to tell you what is bad about other schools and what is good about their own school? I just got back from the Harvard open house. I really enjoyed the campus, and I got the feeling that faculty and students were both very candid with each other. This isn't the time to play tricks or bargain - it's your chance to figure out if the school is the right place to spend the next 4-6 years of your life. Regarding your first couple of questions, it seems like you are looking at programs where you don't know your prospective advisor yet. That's fine, don't worry about asking them hard questions. Also, I don't think you should worry about courses too much, nor hours in the lab unless you're an extreme experimentalist-type person. And yes, I think you should be honest with your other offers. Faculty will compare and contrast and you can certainly compare what they say on different visit days. They will tell you even if you don't "force" them to, but since they know their colleagues in the same field at other universities, there's nothing to lose by telling them. On to the visit day - first of all, Harvard is a small faculty with no department lines, that emphasizes cross-disciplinary research. The faculty are perfectly honest that they don't have some of the depth of larger departments, but what's special is that there is research in new areas that are just breaking ground (such as economic combinatorial and prediction markets, algorithmic game theory, etc). They have a pretty much brand new computer science building, (built from funds by Gates and Ballmer and named after their mothers) and I got the distinct feeling that there is no politics going on between faculty at the school. Since Boston was blanketed by 9-14 inches of snow the night before, some professors brought their kids in and another showed us his dog, who is in his office every day he is at work. By the way, I love snow, but it just happened that the biggest snowstorm this winter happened this weekend. For my potential group, I saw a lot of possibilities because the senior professor was just tenured and we also have a new assistant professor who will have relatively more time to spend with students. The group has been cranking out papers like a printing press because there is so much new research to cover. Also, both professors are married, one is tenured, and the other plans to have kids, which goes to say a lot about their understanding of your need for work-life balance. This is something some of you might want to consider, and if you are working with an assistant professor who is a few years in you will need to consider their tenure situation. Harvard's faculty, albeit small, also claim to be very high quality. Their proximity to MIT really offsets the disadvantages of the small department as well. You can take MIT courses, and even have MIT professors as an advisor. This seems to be ideal since you will have faculty that will pay attention to you but also have access to the course listings of a huge department. Finally, if you are interested in interdisciplinary research, then the other world-class departments at Harvard are all open to you. Boston may be cold but it's a really fun and quaint town to be in. Public transportation is efficient and there are tons of things to do for students (80 universities in the greater Boston area alone.) Students all seemed happy and not half-dead like the ones at certain other grad schools down the river that I won't mention. There were about 25 CS admits in total, but from my random non-scientific sampling almost all of them (except me) also got in at "higher-ranked" schools. Harvard really was trying to sell them but I think they will probably get a low yield. If you're on the waitlist, you might have some good chances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bernard Posted March 3, 2009 Share Posted March 3, 2009 heheman3000, I have some ideas of what I want to do, but at the same time I want to be open to projects in other areas. Nobody I talked to was doing the same area of research that I was doing in my undergrad. So I am kind of stuck, and have to keep an open mind. All the projects I heard were interesting, but it is hard to know if I will like a project without trying it out myself. My background (biochemistry and computer science) really allows me to do any aspect of computational biology. So it is more like I need advice on which research area to pursue, based on my talents & skills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heheman3000 Posted March 4, 2009 Share Posted March 4, 2009 You know, I am kind of in the same boat as you. I did a dual degree in finance and computer science, but I couldn't really put that on my CS applications so I just picked a field: systems. I was also hoping to just wing it and find something interesting to do. Luckily I was picked out by this Harvard group that sounds like it is right up my creek. I will still keep an open mind as I visit the other systems groups I was accepted to. In any case, be honest with your visit day faculty. They are more than willing to give you advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tedjj Posted March 8, 2009 Share Posted March 8, 2009 Does UNC have a weekend event? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod_beeblebrox Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Cornell's visit weekend was last weekend right? Did anyone go to that? Can someone who visited provide some information along the lines of what michigantrumpet did for CMU. It would be quite useful to those of us who didn't get a chance to visit the universities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djrg Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 UCSD's visit day was last weekend right? For those who were there, any insights on your visit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heheman3000 Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 I've got to say I was quite impressed by the UCSD visit day. I will post more details when I get a chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sakisBoulas Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 So the rest of us.. we have to wait our rejects.. :oops: :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximKat Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Have anyone been to UMich visit weekend? Have there been such an event at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
applicant101 Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Have anyone been to UMich visit weekend? Have there been such an event at all? There were UMich visits March 5th - 7th and again March 19th - 22nd. The way our emails were worded, it sounded like if you were invited to the visits you were going to be accepted. I wasn't invited so I assumed rejection. However it sounded like you got accepted already (Congrats again btw!). Who knows what their policy is like. In any case, I live about 30 minutes from Ann Arbor and can tell you that it's a great place to live, and a very fun campus. Don't know much about the CSE department specifically, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximKat Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 However it sounded like you got accepted already (Congrats again btw!). Who knows what their policy is like. Well, I'm an international applicant, so I wouldn't be able to visit anyway. That's why I'd like someone to share his/her experiences Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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