Exercises in futility
Since someone asked, and since ya'll might have useful things to say, here's the pending list of grad schools I plan on applying to. I expect to prune this list down a little bit, but not by much. Yes, it's a lot. I think of it as paying for re-rolls in advance. It's roughly (but not precisely) in order of my opinion of the schools so far, given my interests (Theory and Languages, mostly). The order so far is roughly determined by my personal knowledge, a little bit of influence from World News & Report (bleh), looking over the actual web pages and info for research groups at the schools, and advice from my old advisor.
- Cornell
- CMU
- MIT
- UCB
- Caltech
- Princeton
- University of Washington
- Stanford
- UPenn
- Rice
- UCSD
- OGI
- Harvard
- Brown
- UCLA
Northeastern and Indiana are also schools I've been told to look into, but only as backup options... Fifteen is already pushing it, so I'm not sure. I'll certainly look into them, at least.
So yeah, if anyone has anything constructive, destructive or just amusing to say, I wouldn't mind. Might even appreciate it, even.
posted by Lemming @ 11/07/2005 10:33:00 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
FYI: UC* requires a 3.0 gpa or better to get in. If you haven't got one, the department has to do a whole lotta extra paperwork.
Most of the places I've listed specify a minimum GPA requirement. I probably don't have to tell you how that makes me feel.
At a private school, I'm given to understand, it's less of an issue. Here, it's tied into a lot of other stuff. I was actually formally a Master's student until I passed my qualifying exam.
Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me-1996, but you need to seriously think through where you're actually willing to live. Looking at the list, it looks basically like a generic list of top US research universities with no obvious geographical bias from the applicant. If you're actually OK with living on the east coast, even bits well inland like Ithaca, you're fine. And isn't Rice in Texas?
Anyway, I lost one or two years by finding out the hard way that I couldn't stand living in New York City, so best to avoid that kind of thing. You've already avoided the other major mistake I made, which was applying to relatively few schools. Many is good, lots is better (that applies to job applications as well as grad school, of course).
In terms of location, I went to Cornell knowing the place to live was suboptimal but having decided that it was my best move academically. Both turned out to be true, and because of the latter, it was definitely the right decision. I think some people can put up with a place they don't like for a few years as a springboard to other things. (Anyway, this is a personal thing.)
I applied to 7 different grad schools, and there were some I should have considered but didn't. My final decision was a choice between Cornell, MIT, and Caltech (in CDS). I picked the place with the worst location for specific reasons. I dropped MIT because while they are generally awesome in applied math, their curriculum was extremely inflexible and they didn't have very many people in dynamical systems. The pretention also turned me off a bit, although that was a minor thing. In terms of Caltech vs Cornell, even the Caltech people were telling me I should go to Cornell because switching institutions between undergrad and grad is key. Also, Cornell had tons of people in applied dynamical systems and I decided that if I stayed at Tech it would have been to not leave friends behind, and that would not have been the right career decision. I didn't have friends around for many years, but it was nevertheless the right decision and the one I had to make. I went down to the very last day on that one.
Rice is in Houston but is a very good school.
15 schools is a bit much but not horribly so.
One decision that can show up (though it doesn't seem too relevant for you) is that some schools are much more flexible than others. Some will pidgeon-hole you to choose an area/advisor quickly (MIT is known for this) and others will give you more time and/or room to breathe.
I can try to contact Lloydies (class of 97) who got their doctorates in CS from Cornell (Mark Neidengard) and CMU (John Langford). Both are actually gamers too. :) Actually, I can put you in contact with multiple CS alums from Cornell, which is no surprise. One of them is a postdoc at U Wash (though he might be in math there), so we need to talk about this when the time comes. (For now, it's more important to send the apps and get admitted.) Let me know when you want to do this, and I'll try to hook you up. I can help with Berkeley too. Talk to Vito about it. He was in CS/EE. Or talk to Brian L. There are plenty of people we know with direct experience in many of these programs.
Justin, I do actually appreciate your point, and geography will probably play a role in decided between (assuming more than one!) options. I'm taking a more pessimistic stance, however. My metric for applying: if, for some school X, only school X accepted me, would I seriously consider going? That's basically what that list is. Yes, it's very closely correlated to just a list of top CS schools. I used that as a seed for a good bit of the list, plus personal knowledge, and knowledge of people I trust. Then, once I had a bigger list, I did a little research and crossed out a few clear nos, added a few others, etc.
For Cornell as a specific example, I'd definitely go if they were they only one who accepted me. I would hate the weather, but I'm capable of living in a cave--just capable enough, I imagine. In this particular example, I also expect it's one of the places that my letters (well, at least one of them) will carry more weight, since the group I would probably be interested in working for there is where my old advisor got his PhD.
Tim-
I wouldn't worry as much about a minimum GPA if you could find someone who wanted you there. My conversation with my advisor when I was applying at Berkeley.
Jere--"Well, you want to work for me or not?"
Curtis--"What about the minimum GPA, I have a 2.5, not the 3.0 you want."
Jere--"Yeah, so...you want to work with me or not?"
This was shortly after they got drunk together and made plans to invade, what was it, Iceland?
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