How to be a good graduate student

[nibot]

How to be a good graduate student, and other stories.

How many programs do you think it is appropriate to apply to? (and how is that question best phrased?)

Comments

[probablevacancy.livejournal.com]

If I were you, I think I would apply to a smaller number of schools, the good ones that you'd really like to go to. It seems that you have ways of keeping yourself gainfully employed, and if you have good projects to work on, what's the point of dropping that to go study somewhere that sucks? So, I guess what I'm saying is, no safety schools. As for how many *actual* schools to apply to, I got no clue.

"To how many programs do you think it is appropriate to apply" is grammatically correct, but clunky.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

I think I agree.. it's the "keep pinging princeton" idea. (-:

[emidala.livejournal.com]

three. I applied to three. princeton, harvard and brown. three is a great number!


actually, forget that, just apply to princeton. it is the only place to go, anyway!

[nibot.livejournal.com]

were you accepted at harvard and/or brown? did you visit? what did you think? (of Brown in particular)

[emidala.livejournal.com]

no, brown turned me down (I know why, and it scares the hell out of me: one of the professors who recommended me is hated by the chair of old world archaeology at brown), and harvard first turned me down, then they mysteriously changed their minds and said "we'll take you next year!!" - probably after they heard that princeton had accepted me. I did not visit, because I really just wanted to go to princeton. (this is actually something I've realized afterwards: I always thought I wanted to go to harvard, but when I did not get accepted in the first place, my only real thought was "oh great, now I don't have to choose between the best program (princeton) and the best location (harvard)")
anyway, people who visited princeton before they came here all agreed on princeton being
1) very small
2) very, very rich
3) really damn cold in early march. for me, seeing it for the first time in september, 1 & 2 were still true. :)

[ephermata.livejournal.com]

(I don't think we know each other, but I just went through this
last year, so...)

I second the "only apply places you would want to go." Grad school is the next four or *more* years of your life. Why spend it somewhere you aren't psyched about?

That being said, when I applied, I decided to err on the side of applying to more places rather than fewer; I had a low GPA and wasn't sure how competitive I would be as an applicant. In addition, my interests are sort of "narrow but multifaceted" - there were a lot of places that had people who were excellent in something I am very much interested in. So I ended up applying to ten places: Cal, Stanford, MIT, CMU, Harvard, Purdue, NYU, Columbia, Princeton, and UCSD.

In retrospect, that was a lot, just from the point of view of organization and filing applications. I know for a fact that I never completed my Columbia application, and I never heard from Princeton. Ah well. I would have been happy at any of those places, but as it happens I made it into Cal and I decided to come here. Been loving it ever since.

I also went to Harvard as an undergrad. I'd be happy to give you my perspective on the place if you're considering it for grad school. You should be able to find my eecs.berkeley.edu address from my user profile.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Well, you couldn't have had too low a GPA — after all, you got into Berkeley. To what do you attribute your success?

And you're working with David Wagner, no less... such coolness!

[ephermata.livejournal.com]

I had some research under my belt, and I had excellent recommendations. I think that's what did it. I'd also taken a year off between junior and senior year of college and worked for a startup; that probably offset the GPA a little and made me look stronger.

and yes, David Wagner is amazing. :)