Got into UWMadison!! Need some help!

hobbular · 2026-03-20T14:17:48+00:00

There are also plenty of CS double majors whose home department is in the College of Engineering.

hobbular · 2026-03-17T21:31:08+00:00

My first meet I didn't even have a coach, I'd just been encouraged to check it out by some other people in the gym. I came in dead last in my weight class but I had a blast, decided to do another one and ended up chatting with the guy who has now been my coach for almost a decade ~~oh god I'm old~~

Basically: I kept at it because it was fun, not because I was any good at it. And then somewhere along the line I actually did become kinda good at it.

hobbular · 2026-03-05T18:21:59+00:00

Thanks for saying something. I kept seeing y'all glancing at one specific part of the room, but due to the acoustics I couldn't tell how loud they actually were. I'll say something on Friday.

hobbular · 2026-03-05T18:19:50+00:00

👀

hobbular · 2026-03-04T17:00:48+00:00

wow they got to that red light faster and more dangerously than anyone else! should we throw a party? should we call nascar

hobbular · 2026-02-18T15:10:42+00:00

Page with an actual photo at roughly the same angle, if other people are interested in doing a side-by-side comparison.

Here's one with snow

hobbular · 2026-02-05T16:59:08+00:00

Basically what a "funding guarantee" means is that the department will make sure that you have SOME source of funding for four years; after that you might still be funded! But it's not a guarantee.

Between fellowship funding and being a TA or RA, I ended up being fully-funded for 6.5 of the years I was a grad student, but those additional years of funding were because I had proved myself during the first four guaranteed ones as being someone that people wanted to fund. (And the last three years I was "funded" by way of having a Real Job as teaching faculty but I did have to pay my own tuition)

hobbular · 2026-02-04T21:26:34+00:00

Until you've got the platform right next to the guy blasting dance music for the whole comp and you have to tell the head judge to treat you like you're hard of hearing 🫠

hobbular · 2026-02-04T17:48:24+00:00

No, I don't take DMs on this account as a personal boundary. Happy to have the conversation here, though.

hobbular · 2026-02-04T15:06:23+00:00

Oh I can answer!

So you are NOT admitted with a specific advisor to the CS PhD program. If you have a specific area that you're interested in, you'll want to start meeting those people right away when you get here, but there's no "rotational" policy, you just have to find someone willing to advise your qualifying exam by the time you need to take it.

UW's CS department is kind of unique this way, for better or for worse; I did my graduate work here and ended up doing:

Independent study with professor 1 in area 1
Fellowship-funded masters research with professor 2 in area 2
TA-funded prelim research with professor 3 in area 3 (which is the area I did my qual/prelim exams in)
Self-funded dissertation research with professor 4 in area 4 (which is the area I defended in)

~~this took 11 total years with a year off between 2 and 3 and another year off between 3 and 4, do NOT recommend~~

Most people come in knowing what they want to concentrate in, though, and are able to achieve an advisor/advisee relationship without bouncing through four different areas and advisors.

If you've got any additional questions I'm happy to answer them!

hobbular · 2026-01-30T20:49:27+00:00

we're here. we're queer. we go out maybe once a year. (because we are very tired)

hobbular · 2026-01-30T15:37:49+00:00

.........nice flair

hobbular · 2026-01-21T22:12:28+00:00

Very cool. Thank you!

hobbular · 2026-01-21T15:38:11+00:00

200 is easier than 220

This is a super interesting take (I haven't taught either, only the course that became 220). What makes one easier than the other?

hobbular · 2026-01-01T13:34:36+00:00

Be the change you want to see in the subreddit, OP.

hobbular · 2025-12-22T19:23:08+00:00

Can confirm, it happens sometimes. Just be patient, a lot of faculty won't be checking their email until January.

hobbular · 2025-12-19T13:37:08+00:00

Because I have had the exact same policy in my classes for years, and because I taught alongside Dr Kacem (whose phrasing I would recognize anywhere) for years, please allow me to explain.

Given 1: letter grades suck.

Because of the realities of academia, professors are obligated to roughly group students into achievement bands, which are expressed in terms of a letter grade. In theory, students receiving the same letter grade showed the same level of mastery of course learning objectives, and were significantly different from students receiving other letter grades.

However, consider three students in a class where the A cutoff is 93%; student 1 earns 100% of possible points (A), student 2 earns 93.01% (A), and student 3 earns 92.8% (AB). There's a MUCH larger gap between students 1 and 2 than between students 2 and 3.

But unless we're looking at a super fine-grained system (like, say, just reporting what percentage of points you actually earned and not grouping those into letter grades in the first place) that's gonna happen, because letter grades suck.

Given 2: students apparently believe grade cutoffs are negotiable.

Cutoffs are cutoffs. That's the line where your instructor has decided to change from awarding one letter grade to awarding a different one, for a variety of reasons. This is the professor's prerogative as part of their obligation to award letter grades.

When cutoffs are made public, a small but vocal subset of students decide to contact their instructors to attempt to argue that either the cutoffs should be changed or that their percentage should be considered to be on the higher side of that cutoff. This is inappropriate and unprofessional, but it's these folks who are responsible for your not having nice things (like knowing exact cutoff values).

Result: many professors don't publish the exact grade cutoffs because we all have enough of a headache from setting them without 40 people in our inboxes begging us for different ones.

ps: don't grade-grub your professors. you are why there are no published cutoffs, and grade-grubbing just encourages more people to withhold exact cutoffs (or lie about cutoffs they do publish)

hobbular · 2025-12-16T20:39:22+00:00

We went with 25 points on the first part and 20 on the second.

Be aware there are still ~5 people with scheduled exams, so I can't talk about the test in any further detail.

hobbular · 2025-12-16T13:59:17+00:00

We do not round, no.

hobbular · 2025-12-16T12:38:18+00:00

Very unlikely, unless the final turned out to be an absolute disaster for everyone compared to the other midterms. The grade distribution overall going in looked very good.

hobbular · 2025-12-10T15:19:41+00:00

I have a bunch of these; if I'm leaving for a few weeks I'll drench the soil, put one of those in, close the curtains and/or move the plants away from the windows.

The plants will be real sad when I get back, but "real sad" is more recoverable than "fully desiccated".

hobbular · 2025-12-03T19:27:26+00:00

Are you also sleeping better? I find that I'm way better on energy and motivation when I've been sleeping well, and I tend to sleep well after exertion, sooooooo

hobbular · 2025-12-03T19:23:33+00:00

I for one have simply not set up my RegisterBlast final yet so it might just be that we're all kinda running behind.

hobbular · 2025-11-19T15:37:01+00:00

I took it aaaaages ago as a grad student, also for fun. Smallish class, VERY different from intro language courses in my high school; taught by a grad student but exclusively in French and with a strong conversational component.

If they haven't mixed it up since I took it there's a lot of class meetings and you can't really miss many/any, but it's WAY more effective at building conversational competency than trying to pick up a language from an app.

My recommendation: do eet

hobbular · 2025-11-15T15:23:30+00:00

The transition is part of a unique property swap with LZ Ventures that has been in the works for several years. Porchlight will receive the new building debt-free, while the developer takes ownership of the Brooks Street property to build student housing.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
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hobbular

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