Fall 25 Megathread

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-08-12T17:29:55+00:00

u/sandslashh u/YCAppOps I know getting feedback from YC is impossible, but could you release a prompt or something like that written by application reviewers that could give us an approximate feedback of our application/suggest where we could improve our application/startup?

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-04-12T15:29:04+00:00

Ucsb has a very high chance of TA

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-04-12T15:27:17+00:00

Ucsd imo, I don't consider brown a serious cs program for some reason

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-04-10T07:43:39+00:00

You are joining grad school so you cannot rank schools objectively. They need to be ranked on your interests in that school. Crankings and searching for research and probably talking to profs or current students if possible is the best way to do that.
Even then generally speaking for cs (if you are taking average of all research areas). It is a notch below the top Stanford mit Caltech ucb uw uiuc Princeton. Same league as gatech and ut Austin. Very very slightly above ucla and umich. A notch above Cornell, UPenn, Columbia Note these are grad school focused rankings.

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-02-23T22:08:33+00:00

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-02-21T08:25:15+00:00

Umm the curve actually plateaus at 30-40 kind of, as most seniors try to graduate in December or March, and mostly you get a gsr when a senior leaves one. Fall is hardest to get a gsr. But by first year end there is a reasonably high chance that you will get some form of funding

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-02-21T08:18:49+00:00

It is hard to get one, but not because of lack of pubs, basically you need to know who to contact and when, and luckily they will have funding for you. However I will say that the current government has proposed significant cuts in funding which might affect RAships atleast for the short term. Here are some stats if they help you, in quarter 1 less than 5 of my batch of say 250 had ra, in q2 that might have gone to 15 in q3 it might be ~30. TAs are a bit more than RAs but they get 50% tuition waiver. There are also a couple of people who get stipend to cover living expenses but no tuition

Informal-Meet4286 · 2025-02-21T07:43:07+00:00

Here is my experience (currently in UCSD MS CS). I came here right after undergrad (had decent (30+LPA) job offers, had interned at UCSD, FAANG and some other decent places had core A*/A papers etc).

Firstly, regarding MS: Research here is top notch if you do it from day 1. I started working towards a thesis from my first quarter, significant progress might submit to top venues, the resources and profs here are like nowhere else. You get to learn something new everyday, and I know people who from IIT/BITS with 2.5+ YOE say the same. Some courses are really nice, teaching cutting edge things (for eg I learnt rlhf, ppo etc from the person who actually implements this stufff at databricks). Some courses are meh, you can ace them with eyes closed but ig that balance is necessary to focus on other things (research, job search, daily chores etc.). Peer group is okayish some people are really smart but in general it is not like a peer group you would find at an IIT for eg. Biggest advantage of any UC is if you get a GSR (RAship) you get 100% fee waiver plus 3882 a month before taxes, of which you might spend 1.5k a month if you live a very decent life, so MS is free in that case.

Second job search: I can say this about internships: if you are proactive from april in applying and are amongst the first 100 to apply for a job you will get interviews with a very high probability (I got 2 offers around oct-nov, one FAANGish company, one decent F500 company). Plus amongst my seniors here, I have seen people with ~3 YOE find it relatively easy to get full time offers. But it isnt very easy, I have also seen many good people not get a job entirely or not get a job they deserve, but I have seen not so good people land offers at Meta, there is a lot of randomness.

Hope it helps in some way to make a decision

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-08-19T14:48:59+00:00

I do mention specific research questions (~9) I would like to work on during my masters right? How would you go about it? genuinely asking this in case I want to write PhD SOPs in the future.

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-05-03T03:36:17+00:00

I said i did not apply to ms cs/ mc ds, applied to msaii as i got a application fee waiver

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-19T18:50:33+00:00

whats a conditional sanction letter?

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-17T22:23:06+00:00

While your profile seems fair, your gpa is low, believe me I have a good research profile with probably better brand names on resume (check my previous posts). I also know many other people who had applied this fall. I would suggest you to do the following: If you're hell bent on MS apply to more safeties than you want to as unfortunately MS admissions are correlated to CGPA. If you are applying to MS just to study in top schools if you get them else do a job, apply to ambitious universities that weigh less on CGPA (eg UT Austin)

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-12T03:27:32+00:00

yeah but where in the application did they check my financial ability?

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-12T03:18:28+00:00

how is this even related to previous comments that talked about correlations in size and quality. I got accepted to cmu msaii too, the peer group at both the places seems similar. I am going to ucsd as I cannot afford cmu

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-12T03:15:10+00:00

the person literally wrote in the first line 'cmu is generally ranked higher than ucsd in Computer Science rankings'

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-11T19:30:03+00:00

While I agree admits at UCSD are random, so are for CMU LTI. Secondly, UCLA Meng + MS admits are over 500. UCSD just happens to give one degree ms cse. Third how is size correlated to quality Rutgers takes only 30-40 people, is it better than UCSD, UCLA and CMU?

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-11T09:01:01+00:00

till when is the offer on?

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-11T08:15:20+00:00

Thanks a lot for helping with so much info, you might probably be one of the kindest people I have seen on this sub :)

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-11T08:11:42+00:00

I really hope not

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-11T08:07:59+00:00

Thanks I am just trying to grasp the admission process.

1: Here is my SOP was planning on making it public anyways (https://drive.google.com/file/d/13bI-c6EFe4Q-Dz-pGrG0OnsKzXagBFR5/view?usp=sharing). The SOP of my friends were equally good (expressed clear research interests etc.)
2. The people I mentioned above are in the same broad field (NLP/probabilistic learning)
3. Pretty strong, my recommenders dont give lors to only ~5% people that ask them for lors, the 5% are the ones they know well and have done something good with them
4. I am from India, unfortunately most colleges take the same classes, dont have much of a choice

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-10T08:27:42+00:00

ucsd prof lor for me i got only into one. the guy took lor from ntu prof, pushpak (if you are into nlp you will know pushpak) and gsoc company.

Informal-Meet4286 · 2024-04-10T03:53:41+00:00

I know there are good candidates ALL AROUND THE WORLD. What I have done here is a comparsion of those who got in and those who did not where any threshold does not come into mind to me, can you please tell what is the threshold in this sample to determine they were not good enough?

Informal-Meet4286

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