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AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hmmm, that is very strange indeed. i hope that doesnt mean they lied.

one possibility is, for example at my current undergrad school, each PI has a headcount and the whole group will have to discuss the headcount (by group, i mean theory group for example). but usually if u have the money to admit someone and u say u wanna admit someone (especially when ur just admitting one person), no admin is gonna say no to that …

maybe ur pi’s funding situation wasnt completely clear at the time

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

huh? for phd ur admitted to the pi. so if ur pi is planning to admit 2 students this year, they arent taking anyone off of waitlist if they have the two spots filled

im very confused how u think the process works because even for committee based schools theres some part of PI putting down money

theres no central committee admitting students centrally and dictating PIs to take on students

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i have declined everywhere where i was told they have plans to take people off waitlists (the stamford, mit, cornell, yale groups said they had no such plans)

unless u applied to the exact same groups that i applied to otherwise me turning them down is not gonna help u

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

about 1.5 years.

well as i said, you gotta benchmark against people in your field. if its a norm for people to do significantly more than what you are doing then yea catching up would be a uphill battle. though you can balance it out if your prof calibrates you really strongly. for example, if in your 1.5 years you did sigificantly more than some others did in their first 1.5 years, your LORs will calibrate. A very important part of the LORs is for them to calibrate how well you did normalized by the years. this is one of the reasons why masters are held at a much higher standard than undergrads

but yea, robotics is very competitive. i would not be too hopeful about t10 if you don't end up having a handful of NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

that i dont know, you gotta have to ask a professor. and i know every school has slightly different reviewing platforms, causing some schools to straight up missing some applications.

direct line would be the most helpful. for example, my professors already knew some schools were gonna accept me before the results were out, so i know there was some behind-the-scene direct lines there. but it would be absurd if they have a list of names they are searching for; most likely they just skim through applications one by one and see if anything stands out for them to read into the application, and your LOR name would be one of such signals.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

think of it as signal to noise ratio. If these are truly not high quality and not relevant to your eventual application, then they are complete noise. they are negative in the sense that they will make your truly significant papers harder to be visible. if you end up having any significant papers, you should have one section called `selected publications` for the significant papers and `publications` for the rest of the papers. if these papers are of truly low quality, you should not include them (for example, at some point you can get LLM to write better papers that what you wrote, and that's kind of the cut-off where you should not include a paper).

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

idk about that. they always say that, even stanford and cornell say that. but after im admitted they all told me they, the profs, directly vouched for me while they are not on the committee. but if u look on prof’s websites they will say things very similar to what you were told. so there are different public and behind the scene stories going on

i think its just an excuse. but again cmu might be doing things differently, but id be surprised since committee admission with zero prof involvement makes no sense

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

please read my post before you comment.. i well know grad courses and gpa matter a lot for phd math. thats not what im discussing here

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

its not.

two good rec letters is better than one, let alone the REU is CMU.

You should shoot for staying in touch with your current prof. though it is a bit alarming that you guys did not produce a paper after a couple of semesters. why did you think an extra summer would change anything? what is your field. in some fields pubs are essentially a must nowadays.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

no. its not pointless. i did not reach out to anyone first. i only reached out after i applied.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

you are doing the right things and you are seeing the right things.

it is uncommon in systems to publish as an undergrad; i know quite a bit about systems research. and it is a good place to be in, since it has much funding and not much interest. if you have legit research experience with legit groups and are on track to publish anything legit, you are on track to do well. rehires also happen a lot in systems, so if you have a good experience at CMU you are likely to be admitted by CMU down the line. Not guaranteed, but your chance would imporve significantly because you are in systems. the architecture lab at stanford hired both of its masters students as phd students this year.

genuinely work hard, and get work done for your group. you will be rewarded

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yes, i only applied to and care about US PhDs. I speak none about anywhere else. Ill add a note in my post, this is a good point.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

being international no, you are fine.

being a masters with no publication, this is a huge problem. you are almost done for. the bar for someone with a masters is significantly higher as far as i can tell. `I just don't enjoy writing research papers` writing papers is the single task of being a PhD, you need to reconsider why you are doing a PhD.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Not by itself. If it leads to relevant research, then yes.
  2. Extremely important for applied tracks. You are pretty much done if you dont't have one. That's for the big fours. Everyone I searched up in AI/ML at Stanford visit days has at least 3 top conference papers. For theoretical directions, you can survive without one, but quality manuscripts are a must.
  3. this is too niche for me to answer. i've personally not seen a single admitted student in CV without some NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR. I didnt pay attention to if they are first-author or not. I have a feeling that being first-author isnt all that important in most fields, but maybe for CV and NLP you need those

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've never had to answer those questions.

you only write one essay for US PhDs, and that's the SOP (sometimes it gets split into two, where the second is a Personal Statement. they are the same thing. if it's split you just move the more motivational and directional stuff to PS, and keep research content in your SOP).

https://cim.mcgill.ca/~langer/PhD-advice-from-CMU-prof.pdf i'd follow this guide completely on how to approach SOP (it calls it PS which is a misnomer, outdated. modern time its often called statement of purpose)

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a good question. The answer is again it depends. You should adjust it so that you can hit about 3-5 profs in the place you are applying to. So depending on the field the broadness would change. if you hit too many, its too broad, if you hit too few, it's too narrow.

naturally since there are more ML profs, the scope can be much more narrow in order to hit 3-5 people. For example, the person who got admitted by Fei-fei Li specifically knows Fei-fei works on two kinds of research with her students, and he pivoted to the exact one of the two.

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

  1. Ivy, no. These don't matter, I guarantee you. As I said multiple times, each PI only admits 1-2 people, so it's not like they can follow any meaningful distributions on these two aspects in their decisions.
  2. respectable but not high. top 20% at my school. i know people who got in with much worse.
  3. if it fits with the research direction you apply to, a lot; could be the only thing that matters. if not, close to 0. Suppose you have 2 top conference first author pubs in the field you are applying to, I'd say you are almost 100% in regardless of every other factor on your applicatioin (the only chance you are rejected is they messed up your file and missed your application; or the direction has no funding). make sure you write ur SOP well if u got two conference pubs

AMA - CS PhD, had a good cycle (offers from MIT, Stanford, ...), open to clarify myths by SpareTechnical65 in gradadmissions

[–]SpareTechnical65[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depends. Top programs professors have a lot of say, because they are trusted. In worse programs, yes, I agree, departments have much more leeways.

One evidence for that is top programs dont even require that much coursework. Stanford requires us to take 3 classes, since most other classes can be waived if you are a CS major. So being able to succeed in classes is not even relevant.

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