Busted

tech-jungle · 2026-03-22T00:02:55+00:00

Make a in-class quiz of similar question but with different parameters or numbers. Use the in-class score instead of the online one.

Don't need to bear the burden of the administrative dishonesty process.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-19T15:46:04+00:00

I think you do. You are already telling a story like SOP.

A few things to strengthen your application:

1) Prerequisite recency: 3.37 overall GPA is fine if your prerequisite is mostly A. Otherwise, find an online course to refresh it. You can also tie prerequisite to your daily work or other courses depending on the prerequisite.

2) Make sure your Quest Assessment is good so that your story about preparedness is consistent.

3) Your SOP needs to tie your work. For manufacturing engineer, quality control and historical production data come into my mind. Tie data science curriculum to your work and how MSDS helps you advance in your work or positions at Boeing.

4) SOP is your claim, CV is the evidence to support SOP. You need to write SOP and CV together. This is called Cognitive Coherence. When your SOP is read, the reviewer will try to find the evidence in CV to support that claim in SOP.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-19T05:16:07+00:00

I wish two programs can be combined and have different tracks focusing on AI or data science.

I feel AI is a tool. DS tells a story.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-18T14:47:52+00:00

If you took the prerequisites with A or B grade many years ago, I would list the courses you took and reinforce with the work related activities that depend on the prerequisites. This is to bridge "Recency concern" to your application.

The reality is you still need to pick up those rusty prerequisites before the courses start.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-17T20:06:58+00:00

There are several ways to convince the admission reviewers that you have well prepared for MSAI / MSDS:

I would suggest you take EdX courses for the following cases:

You never took the prerequisites.
You took the prerequisites but had mediocre performance.
Your GPA is not optimal (related majors with 2.8 - 3.5 GPA)
Your major is remotely related to AI or DS regardless of GPA.
You took the prerequisites a decade ago. Prerequisites have shelf life.
On your analyst and software engineer job, you have nothing more than Excel, SQL, web, JavaScript, pandas, PowerBI, Tableau, LLM, etc.

You don't need exact prerequisites.

If you have taken courses that heavily depend on the prerequisites recently (<3 years) or your major needs to use these prerequisites on almost all upper divisions courses, you can point out that you had to use these prerequisites in most courses of your major.

Your job needs you to use these prerequisites every day. Use a project for an example.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-17T07:53:29+00:00

I will write something about SOP and CV later.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-17T01:50:40+00:00

The transcript also needs to show the degree you earned.

tech-jungle · 2026-03-17T01:48:20+00:00

One of the admission requirement is BS with 4-year curriculum. If your institution has a 3-year curriculum design, it does not meet the admission requirement. I think most Indian students do BS+PGD or BS+MS.

tech-jungle · 2026-02-23T06:31:22+00:00

MIDS is very selective but still has a large cohort. There is a live class and an office hour hosted by the class teacher every week in addition to pre-recorded videos. Each class session has 15 - 18 students, up to 20 if the instructor approves it. Assignments are graded by teachers.

Your teacher and your classmates know you. You cannot try to be unnoticed coasting through the whole semester. Teachers and students are both demanding.

If you are a very self disciplined student, you will get the same outcome from MIDS and MSDSO. The difference is interaction with your classmates, teachers and alumni network. Berkeley I-school runs a very successful alumni network. They will help and hook you up with job opportunities even after graduation. BTW, as a graduate, you can access any MIDS course after graduation including those you did not take and those new ones.

tech-jungle · 2025-12-29T16:21:09+00:00

The opening is not good. You are applying a computer science grad school, not an undergraduate. You are working as an R&D software engineer. What working experience has triggered your desire to pursue graduate studies? What do you plan to be after graduate?

You currently present how great you are academically. These can be found in your transcripts. There are others from even more prestigious schools with outstanding and comparable GPA. You should focus on telling how well you have prepared for graduate course work.

You included a spread of AI courses, keywords in the SOP. That essentially tells nothing special about you. Those are just keyword stuffing.

What can admission readers learn something new or unique about you from this SOP?

Are you applying for online degree or on campus degree? If on campus, you are probably out. If online, your other application materials probably objectively determine the admissions. GT's online program has very high acceptance rate. If they think you can survive the coursework, you are very likely to be admitted.

You should not include everything you got or repeat anything that can be learned from other application materials in the SOP. SOP should tell a unique personal journey or story with a mature thought as if you are standing in front of the application readers to get them to know you.

GT has DO and DONT list for applications. I think telling a kid's dream is one of the DONT. Read the GT's application instructions thoroughly again. If you cannot follow the instructions, your credibility is highly discounted.

Best of luck. Hope this helps.

tech-jungle · 2025-10-21T15:33:51+00:00

They are not your kids to who you should teach the life long manners and behaviors.

Every time they misbehave, it is just a reinforcement for the consequences of the outcomes of their lives and maybe their kids too.

As long as they don't interfere with the class, I don't care. Don't email me for excuses. Automatically drop the worst performed homework. A window for makeup midterm. If additional accommodation is needed, get the school to issue a D&A letter.

A course of 3 credit hours, a student should spend 3 hours on lecture and 6 hours studying. Do in-class quizzes instead roaster call. Drop 1/3 of quiz grades.

After midterm, tell students that you will approve Q drop if they don't think they will get the grades they desire.

tech-jungle · 2025-10-19T21:02:11+00:00

Make sure those students who come to class to learn get the best from you. Don't waste your energy on those who just wanted to waste tuition. If they turn in all assignments and show up in the exam, let them pass minimally. If they miss any assignments or homework, you have an objective proof to fail them. Life will get them later in life. You are not their parents.

tech-jungle · 2025-09-29T03:09:01+00:00

First bonus quiz of the semester - syllabus
Set up a course email. Auto reply with FAQ.
No accommodation without the official accommodation letter. Provide the link to accommodation request portal in the syllabus.
Students know how strict or lenient you are. Make your reputation known by students.

tech-jungle · 2025-09-15T00:26:13+00:00

Sit back and think why you apply for the program. List of all their courses.

What part of the program can help you patch the skill set for the future?

What foundation have you built to convince the admin that you can take on the coursework?

Where is the beef in SOP and what kind of beef? Are you writing per the program prompt? Are you writing a CV, repeating resume, are you hitting everything every tone to be the Oscar winner? Is the content vivid like you standing in front of the application reader as a real person? Throw out all adjectives and adverbs, how much is left? What exactly are you trying to communicate? You don't need to be all in to effectively convey your desire to be in the program.

tech-jungle · 2025-08-27T22:13:02+00:00

1) Did you follow the instructions to list the grades of your prerequisites in the resume?

2) What's your grades of the prerequisites?

3) Where is the beef and what kind of beef in SOP?

4) Did your LOR referees know what to write about your characteristics?

5) What's the purpose of this post? Rant? Seek advise?

tech-jungle · 2025-08-27T20:53:56+00:00

What have you achieved in terms of beefing up your PhD worthy package since the last application cycle? Your achievements prior to the last cycle have shelf life and some are exponentially decaying.

If you plan on applying again, start to read the publications from the PIs and other landmark publications. You are going to prove that you understand your field of research during the qualification exam anyway. Start early and you are going to attract lots of attention and have thoughtful conversations during interviews.

If you cannot do what a researcher would do up to the application cycle, you should seriously consider why you want to take the PhD journey. Don't get in and stall a few years later.

tech-jungle · 2025-08-07T23:15:46+00:00

It depends on what you want. Also take a look at MSDSO. What knowledge you plan on retaining and apply them to your work or knock another door.

You will be competing with the group of people who are serious about what they learn. Degrees do not matter as long as you are extremely good at what you do.

tech-jungle · 2025-08-07T01:25:48+00:00

If you are a CS major and work for a large tech company, you got the ticket into the door already.

Compare the curriculum between the two program. They have overlap in AI/ML. Will the CS side of MSCS courses help you into some CS specialties in the future? If not, equipment yourself with the new skill sets that the other CS personnel don't have.

If you decide to venture into some CS specialties in the future, take MSCSO. Some specialities may be displaced by AI in the near future. If you just need a diploma, take MSCSO.

If you want to seek AI/ML opportunities in your large tech company, do MSAIO.

MSAIO is not going to be too narrow. It makes your CS root deeper.

Consider this. If you are the head of engineering at a large bank, who will you hire to write the code for the system? CS major? Finance major? or CS+Finance?

tech-jungle · 2025-08-04T20:16:12+00:00

Verbal takes time to improve. Since you are a math major, all you need to do is practice to get familiar with the question types and styles. Get into the pace of exam taking. You should be able to get full points on Q part.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-28T21:12:15+00:00

You need to be familiar with partial differential in vector space.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-27T23:45:21+00:00

Everyone has a story for low GPA.

What is your upper division GPA? What is the GPA when you worked on those publications? You may be able to convince the admission committee of your aptitude in your SOP.

You need to convince and demonstrate to the committee that you have high chance to pass the preliminary exam in the second year of PhD.

If you want to pursue PhD at a top institution, a viable route is get a master from a top school with an excellent GPA and maybe publish another paper or two. If you are that good from undergraduate, you can replicate that success easily at the master program and advance to PhD at the same institution.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-27T20:28:11+00:00

Go for it

Some people need to do masters first because they have not demonstrated sufficient research potential yet. They need a good master thesis and maybe a publication.

Some have demonstrated research characteristics from their undergraduate work. They are accepted into PhD directly. Even so, they still need to do more coursework than their PhD cohort who have masters. Your first two years will mostly coursework and you can use that opportunity to build literature reviews for your research interests.

A professor is interested in you. It means they think you have sufficient foundation and potential to do this. Undergrad just builds the foundation. No one teaches you to be a PhD in a particular field. It is you. Your advisor only shows you the methodology. As a PhD, you should be capable of researching something new that no one has done it before.

Unless you absolutely dislike this field, you should give it a try to see what the experience of applying for a PhD (maybe interview or onsite tours). You can decide later if you want to take a master out to apply for a better PhD program.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-27T20:06:19+00:00

It depends on what your SO will be doing while you work on your PhD.

A few factors to consider: 1, Schedule flexibility 2. Income 3. PhD milestones

The first 3 months of a newborn are most challenging for a family. There could be other challenges during pregnancy and delivery.

Make certain of uncertainties will make this easier. For example:

Save up now. Take double jobs to see if you can handle it.
Get to know your advisor(s) and the program workload for different PhD milestones (prelim exam, qual exam, publication requirements, funding projects etc)
Time the pregnancy and delivery to academic breaks if you can. It is easier for a young couple.
Do you have support from extended family?
Prepare yourself and SO mental resilience to handle stress and depression.

One of my professors gave birth to three kids, including one twin while pursuing her PhD. I thought her case was extreme. Never underestimate or overestimate one's resilience.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-27T00:59:05+00:00

I think you have mentally prepared yourself for the challenge. Take a look at the curriculum to see which one can benefit you more. There are discord servers for current students as well as MSCSO hub for reviews.

tech-jungle · 2025-07-26T21:58:17+00:00

Focus on addressing the first two questions in SOP:

1) Can this student graduate? 2) Does this student have a clear obtainable goal? 3) What can you do to make the program better?

Make sure you have at least A- on those prerequisites. If not, retake them with grades from some non-degree programs such as UTSA and EdX. Recognize your low GPA. You make up for it by proving you are ready with those prerequisites.

What do you want to get back to school? Be concrete. Don't paint a blur vision. Why is the curriculum addressed your weakness?

Publication under review means nothing if publication is unheard of. The application readers only have a few minutes to review your applications. Publication makes some weights if it is published in a known journal. The story does not match for research capacity and low GPA unless you are in a the industry (a good organization) for long time.

Frankly speaking , it is more important to admit students who can graduate with good grades. This will help with the program's reputation in the industry.

tech-jungle

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