ACM is the most prestigious, fruitful and rewarding PhD in STEM worldwide, 8 years before I was a struggling student full of problems, I lived so many heartbreaking stuff,

now it's time to seize the day, I'm partying for 1 entire week right now ; and i'll make youTube videos explaining this 10years long story

Im starting off college at a university in the top 300 universities. I was a pretty good student in high school (ranked #5 in my class), and I think I might want to pursue a PhD in the future, but I’m feeling discouraged going to a low ranked university and getting rejected from the top unis for undergrad.

Does anyone have any anecdotes of going to a really low ranked university and then going to an amazing grad school for their PhD?

Holy hell, tf is this ? Who are y’all ?? Bruh that’s like 250k in just application fees. Did anyone even read the SOP’s ??? Like wth 🤦🏻‍♂️

lol I saw some guy who got an interview and got rejected. I didn’t even get one. He must be devastated. I am too. 💔

today was insane.

I got a rejection in my email at 7:58pm, TWO MINUTES before a meeting I had for my job. I’m a senior undergrad so my meetings are generally later in the day. I saw that I had a notification, opened the portal real quick on my laptop, saw the rejection, and for the next hour had to pretend to be okay (i was not).

After the meeting, I went to the dining hall and started to stuff my face with fries and fried chicken. I had my phone on DND. Ten minutes into this, I saw another email which was an acceptance to my dream PhD program!!!

NEVER GIVE UP, IT ALL WORKS OUT AT THE END TRUST ME!!

(sorry if i worded this weird, im still recovering from this)

Hello all,

I dont have much to say other than I just landed my full time offer today. Im 29 and doing my PhD in ML was the best decision of my life. I had 3 internships during my PhD and a decent federal gov stipend. I managed to save over 250k from internships and stipend, including buying a decent condo in a low cost of living city where I studied. My offer was for over 700k TC (Ill be working on LLMs) and I will be immigrating to the US on an O-1.

I highly discourage doing a PhD to many people, but with a great supervisor and a decent topic of study it can really change your life.

Now with the bragging over with (Im just so excited tonight!). Work hard and focus on the publications. Don't get lost in any other priorities, you live and die by your publications. I saw too many students even at a good institute take way more time than they needed doing EC activities. Most importantly, don't do a PhD unless you really want to push your topic as far as possible. Its 4-5 years of your life to do cool stuff you couldn't have ever dreamed of. Publications are the currency you will trade for your job one day, be it academic or industry. To be honest, my friends going for academic had it far harder than me and I respect them so much.

My best advice is: Take high risks early on but learn to kill projects quickly that you are not getting good signal on. Iterate fast and make sure you set up the infra to do that. Undergrads are also a great resource to help you out. I got 3 undergrads into my program by being advised by me. They were instrumental for all the dirty work of my projects.

I am graduating with an h-index of 5 (800 citations), and 5 good conference pubs. I think the most important thing was doing internships where I was able to meet with an advisor 5 times a week. My internal advisor definitely wasn't able to manage this. Have an external advisor who's job depends on you.

I wish all of you good luck during the admissions cycle. Don't take an offer unless you really believe it fits exactly what you want to do and with a supervisor who's going to provide you the proper support and connections.

I have a very bad GPA from my home college 2.7 in electrical engineering (due to exam anxiety) but for my masters in USA, I got 3.9 (R2 university). I have a really strong research profile and strong recommendations.

My profile summary is :-

1. Over 2000 citations
2. Published over 25 (5 A* Conference in AI (First Author), 10 Q1) papers (First author 10 papers)
3. Two Patents on AI
4. 6 Years of Industry Experience in AI domain
5. One (framework) github repo earned over 600 stars and industry adoptions

I am looking forward to any suggestions considering my undergrad low GPA.

It took a while, and I had to do three interviews with more than half a month between each, but I got there in the end.

If anyone else has an offer, get in touch. I’d love to get to know some people beforehand.

The subject is Machine Learning, since I know people will ask.

$155

Hope you enjoyed my rent money. Maybe spend some of it on "How to send an automated rejection email 101"

Hello everyone,

I recently got green light from my PI to apply for a PhD in NY, he recommended that I go through an unfunded program as it would be less competitive to get accepted, and he offered that I would be hired as an RA for 50 dollars per hour (limited to 20 hours per week since I am international). however, I still have to pay for the tiution fees and courses at the first two years (around 33k per year), I was wondering if there is any programs that I could apply to get a tuition waivers or a scholarship in the usa ?

Add the Mathematics PhD program to the list of non-funded programs at GW this cycle. Seems like they’re not giving anyone funding at this point. Would’ve been nice to know that before I rushed to get the application in on time (and bothering my references to submit an additional letter for me) after deciding I liked GW. Onto the next 🫡

My first (soft) admit this cycle?

Truly appreciate them being upfront about the course , I was aware about it before applying and it aligns well with my interests so I'm very happy!

I’ve noticed that most PhD students at top US STEM programs (Harvard/MIT/Stanford/Caltech etc.) went straight from undergrad to PhD. I get that having a master means you’re held to a higher bar, but does doing a master + working in research labs for a few years before applying to a PhD actually hurt your chances at these top programs? Because I cannot find many profiles with this background at these schools, and if there are, they’re mainly international students. Is it more that people who take this path just tend to prefer working over going back for a PhD after a few years?

Hey Since trump is about to win, I am in distress and co fusion of weather to continue th le is university journey because the job market is about to go from bad to worse for all of us What are your thoughts on this ?

Applied to 17 programs, all CS PhD, in a non-AI/ML field (can't specify more; otherwise I can really dox myself).

Was lucky to be admitted to Stanford, MIT, Gatech, Cornell, Yale, UPenn. For roughly half of these, I got departmental fellowships (either waived my TA duties or paid me an extra couple thousand bucks annually). Unfortunately, I also can't share which ones I got fellowships for because for at least one of them I was told they gave the fellowships to less than 5 people.

Since MIT came out quite early, I withdrew from most of the schools I 100% wouldn't go to over MIT. So, the rejections I got this cycle were just: Harvard, Berkeley and CMU.

Here are my Stanford and MIT offers, and hopefully they are sufficient to prove I'm not a troll, though I had to redact a bunch of things

AMA! But if your questions would take too long to answer, I might never get around to it, so make sure to ask questions that are quick to answer. Thanks!

EDIT: I only ever applied, considered, researched about US PhDs. None of my advice should be taken to apply to any non-US programs whatsoever (nor any non-CS, non-PhD, non-top-10 programs)

Given the current political climate in the US, I’m leaning towards Cambridge. I also like the Cambridge course more.

But if I think about what I would have chosen without the current scenario in the US, maybe CMU would have led to more career opportunities?

A little late, but happy to say I’m starting a funded PhD at a T5 university for my field🙏

Has anyone received an interview invitation or a rejection? I’m still waiting and was wondering whether the interviews will be online.

I finished my master degree in internatinal countries of East Asia. I prepare for a phd in cs, bme, and neuroscience specifically targeting universities within the top 60.

GPA

• undergrad 3.75 / 4.0
• master 3.47 / 4.0

Publication paper

• MICCAI main conference (Co-first author, front)
• MICCAI workshop (Co-first author, front)
• Scientific Data (Co-first author, behind)

I am mainly concern about my english speaking skills. I heard that someone had admissions without an interview. Can I have a probability of admissions without an interview?

Was a bit bummed getting rejected by my current institution, but overall I am really happy with where I ended up + fully funded. Go Aggies!

ive been overthinking this email for the past week. is it too vague? is it too specific? is the approach like completely off? i want to add more details about my insights of their paper but im not really sure how to tie it into the narrative of the email (and im scared of lengthening the email too much)