Computer Science Graduate School Admission Results

Admitted. to the Bridge program. Already accepted an offer elsewhere, so planning to decline.

[TTBP]: I totally agree with your point. My friend got in Stanford MS because he knows a prof there who is willing to work with him. Many others I know as well. So, more than LUCK, it is about CONNECTION and knowing the RIGHT PERSON.

As a parent of a boy who has got admission into PennState, who wont be taking it since he has got Purdue and Wisc Mad PMP and will be most likely taking the former and will be considering OSU (another seat) along with PennState as trophies, I thought it right to comment about the situation this year as I have been following this site steadily for the past few months. My son has high end CGPA+rank from a top State college in India (forget this stupid Tier 1 etc that many Indian students rant about...I personally am an IIT B.Tech, IISc M.E. of yesteryears (1980s) and wont rant about it unnecessarily!) has 6 publications as on date (journal + conference...decent International ones...not the top most ones!) and I must say without doubt has been lucky to get what he got. I am aware of others with almost similar CGPA not getting any top 20 college, even some who are again seniors and rankers of my son from his college. I am also aware of some with lower CGPA and zero experience who have got top 20 from his college. While I admit, that I am illiterate in talking about SOP etc (as I never tried to go for higher studies in US in my times!), I can say that the idea that SOP defines the possibility sounds ridiculous. In fact one stupid comment I get from my son's contacts and even on net is that "dont mention financial help in SOP". To be precise my son mentioned it in almost all cases. There are comments about "dont underline or use bold" and I as the person who was helping review my son's SOP and even the LORs (which of course were accepted by his recommenders!) had BOLD, UNDERLINE and ITALICS. What I want to tell as a senior person about this GRAD program looking students are the following. 1. Getting a Univ in US (did not try other places) based on my son's and the others that I could track shows that IT IS JUST A LOTTERY. So many who are frustrated that what you perceive as you being better and not getting a college while somebody bad got it, just shows that you did not win the lottery. 2. While I said 1 above, certainly a CGPA of 9+ helps though I think 9.5+ seems to have a bit of negative effect especially in the top 30 colleges sometimes. They probably rejected you because they thought you were not going to join or you were not the right fit. 3. Coming to the above point, RIGHT FIT is what the Prof who took your Application thought about it. So if the right Prof got your appln. and he wanted you, may be you got it. In simple there is a high level of randomness and so dont curse yourself for failure. Bad luck. 4. Finally this year is THE REAL BAD YEAR. Penn State that my son got and will not be taking seems to have hardly taken more than few Indians. Strange but true. Many with decent profile didn't get it. I am not even talking of WiscMad rejecting hordes for the MS Traditional program. Overall, it looks like that Covid year is a big game where the Colleges were trying to find the right match and they had invariably hangover of previous year students who had deferred it. 5. The scene might only improve marginally next year as per my guess. Since the carry flow of the deferrals and the space lost last year (by folks not joining) will get into the next academic year, I dont think situation will be same even in 2021-2022 as it was in 2019-2020 and before. So the trouble you saw this academic year might actually continue for one more year if flow control exists. Anyway colleges have their ways of dealing with it. 6. Finally, I find there are 2 types of US colleges. Ones that you pay and get a seat easily potentially with say 9+ and nothing more (Columbia, UPenn, USC and even quite a few branches of CMU and well WiscMad PMP!) and others where you need to slug it out. If my career in the SWindustry of the past means anything, nobody in US in a job really cares so much about college etc (the Tier based approach so sadly seen in Indian colleges!) once they are placed in a job. So if you joined NCSU and I joined Cornell, it is not really that in the end you are low class and I am high class. Please try to understand that. Something I tend to educate my son as well. The truth is you are worth what you are and the colleges took you for what they felt you were. Good luck.

TTPB: They haven't even started giving out decisions for MSCS. FYI, they don't even send rolling decisions.

To everyone below: when did you all apply? Do we think that they are filtering by GPA according to date submitted?

Ah and to filter on cgpa admission committee took 5months they would have hired an excel professional who would have done in 10mins at max. Anyways may be I can't make it to fall 21 hope Columbia also clears this misery soon ! All the best those who got in !

Well... It is what it is. 2 AAAI, 1 ICLR and 1 Springer Nature paper. 1 in review at TPAMI and 1 in review at ICCV. Strong LoRs from Google Brain and Institute Chair Prof at IIT-Bombay. 1 year full-time research exp at IISc, 1 AI startup internship, 2 research internships at top-tier labs, 2xGSoC in AI/ML. Strong research fit with profs and several National Awards. I guess I must have worked harder. The 2021 cohort is more competitive than I expected. Congratulations to those who made it!

From a top private university in India. GPA - 9.36. Good Project on Machine Learning. Won few technical competitions. Honestly, didn't expect a rejection from USC. Am sure that I've got great SOP and recommendations. I don't know what USC did look for. So, am not sure if they send out rejections based on GPA.

Ignore WL. Once again it seems they are processing applicants in the order of GPA. TTPB with gpa 8.8, it seems I would be next in line to be rejected with gpa 8.9 :). USC is so gpa centric it's almost ridiculous.

Rejected after over 4 months of wait. 8.8/10 GPA from a reputed private university, 329 GRE (168 Q 161V and 4 AW) with 4 years R&D work ex at a Siemens and 2 publications. Unable to understand where I fell short.

not able to see my result on youSC portal

Finally, USC put me out of my misery. The long wait was testing my patience on the next level and also affecting mental health, Seeing the horrible situation in India, I don't care about the admission decisions anymore, Yes the reject made me a bit sad. Columbia also should release the decision quickly and put me out of another misery

TTPB: Other accepted person responding here. I submitted everything on 2/28, including my video interview. I actually didn't know you could choose which term to apply to LOL. Idk how I missed that, but I got admitted for the fall 2021 term, which works out better anyway. Best of luck to you guys :)

Was accepted to the CS@CU MS Bridge Program earlier today! For the questions posted earlier: I applied the day before the priority deadline (2/28) and submitted my video interview on 3/1, and I applied for the summer term (:

I'm the poster who talked about getting accepted to UTD's Computer Science PhD program around February 9. I finally got my funding letter today (30 April). A professor I mentioned in my SOP reached out to me, we talked over MS Teams, and he also offered me a summer RA position since I'm from the US. I'm just letting y'all know this in case any of you are still waiting for funding at around this time this or following years. Excited to get my PhD! Best of luck to everyone else in your academic endeavors. :)

TTPB - Sorry to break it to you but it's most likely a rejection at this point. Stop wasting your time.

Accepted into CS@CU MS Bridge Program! Finally after the long wait!