Last post, I mentioned that the University of Michigan had a nice admissions blog that included a contact email in case any prospective students had questions. I actually had a few questions, so I decided to send an email. I also figured that I should send emails to all of the institutions that I was thinking of applying to. I sent similar emails (though they each had specific questions about each program) to Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, UC Irvine, and Berkeley.

I found a few more schools that have good looking programs that I’d be interested in applying to. With these two, my school count would go up to 7. I’m not too sure that’s playing it too safe, or not safe enough. Here are the additional schools and my reasoning for wanting to apply: Cornell 🔗Degree: PhD in Information Science Deadline: January 1, 2007 Notes: Cornell has a program similar to a few of the schools that I’m already planning on applying to.

So I took that same practice GRE test a few times yesterday. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m getting duplicate questions, so the accuracy of the scores is probably not as good. I got 690 on both verbal and quantitative this time. I wonder why I keep getting the same on both parts… The first time through the math part, I actually ran out of time. This is because I took a more leisurely pace and suddenly the questions got more demanding.

So I talked to another past professor of mine today because I had heard he knows a lot about applying to grad school. He wouldn’t admit mastery of the subject, but he did say that he probably knows a hell of a lot more than I do about it right now. That fact is incontestable. Anyway, he gave me some tips that I hadn’t heard yet. First off, he went through the process of how he looks at grad school applications at our own school.

So one of the (supposedly) most important parts of the grad school application packet is the statement of purpose. The SOP is basically an essay explaining how awesome you are and why the university should accept you as a grad student. Interestingly, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech do not list the statement of purpose as a required part of the application. UC Irvine says that it’s part of a complete application, but doesn’t describe it at all.

After taking quite a bit of time considering schools and departments, I’ve come up with a list of schools I’ll be applying to. I suppose they’re still subject to change, but here’s what I’ve got (in no particular order): Georgia Tech 🔗Degree: MS in Human-Computer Interaction Deadline: February 1, 2007. Notes: Georgia Tech seems to be one of the more, if not the most progressive schools in the nation when it comes to computer science.

One of the things that will hopefully help in my grad school admissions are my standardized test scores. I remember getting a decent SAT score, and I never even took the ACT. Luckily, I still got into my school of choice, UNM. Well, it was my only choice, really. I’ve heard people say that the GRE really did a number on them. They went in unprepared and suffered the consequences. While a high GRE score probably won’t guarantee that I’ll get accepted into the more difficult universities, it definitely won’t hurt.

So getting a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science was a pretty easy decision for me to make. There’s not a “Computer Engineering” degree at my school, and “Electrical Engineering” is too circuity for my tastes. I want to do research in stuff like social computing and computational linguistics. While looking for departments with research in these fields, it’s become evident this kind of research doesn’t typically fall in the Computer Science field.

I guess a good introductory post would be discussing why I’m considering grad school. I suppose that most people go to grad school because they want to make more money, or they want to be elite. Some people want to be professors, so graduate school is an obvious choice for them. If I wanted to, I could probably just walk away from school after getting my BS in Computer Science and make a comfortable living on that.

So this is yet another blog for me, Hung Truong, to keep up to date. I’ve been searching for CS Graduate Schools and thought it would be a good idea to impart the information I’ve gained onto the web. Most graduate school info online tends to be dry and written from the perspective of someone who’s been through it all already. This blog will be written by someone who’s still figuring out the process, so hopefully it’ll also be helpful to others who are going through the same thing.