4 ms·

I was in this situation, decades ago, and indeed was turned down by CMU. At least back then, CMU like some other elite schools had no MSCS, making it even hard

I was in this situation, decades ago, and indeed was turned down by CMU. At least back then, CMU like some other elite schools had no MSCS, making it even harder to make the grade coming from Podunk U. My strategy, which worked out okay, was to "bracket" the field by choosing a couple of schools that looked solid and had very large MS class sizes and to just view my "elite" apps as lottery tickets unlikely to pay off (which they didn't). Beyond that, and especially today, I'd look seriously at targeting specific future advisors at the schools in question, and worrying far less about the school's reputation. An excellent advisor at Mississippi State will do you far more good than a crappy one at Stanford. And will probably cost a lot less.

glangdale 6y ago
I think this is bad advice for most people. "An excellent advisor at Mississippi State will do you far more good than a crappy one at Stanford. And will probably cost a lot less." I applied to 6 schools - doing the "bracketing" thing (CMU+UCB as "reach" schools, Wisconsin-Madison & Washington as "mid" schools and Columbia and U Colorado Boulder as safety schools). I got into everywhere but UCB and Washington, but CMU was my first choice so I was super-happy. The thing was - there were specific people at Boulder and Columbia that I thought I wanted to work with, but I checked a couple years later out of curiosity, and they'd moved on (around the time I would have been doing a thesis proposal). My first adviser at CMU also went to industry after a couple years and I had to switch advisors and fields, but had a number of excellent choices - as top-tier schools are packed with really good people. So if your interests shift, or you are forced to have an advisor change, or you wind up working in an area with some adjacencies to your original area (say you start as a networks person but wind up doing a half-networks, half-operating system PhD) you will find good advisors and coadvisors aplenty at a good school. At an "OK" school there are usually some really good people but they may have zero good people in whole subfields, and you might find that that good academic has left before you start your PhD proper...
- downerending 6y ago
  All worth considering, yes. I don't envy anyone having to plan a strategy on this.

glangdale 6y ago

I think this is bad advice for most people. "An excellent advisor at Mississippi State will do you far more good than a crappy one at Stanford. And will probably cost a lot less." I applied to 6 schools - doing the "bracketing" thing (CMU+UCB as "reach" schools, Wisconsin-Madison & Washington as "mid" schools and Columbia and U Colorado Boulder as safety schools). I got into everywhere but UCB and Washington, but CMU was my first choice so I was super-happy. The thing was - there were specific people at Boulder and Columbia that I thought I wanted to work with, but I checked a couple years later out of curiosity, and they'd moved on (around the time I would have been doing a thesis proposal). My first adviser at CMU also went to industry after a couple years and I had to switch advisors and fields, but had a number of excellent choices - as top-tier schools are packed with really good people. So if your interests shift, or you are forced to have an advisor change, or you wind up working in an area with some adjacencies to your original area (say you start as a networks person but wind up doing a half-networks, half-operating system PhD) you will find good advisors and coadvisors aplenty at a good school. At an "OK" school there are usually some really good people but they may have zero good people in whole subfields, and you might find that that good academic has left before you start your PhD proper...

downerending 6y ago
All worth considering, yes. I don't envy anyone having to plan a strategy on this.