<p>@Mollie, even in my experience, big name profs, including Fields Medalists, Turing award winners, etc, teach undergrads and grads. However, perhaps the so-called issue being raised is that most professors of big name may not be enthusiastic about students. I very much disagree, just as you seem to, since I think it depends on the professor, and generally there are plenty of profs who will help an undergraduate who really cares and makes an effort to do some thinking.</p>
<p>Another point is that MIT will surely have its share of talented postdocs who can have more flexible schedules than professors advising a ton of students, and they can be great to ask questions to and chat with. Sure, maybe you want your ultimate letters to come from big names, but that isn’t all or even most of what you should aim to get out of your education.</p>
<p>This is very true. Also, I think also the OP needs to talk to people who know about CS admissions specifically. Computer Science is a strange field. I read in the MIT newspaper that some professors in CS thought undergrad education in CS (in general, not MIT) may not be useful in that career. So, I don’t know how they make their decisions–they may not take grades as seriously. I really don’t know. </p>
<p>The best thing for the OP to do is to find people who have graduated recently from the CS department at his school who were successful in grad school admissions and find out what they did.</p>
<p>Regardless, don’t let all this discourage you. Even if you are talking about grad school admissions, you can always get a masters at a place which is intermediate between your school and MIT and then try again for the best places for the PhD program.</p>
<p>I realized one point of my previous post may be unclear - i meant to say undergraduates who are actually actively asking questions and show lots of enthusiasm and backbreaking work towards doing high quality academic work, will probably get attention from the friendlier professors. There is no doubt that many undergrads complaining about professors not wanting to have much to do with them have not tried to care about anything remotely enough to have a legitimate qualm. Some of the most elitist, seemingly inaccessible professors will light up if you ask them good questions about things they care about. Something like this was even in that CS admissions article by that CMU prof that seems to be circulated a lot.</p>
<p>Wow, It sucks that I’m on the other side of the globe. Most discussions here happen while I’m asleep/at school (I currently live in Saudi Arabia. That’s 7/8 hours away from the US).</p>
<p>I’m obviously planning on putting in the extra effort, getting internship positions during summers and doing undergrad research. I took a look at McGill’s website, and they do have information on a couple of CS students. Those who ended up in grad school at MIT or Berkeley were mostly Honors students who also did research at NSERC, which seems to only consider canadians. I’ll definitely try to find something else though.</p>
<p>I guess it’s not IMPOSSIBLE to reach a top CS school if I spend my undergrad years at McGill. I’ll just probably have to work harder than if I’m at Waterloo.</p>
<p>cornfields, in addition to others, your comments have been truly tremendous and very helpful. However on the comment above, I might agree with a few of the others that there are universities where the top Profs are required to teach undergraduates and research is very often conducted with the undergraduates as strong personal relationships occur between the well known Profs in the field and the undergraduates. I experienced this years ago and I can’t imagine that it is any different now. The school: Princeton. The department: Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>This is not true at MIT at all, mainly because there are so many faculty here. In fact, a Nobel laureate taught the few lab classes I had in intro physics. Also, a former president of MIT was a TA in some engineering classes.</p>
I’ll definitely try to find something else though.</p>