<p>I heard similar advice (as a Canadian applicant). Safety schools will be Canadian universities. :)</p>
<p>ugh. does not work for me. European universities are not good safety schools, they are barely consolation schools when it comes to biological engineering...</p>
<p>it's not even the matter of their quality, in Europe there is not nearly as much research in the areas I am interested in... so I would rather stay here for a year at a lab tech position than go back to europe...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I heard from my professors that there is no point in going to second tier school... because it will be really hard to get a faculty position later. Partially due to quality of second-tier programs, and partially because good faculty positions ... are peer-reviewed by people at good universities :P.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I hope you're not implying that outside of top 10 = second tier. Or that safeties are second tier.</p>
<p>I think it is really subjective, what is a second tier and what is the first.</p>
<p>When it comes to the faculty position applications, the important matter is what your reviewer considers seconds tier... when you go to a very good university, the probability that he/she would do so, is getting smaller.</p>
<p>SBUMathgrad, I'm kind of on the fence about applying to safety schools. My marks and recommendations are good enough (i was actually advised to apply to just 5 schools - what I have is an expanded list), and I'm thinking if I don't hear by mid February, there are still a few schools that will be accepting applications for a Master's in math which I might try. My undergrad institution also unofficially offered a place for a Master's... Oh, also, certain schools are very strong in combinatorics (which is not i'm going for, and i'm assuming Dilksy is going for those schools primarily).</p>
<p>Although with the current economy, maybe I should apply to more schools...</p>
<p>Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, Michigan, Chicago and Columbia.</p>
<p>Look at Columbia's 2006, 2007, 2008 incoming class.
Graduate</a> Program
2006 American incoming class: Harvard, Princeton, Bryn Mawr, Amherst
2007: Berkeley, Caltech
2008: Harvard, Notre Dame, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley.
And the rest were presumably, stud foreign students. Some came over from Oxford.</p>
<p>So while Columbia has accepted some students from lesser known math undergrads in Bryn Mawr and Amherst, 2007 and 2008 were all powerhouse undergrads. And 2009 seems like it'll be another ultra competitive year, maybe even more so due to the economic circumstances.</p>
<p>And Columbia, while it is a top 10 school, it is probably even harder to get into all the other schools on your list. Stanford is probably tougher as it is a higher ranked private uni, while Berkeley accepts larger incoming classes, it's also a top 5 program. </p>
<p>Look at your list, you are essentially applying to 5 out of the top 5 (Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago) and then 2 of the top 10-12 schools Columbia and Michigan.</p>
<p>I really don't think this is a good idea at all, but it's ultimately your decision. </p>
<p>And to the point about where Dilsky is applying, it doesn't matter that combinatorics is his main goal. I said look at his list, he picked his schools out very well. Rutgers is a reasonable admit for him (Harvard is still a stretch even for top undergrads) while Rutgers is a top combinatorics program. You have no school like that on your list whatsoever. Every school is a top 10 in overall rankings (more or less) or a top 10 in a certain field, while no school is a great chance of admit.</p>
<p>If you are comfortable going back for a masters, I can see why you only are applying to top level programs. I'm not saying you don't have a chance, you might have a good chance depending on how strong your letters are and all that. But I really would suggest you apply to 1 or 2 "mid-level" schools, like 20-35 ranked.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Roksal,
I expect anyone who is smart enough to have two publications to have an easy time getting 3.9+ gpa.
3 years math/cs is normal for applicants to schools of good calibre, not overworked. Btw, what college do you go to, if you dont mind sharing?</p>
<p>anonamous</p>
<p>I go to a top 50 school, cs program in the top 15. Personally, I find that GPA vs research has little correlation. It really depends on what you invest your time into and where your interests lay.</p>
<p>I have more than two publications and I don't have a 3.9+ GPA. I don't believe this is due to not being "smart enough"</p>
<p>I go to a top 650 schools, but not sure where it ranks in computer science. I suppose that you, coming from a top 15 schools, will have a different experience on this matter. Over here at my university, they don't recommend you to do research unless your gpa is already strong, the mentality is to use that extra time to improve your gpa rather than do research. Anyhow, having 2+ publications is really an achievement; not many students have this even those from the top 500 schools.</p>
<p>HT2010, just to be safe perhaps take out one of the schools on your list and add another not-so-competitive one, say ranked between 150-200 in math. I have seen far too many people regretting that they did not applied to enough safety schools.</p>
<p>anonamous, I emphatically disagree with you. I have worked 25+ hours throughout college. Let me tell you, there comes points some semesters when you must make cuts. There are periods in the semester when you simply must say that a B will have to do because there are simply too many things going on in your life. Even graduate schools realize this. I included a link below to a grad school talk given by a guy involved in top level CS admissions (CMU, Berkeley, MIT). He even states that it is more important to do a lot of research than to optimize your GPA. With my job, research, spending time with my girlfriend, and class, it was/is very difficult to achieve a 3.7, and it is quite frustrating to hear that apparently my time management skills are not good enough and that I simply do not compare to some guy who has all the time in the world to perfect his homework/projects/exam grades. If there is one lesson I've learned from college, it is that time is an invaluable asset that should be managed very carefully.</p>
<p>Sorry for the rant. I'll post my profile later. :P</p>
<p>I have read this paper before and yes research is very important. However, gpa makes the first impression and having a low gpa can strongly affect your application. For example, at my university, one of the top in the US (top 650) states that they expect applicants to have 3.7+ gpa at the least.</p>
<p>Applying to Computer Science and Computational Biology/Bioinformatics Programs</p>
<p>US Citizen
3.7 GPA (public, 4-year state school)
3.9 CS GPA
750Q 520V 5.0AW
2.5 years work experience (software engineering)
1 year of research (no publications, 2 poster presentations)</p>
<p>MSU (CS)
Michigan (Bioinformatics)
Wisconsin (CS)
Purdue (CS)
Minnesota (CS)
CMU-Pitt (Computational Biology)
WashU - St. Louis (Computational Biology)
UCSF (Bioinformatics)</p>
<p>I realize that for my profile these are a bit of a reach, but you only live once, right? :)</p>
<p>anonamous, this may sound stupid, but what exactly is "Top 650"?</p>
<p>"Top 650": if one were to write a list of universities in the US assigning a rank to each, with 1 being the best, then top 650 means that it is ranked =< 650.
I can't remember which ranking I saw this in.</p>
<p>SBUMathgrad: you may be right. I /was/ considering some Canadian schools like Toronto and McGill, they're cheap and still very strong.</p>
<p>Anonamous: Top 100 to 150 sounds pretty safe, although considering I have to spend the next 5 or 6 years of my life there, I definitely want to be picky.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I noticed that Anonamous is only applying to probably top 3 programs only. Are you comfortable with that?</p>
<p>HT2010 - I also think you need to expand your list. There are very few spots at these schools and you're going to have some stiff competition. Yes, you have a great GPA, but you're competing with students who have had access to a much tougher undergraduate curriculum. Take a look at the course offerings at some of the top undergraduate programs.They are graduate level classes elsewhere. </p>
<p>My S is applying to math PhD programs as well. He said some of the schools ask you to list the books you used in your undergraduate classes. They are looking closely at the rigor of your curriculum. When you consider that Harvard and MIT alone are graduating about 150 math majors a year, the number of spots at top schools looks very small indeed.</p>
<p>Let me tell you -- graduate schools would much rather have the student with a 3.5 GPA and 2 publications than the student with a 3.7 and NONE. It is far more important to have publications than an astronomical GPA.</p>
<p>Also, there's not much point in applying to "safety schools" at the graduate level. It doesn't work like undergrad. Graduate school is about fit. Grades and GRE scores are important, but what your admissions committee/future colleagues are looking for is whether your research background and interests fit with their department. You could have a 1600 and a 4.0 and 3 pubs but if no one at the department is doing the research you want to do, you're going to get rejected.</p>
<p>So it doesn't make sense to apply to "safety schools" unless the safety is a school with a really good fit and professors there who are doing the work that you are interested in getting into. Beyond that, graduate school overall is competitive; not sure there is such a thing as a "safety school" on the Ph.D level. There are very competitive schools, and then less competitive schools, but nothing is "safe."</p>
<p>Juillet, I agree with you. However, in a field like math, it's hard to get publications, since you need real breakthroughs to be able to publish. Of course you could publish in some undergraduate/high school journals by writing an expository article, but that's hardly research, and I'm not sure how much that counts for anyways. That aside, I definitely don't want to spend 5-6 years of my life in a school I never wanted to go to in the first place, so I'm not going to struggle to find a safety school just because I want an admission letter in my hands.</p>
<p>Although my school is tier 2 (I guess that's more or less arbitrary too. what exactly is the definition of tier 2 anyways?), it's very well-known for its rigorous curriculum. In the past 2 years, I've more or less taken graduate courses only (hence strong recommendations), and I'm reasonably confident that I can get into at least a few of the schools I applied, as students of similar or less stats from my school have gotten into all of these schools in the past years. (I know at least 5 or 6 people, and only one had publications, the rest didn't - one didn't even have research experience!)</p>