<story><title>Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]</title><url>https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>plushprocessor</author><text>What isn&amp;#x27;t often discussed is how hard it is to go from a no name school that isn&amp;#x27;t ranked highly to an elite school. At a non-elite school your recommenders may be unknown to the admissions committee, the &amp;#x27;level&amp;#x27; of education these applicants receive can be questionable (&amp;quot;What does an A mean from this program and how does it compare to our class?&amp;quot;), their research experience could be weak, student visibility could be weak (i.e. their recommender isn&amp;#x27;t known in the field, and their student didn&amp;#x27;t do  any sort of research that made professors at our school aware of them in advance), the courses they take may be weak compared to other applicants (i.e. their program doesn&amp;#x27;t offer as many advanced courses, compared to other programs) and so on. There can be tremendous risk in taking students from unknown schools or non-elite schools. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to accept graduate students from a similar elite school, with well-known recommenders, and a history of successful applicants from that came from that school that did well in said program. It isn&amp;#x27;t impossible, but it is an extra step these applicants have to overcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>downerending</author><text>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.&lt;p&gt;My strategy, which worked out okay, was to &amp;quot;bracket&amp;quot; the field by choosing a couple of schools that looked solid and had very large MS class sizes and to just view my &amp;quot;elite&amp;quot; apps as lottery tickets unlikely to pay off (which they didn&amp;#x27;t).&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, and especially today, I&amp;#x27;d look seriously at targeting specific future advisors at the schools in question, and worrying far less about the school&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Applying to PhD Programs in Computer Science (2014) [pdf]</title><url>https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>plushprocessor</author><text>What isn&amp;#x27;t often discussed is how hard it is to go from a no name school that isn&amp;#x27;t ranked highly to an elite school. At a non-elite school your recommenders may be unknown to the admissions committee, the &amp;#x27;level&amp;#x27; of education these applicants receive can be questionable (&amp;quot;What does an A mean from this program and how does it compare to our class?&amp;quot;), their research experience could be weak, student visibility could be weak (i.e. their recommender isn&amp;#x27;t known in the field, and their student didn&amp;#x27;t do  any sort of research that made professors at our school aware of them in advance), the courses they take may be weak compared to other applicants (i.e. their program doesn&amp;#x27;t offer as many advanced courses, compared to other programs) and so on. There can be tremendous risk in taking students from unknown schools or non-elite schools. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to accept graduate students from a similar elite school, with well-known recommenders, and a history of successful applicants from that came from that school that did well in said program. It isn&amp;#x27;t impossible, but it is an extra step these applicants have to overcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwlaplace</author><text>easiest way to jump tiers is networking i.e. person to person conversations with PIs. if you&amp;#x27;re able to represent yourself well and describe your own research articulately and authoritatively it&amp;#x27;ll make up for a great deal of the gap between you and students from &amp;quot;elite&amp;quot; schools. unfortunately this networking happens at conferences which less resource-rich schools can&amp;#x27;t afford to send undergrads to.&lt;p&gt;my hack: when you&amp;#x27;re traveling to a city with a brand name school you might be interested in attending, shoot some professors an email asking to drop by and chat about their research. they will usually tell you to come by during their office hours. this has worked for me no less than 3 times and led to 2 admissions.&lt;p&gt;if you&amp;#x27;re an undergrad and you&amp;#x27;ve never sold&amp;#x2F;pitched yourself to someone i strongly suggest you read some salesy stuff about how to approach a sales meeting. you have to keep in mind that PIs are kind of like CEOs of small startups - they do research, publish papers, and win grants. That&amp;#x27;s their business cycle. when they&amp;#x27;re evaluating new students they&amp;#x27;re trying to determine how effectively you&amp;#x27;ll fit into that cycle. that means if you&amp;#x27;ve done all 3 of those things you&amp;#x27;re in a good position to be hired (and it is out and out hiring) but if you lack experience in one area (e.g. writing grants) you can make up for it by being strong in another (or giving the impression that you will be). ultimately you need to speak to their needs and goals rather than your own.</text></comment>