Confused Mechanical MS/PhD International Student

spidy1985
Thu, 12 Apr 2012 02:19:49 +0000

Hi,
I am currently a PhD student in Computer Science at UC Merced. I started last year in August. I got a BS and two MS degrees from a top 20 - top 10 engineering university in Europe. I was in the same situation as you are now about a year ago. I applied to a lot of top schools in the US (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, …) and was rejected every were.
I got two MS degrees, both with distinction, 790 at the quantitative GRE (which is the most important for engineering programs), was an exchange student at Stanford in 2009 and also got a recommendation letter from a Stanford Professor.
PhD programs in top schools in the US are incredible hard to get in, at schools like Stanford, MIT, etc. there are 2000-3000 applicants and maybe 12-15 get accepted. So its not that your application is weak, its just like a lottery (well a little bit you know).

What can I say about UCM, the bad thing is it has not much reputation yet that is true, but it is already growing and we are publishing papers with the same success rate at conferences where also people from MIT, Berkeley, etc. publish. We work together with a lot of people from Berkeley and other UCs. Most professors here are from top schools like Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, etc.
In a PhD program it is better to be in a small program with an adviser who has time for you. In a big school you can end up seeing you adviser maybe once every two months and share him with 20 other students (people from Berkeley told me that for example). At UC Merced I share my adviser only with 3 other students and we work together every week and I learn a lot. Of course you can also have this situation in a bigger school, but its less likely.
The funding situation is really good here at UC Merced, you won’t have to worry about money here.
If a PhD applicant doesn’t meet the standards of a UC school, he or she will also not be accepted at UCM, thats why we are recruiting actively.

I hope this gives you a better view on UC Merced and maybe help you in our decision. Feel free to ask other questions, I am happy to help.
BTW the surroundings at UCM are a lot like at UC Davis.