Life Update: I switched to UWaterloo MMathCS (with full funding) after 2 terms. Big thanks to my advisor!

Final Results for Fall22 and Spring23

' Means with thesis option.

[Admission]
Maryland MPSML (8/5)
USC MSCS' General Track aka MSCS28 (21/5)
UWaterloo MEngECE (Specialization in Software) (23/7)
[Rejection]
CMU MSCV (16/2), CMU MSR' (17/2), CMU MSCS' (25/2)
UCB MS EECS' (7/3), UIUC MSCS' (16/3）
UofT MSCS' (21/3)
GaTech MSCS' (6/4), Columbia MSCS' (12/4), Maryland MSCS' (22/4)
SFU MSCS' (28/4)
[Decision]
UWaterloo MEngECE (Specialization in Software)

When I applied for grad school, I told myself: why not aim something big? It’s go big or go home. That explained why my school list is terribly ambitious.

Background

This is my background, I have almost finished the first semester of my final year when applied.

PolyU BSc (Hons) in Internet and Multimedia Technologies 2018-2022

  • Hon GPA: 3.86/4.0

IELTS: 7.5 (S 6.5, L 8.0, R 8.5, W 6.5)

GRE: 319 (V: 150, Q: 169, AWA: 3.5)

Publications: None

Letter Of Recommendation: 3 Professors from my school department

  • My programme leader who I worked for as research assistant (RA)
  • My Robocon Advisor
  • A professor who taught me for 2 semesters but I had a few conversation with him

Awards:

  • Some GPA performance awards
  • Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS) Scholarship
  • HKSAR Scholarship (Probably the easiest one)
  • Some Robocon awards
  • Recommendation award in a VR contest

Experience:

  • Summer RA in my school, 2021
  • Software Engineer intern at a company in HKSTP, 2020

Extra Curricular Activities:

  • ABU Robocon 2019, 2020, 2021
  • a few Kaggle competitions (no medals)

Research Interest: Computer Vision

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where

  • Sem GPA: Grade Point Average in a semester.
  • CGPA: Cumulative Grade Point Average is the average for all subjects taken.
  • Hon GPA: A weighted GPA Used to determine the award classification.
  • GPA values were capped at 4.00 before 2020-21 (3|1). Then policy of school changed to follow a GPA 4.3 scale thus from 2020-21 onwards the highest GPA value is 4.30.

Tbh my profile is considered weak when compare with other candidates who have stellar internships or publications. My undergrad major isn’t traditional Computer Science as well (Not sure if this helped me in the application or not). But still you will never know the opportunities you can access to if you never try.

Foreword

I know many talented Hong Kong people study abroad but I have never seen a post sharing about Computer Science graduate school applications written by Hong Kong people. As Computer Science (CS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the hot topics in recent years, many people choose to pursue their studies in CS-related programs. This has caused the admission of postgraduate degrees to become so competitive and the acceptance bar to raise every year.

Inspired by the experience sharing of CS graduate schools apply from the seniors on the internet, I told myself I would write an article about it if the outcome were satisfactory. Luckily I have received a few offers from some top schools and thus I am going to record my journey here. Hope my post could inspire more Hong Kong people to share their grad school application experiences.

Timeline

2021-2022

2021/06

Started to think about gradschool, prep for IELTS while working under a professor as summer RA

  • 2021/07 Took IELTS (Overall 7.0), meet requirement but I was not satisfied
  • 2021/08 Took IELTS again (Overall 7.5)

2021/09

Prep for GRE while taking care of the school works

  • 2021/10 contact profs for LORs, prep resume
  • 2021/10 Took GRE 308 (V: 147, Q: 161, AWA: 3.0), does not meet requirement
  • 2021/11 Took GRE 319 (V: 150, Q: 169, AWA: 3.5)

2021/12

Submit all the applications

2022/01

Working on FYP and a research project while panicking with the rejects

2022/05

Received a few admits, making decision

2022/07

Decided to go to UWaterloo.

My timeline is entirely a negative example of “how to manage your grad school application”. Please do not take it as reference!

Self-Reflection

Things I wish I knew earlier

GPA

  • In my opinion GPA is used as a cut-off/filter, once you are 3.5+/4.0 it should be safe. (Still I encourage you to apply because there are always uncertainties)
  • Some schools only consider your GPA in the recent 4 semesters (2 years).

Resume / CV

  • It is suggested to use LaTex to customize your CV. Overleaf provides awesome templates like This one: Software Engineer Resume.
  • Avoid 2 columns resume because it doesn’t look traditional enough.
    • I used 2 columns resume during my application and I think that hurt my chances of getting an offer.
  • Its okay to have your resume more than 1 page! 2 pages is suitable i think.
    • I regret dropping out some information just to fit my content into 1 page.

IELTS / TOEFL

  • Some schools do not accept IELTS (e.g. UCSD) and only accept TOEFL scores.
    • Language scores are usually used as a cut-off/filter, once you fulfill the requirement, they shouldn’t make huge differences
  • Note that IELTS/TOEFL scores are only valid for 2 years.

Graduate Record Examinations (GRE)

  • GRE is extremely difficult for me, especially the verbal session.
  • GRE scores are valid for 5 years. So you should definitely take it as earlier as possible!
    • I heard some students took it during their first year summer / second year summer. Anyway, you should take GRE asap so you will have much less pressure than I had.
  • Some schools (e.g. CMU) have GRE cutoff (> 320).
    • The safe score is (V >= 150, Q >= 170, AWA >= 3.5) for students aiming for engineering related programs.
  • Note that GRE has 21 days cooldown period if you want to retake.
  • You can book for online examination at home, but note that you have to prepare a whiteboard for the quant section. IMO online examination is more chill because you need not to wake up early (flexible timeslot) and do GRE in a unfamilar place (The soundproof of examination room in HKEAA is terrible).

Letter Of Recommendation (LOR)

  • Usually 3 Letter Of Recommendation required

    • If possible the 3 letters must come from professors
    • If you have been out of school for a few years, you need 2 from professors and 1 from your immediate supervisor at work.
    • No, you can’t simply ask a friend to write a letter of recommendation for you.

  • How to approaching a professor for a LOR?

Application

  • The application process can be competitive and sometimes with a ton of uncertainties. Even if you have perfect scores, great research background, there are always uncertainties in the process that you have no control.
    • Try to apply for a lot of schools from different places! (10 ~ 20 schools)
  • Generally thesis CS programs candidates have very high GPA like 3.8+/4.0, good LORs (it means the committee know your recommenders and he/she gave you strong recommendation), and 1 to 2 publications on top conference (1st author or co-author).
    • Another point is that the thesis programs committees want your academic profile to match their interest (That is why sometimes stellar profiles are still rejected).
  • In some schools, you can apply for ECE programs and you can almost take the same classes and do research as you are in the CS program.
    • ECE dept admissions are known to be less competitive than CS dept. (Still the acceptance bar are raising every year. From the data collected general acceptance bar is at GPA ~3.7/4.0, with multiple extra activities).
  • You can still conduct research in non-thesis programs by working as a unpaid/paid RA.
    • Which means you can still get research experience by getting into a non-thesis program.
  • The title does not make that huge difference even when it comes to job searching.
    • What I meant is ECE and CS program graduates are actually competing for same jobs.
  • When you think you have a bad profile, don’t give up!

Statement Of Purpose (SOP)

  • I have spent more than 2 months writing on this and still I found my SOP unsatisfactory because I was not sure what I wanted to do.
    • Perhaps back then I was not too sure about my research direction, nor have a concrete idea about research. I think my rejects from the Thesis programs are mainly because I failed to align my research interest to professors’.
  • I couldn’t comment much on this because I am still not so sure about this.
    • You would want to spend more time on your SOP.
    • The general idea is that programs committees want your academic profile to match their interest!

Some Information to share

How to pick schools?

CSRanking is for PhD and Thesis master students

  • CSRanking is a ranking software for the schools in terms of academic publications. It has nothing to do with reputation.
  • People use this to find potential academic advisor.

In my point of view, in terms of admission difficulty (harder to get in does not mean the program is more prestigious/better) :

  • Thesis > Thesis Optional > Taught (Course-based)
  • CS/AI/CV/Robotics > ECE > ME > Cross-field programs

Keep this in mind

  • employees from big tech companies are not all from top-tier schools but they are still very competent.
  • getting into top schools does not automatically get you a job but instead brought you a lot of great opportunities.

Safety Issue

  • Some schools are near to dangerous areas, or locate in an area that have bad weather very often. In this case you need to think twice.

Tuiton Fee and Living Expense

  • Tuiton fees for international students are around 4 times of a local student. I heard we could get a student loan.
  • If you are applying for PhD programs, the top schools usually offer full coverage on tuiton fee and living expense if the professor wants you to be his/her PhD candidate.

How to pick professors (research masters/PhD only)?

  • You need to choose an area to work on and have some ideas on your mind
    • Does not matter if the professor is working on different topic, as long as the subdomain is the same and you think the professor is interested on the topic, then go apply!
  • Do not reach out to the professor before you even submit your application. This ignore them.
    • However you can try to reach out to the professor with your proposal after you submitted your application. Remember to include

Admission information

  • Reddit
    • r/resumes
      • Might help with your resume because I am pretty sure your resume is not perfect yet
    • r/gradadmissions
      • An informative place for general grad school applications (Flooded by MSCS-related questions/answer).
    • r/MSCS
      • Basically r/gradadmissions but computer science masters only
  • 1point3acres
    • A chinese forum for chinese people to share their admits info and some school information. If you can read chinese then good for you.
  • gradcafe
    • Another place for worldwide students to share their admits info.
    • I dont recommend reading them.
  • opencs
    • collected wisdom from chinese people (?)
  • medium posts
    • Many Taiwanese have shared their application experience on medium posts and some of them might worth reading.

CS Masters for non-CS background applicants

Not sure if it is 100% legit but I heard these top school programs welcome students with non-CS background.

  • USC Align aka USC MSCS37
  • NEU Align (Available @ US and Canada Vancouver)
  • UPenn MCIT
  • Columbia U MSCS Bridge
  • Rice MCS

Some information regarding Align programs:

  • Align CS programs included fundamental courses of CS and the courses of a rigid CS master. That explain why Align CS programs are more expensive because more credits are required.
  • Align CS masters does not make a large difference to traditional CS masters.

Some inspiring stories / useful information

You will probably find some useful information here. here is a collection of what I think the most important.

Epilogue

That’s already a lot of information here. I thought I would only need one night for this article but it turns out I spent around a week on it. After this tough cycle of application, I found myself there is still room for improvement and I shall work hard in the future. Besides academics, I should definitely improve my English writing and speaking, so I can communicate more effectively!

Being a first-generation college student, I thought being an undergrad at a university is already one of the greatest achievements in my life. The four years of college life have broadened my horizon and I feel blessed to have met my supportive friends and enjoyed the lectures. I also feel lucky have also met my talented labmates during my stay in the robotics lab and the audio & speech signal processing joint lab, and they inspired me to work hard for my future. I also feel honored to have a chance to work with a professor on a research project that we are both interested in. Most importantly, thank my parents for their unconditional love and support.

Last but not least, I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone I met (both online and in real life) because every one of them contributed to all the decisions I made, and even shaped me into who I am today. The information from seniors and the internet has saved me from twists and turns. So I hope my experience could contribute to people with similar backgrounds. Best of luck to all the prospective Master’s/PhD students!