Comment by vzuvz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vzuvz | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In case there are any CS PhD students at top colleges in the US reading this, I'd appreciate some advice: I am currently applying for a PhD in Germany (RWTH), and although I am excited about that place, I think I'd rather do a PhD in a top US School (for a couple of reasons that I won't detail here). The thing is that admissions for US schools do not seem to start before September, and in case I get accepted in Germany I'd have to decide whether to accept or not without having the opportunity to even apply for American schools. My question is about whether I'd have a decent shot of getting into such programs or not. Because if I don't then it makes sense to take an opportunity somewhere else before even applying there.

My relevant credentials are: I'm currently doing my Ms. Sc. at University of Chile, and have published the following papers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.10000 (accepted at FUN2020) https://ioinformatics.org/journal/v10_2016_19_37.pdf (IOI2016) https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.11693 (ICDT2020) https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3329486.3329498 (Workshops DEEM2019 and AMW2019), and I'm currently preparing what will be my master thesis to be submitted to a conference as well.

Does this look like a solid enough profile to get a decent shot at a top US PhD program?

I'm a PhD student in CS at Caltech. The single biggest factor that determines whether you will get in is whether a well-known researcher writes a strong recommendation for you. I expect that it will be difficult to make the case to accept someone from a virtually unknown program like the University of Chile when there are so many qualified applicants from top American schools. Just to be clear, I'm not saying you are unqualified, only that you will have to compete with "safer bets" who look stronger on paper.

Really nice to see a fellow Chilean (I was born in Santiago but raised in NY) going for a PhD in CS.

I got a PhD from a public university that's probably considered tier-2 in 2018. I got rejected from every other university I applied to for the PhD program for but I learned a lot about how academia works in the process.

There's another post in this thread about making the jump across tiers into the elite university tier. They are right on the money when they say how hard it is and how much of it depends on who you know in the department you're applying to or who your references know in that department.

Being from a different country puts you at a severe disadvantage in the networking aspect of the application. If you really want to attend a top tier institution for your PhD, the most sensible path would be to get into a Master's program at a school where you have a few advisors you'd like to work under.

Once you're in the Master's program, you can do your best to impress them and convince them to take you on as a PhD candidate. Otherwise it's really really difficult to convince them to take a chance on you without knowing you personally.

Anecdotally, even at my tier-2 university it was an anomaly for a "stranger" to be accepted straight into the PhD track. The professors would almost never take a chance on anyone they didn't personally know or didn't have good personal references about. I can't imagine how it would be a tier-1.

Tl;Dr: Unless you make a big name for yourself in a specific area, it's nearly impossible to get into the elite universities without connections. If you're hell bent on doing your PhD at a tier-1, go into the same university's Master's program and build a personal relationship with whomever you want your advisor to be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com