Just came across an interesting article on why article reviews for technical journals are important, and some tips on how it should be done.
Larry, J. Greenstein, Opinions on reviewing for technical journals.
Posted in Article.
Tagged with article review, review, tips.
So today Columbia emailed me the decision, and with that all schools I have applied to have officially replied. If you want to know the results, you can check it out at http://grad2010.jamesyxu.com/
Retrospectively speaking, the results arent bad at all:
- Apparently international undergrads going directly to PhD rarely gets any funding. It’s understandable really, no one wants to waste hard earned funding on someone they have never met before. I had original hoped for funding, but given the schools I applied to it might have been a little wishful thinking… just a little…
- All the schools I applied to are top tier schools. My goal is not to relocate myself to America, but rather to do research and get the experience of being in a top school. 3 out of 16 isn’t too bad. Most places have acceptance rate below 6%, and IMHO a lot of the decision comes down to the committee’s experience, interest etc rather than the applicant’s merits. Â Many factors such as having a professor needing someone to work on a project that an applicant has direct experience in are very random, so there is a big ‘chance’ factor in play.
- I think some schools in that list was a waste of spot. Could have saved a few $$s by not applying to schools like MIT and Berkeley. Not only is the chance infinitesimallylow, there will be so many best of the best there that there is less chance for me (or anyone else short of being a complete genius) to shine 😀
UCLA is a very good choice for me, the weather is very close to Auckland, and there are many opportunities in California in the areas of electronics.
Posted in Grad school.
Tagged with admission, application.
Thought I’d finalize a place for myself to live in way before other people start heh. This way I get more choices I suppose, and less to worry about later.
Looked over a few… a lot of places over the weekend, and really settled on Westwood Apartments, seems to be a nice place.
Most of the reviews regarding apartments near UCLA are pretty useless imho. I think students just expect wildly different things, so every apartment ends up having awesome reviews and reviews that make it sound worthless. There are, however, a few places that seems to be infested by pests, probably want to stay away from those…. But still.. these are student apartments, a few pest here and there is probably to be expected I guess
The places that seems good:
- Westwood Apartments
- Levering Heights
- Westwood Concord
Planning to live by myself for a while, the idea of finding a roommate online doesnt really appeal to me. First choice would be a Studio apartment I suppose
Posted in Information, Living.
Tagged with Apartment, Westwood apartments.
Got to meet Professor Greg Pottie on wednesday in Christchurch. A lot of helpful information ranging from classes to where to live. A very friendly person I would say.
His research direction is moving towards Health care, and the applications of sensor networks and information classification and processing, some very interesting problems to be solved fundamentally.
Other than that, two things I noticed:
- University of Canterbury is not as big as I thought it would be. The campus was very well build, and has the university vibe, but just as one starts to enjoy the drive  down the road its over. The campus is like a single block or something
- Christchurch is a nice city. City center is somewhat small, but very well laid out, the square around the church, the roads around botanic gardens are all touristy spots!
/rant
Going to post some pics of Christchurch on Facebook I think… also need to get a gallery thing working on here
Posted in Rant.
Tagged with Christchurch.
But seriously though, it is small and full of coincidences.
An email from the IEEE ComSoc NZ informing me of a regular seminar made me realize that my faculty advisor, Professor Greg Pottie is actually here in NZ (He is the one giving the seminar)… What are the chances..
Decided to go and meet him, and get an idea about what doing a Masters and PhD is like in UCLA. There are also some specific questions I picked up reading the EE website the other day.
Posted in Rant.
Tagged with coincidence.
Trawled through the entire EE website on UCLA, just to make sure I know what I’m doing. Some links are very useful:
The ones below are really nice to know stuff.. Should really join the student assoc. though.
Posted in Information.
Tagged with Information, masters, masters program, steps.
- A retrospective view on the application process, and the amount of preparation etc
- A central location where all the information I need for graduate school can be condensed
- A research, study, project diary that keeps track of progress
- A diary to my daily, or “as often as I want to update”-ly activities, for parents, friends, supervisors, and interested parties
I think in the next few weeks I’ll write about the application process, the documents required, preparations needed etc
Posted in Rant.