Graduate Admissions is a multi-stage process:

  1. Triaging: Triaging will be done by the Student Services and in collaboration with the GAC Chair to facilitate efficient review of applications. If you feel strongly about a candidate that has been triaged and you think the student deserves moving to Round 1, please reach out to Luca Carlone: we expect to be able to accommodate these requests, since we want to make sure that the triaging only rejects candidates that are clearly not admissible.
  2. Round 1: The grad admissions committee reads all the folders to ensure a consistent baseline. This process is intended to be completed by early January, where every folder has been scored by at least one person. Typically, a folder gets 2 faculty reviews during Round 1. However, if a folder gets a very low score from the first review, additional reviews may be removed and rather conducted by the GAC Chair, potentially leading to an early rejection ("pending deny" bin on SLATE). If a folder is admissible, then the applicant advances to Round 2. 
  3. Round 2: More faculty read and assign a score to folders that advance to Round 2. Contrary to Round 1, in Round 2 the reviews of a candidate are handled by faculty in the same sector/area, and possibly by faculty who are potentially interested in working with that applicant. Most people just read the folders that are assigned to them, but everyone is welcome to read every folder. If you are looking for someone with particular attributes, you could search for that, e.g., keywords in their research statement. This round is typically completed by late January. 
  4. Sector Meetings: The sectors then meet in February and make admissions decisions. For example, in the computing sector, we rank the applicants by average score, and then consider then from highest score to lowest score, based on their research interests, and whether there are enough people interested in advising. The commitment to advise is integral to the admissions process. 
  5. Phone Interviews (new in AY25!): The sector meeting can recommend phone interviews to gather more information about certain applicants, who can be potentially admitted, but for which there are aspects that remain uncertain from their application folder. The interview process will need to be completed shortly after the sector meetings, and the logistics of the interviews is discussed during the sector meeting.
  6. Decisions: Once decisions are made, The Graduate Program Administrator sends out decision letters, usually early March. The admission letter will specify a primary advisor, but that is only a commitment by the department -- the student is free to seek different advisors. If multiple faculty are interested in advising a student, then the letter will list alternate advisors as well. If an RA is offered, the letter will also specify that. 

So your process should probably be:

  • Work out how many students you want to take, and to fund. You'll get an email from the ADH early January asking you to fill out a form with the min/expected/max number of students you are willing to advise, and the min/expected/max number of students you are willing to offer RAs to. The number students you are willing to advise and the number of RAs you have to give do not need to be the same. 
  • Start reading and reviewing folders assigned to you on SLATE. 
  • Identify the handful of candidates you think you would want to work with. 
  • Attend your sector admissions meeting and make recommendations about admissions. 

Some additional bits:

  • We try to make admissions decisions as a sector. If a faculty member wants to admit a low-scoring student, that's a problem because if the student ends up not wanting to work with that faculty member, *and* no one else wants to work with them, then we end up with a very unhappy student wandering the halls looking for an advisor. So we try to admit students that we agree are the highest-qualified students, and that multiple faculty agree would be a fit for our department.
  • There are fellowships available, but fellowships are primarily used as a recruiting tool to attract highly rated candidates
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