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| 5/16 |
| 2013/4/30-5/18 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:54667 Activity:nil |
4/30 Cal is a public Ivy League school!
http://news.yahoo.com/consider-public-ivy-school-want-140739978.html |
| 2011/12/20-2012/2/6 [Academia/GradSchool/MBA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:54267 Activity:nil |
12/20 Question to people in industry: I'm a transfer student, which
means I can take an extra semester to graduate. I will have met
all the requirements to graduate in May, but already have an
internship lined up for the summer and was planning to use the
semester afterward to take some courses I haven't had a chance
to yet (graphics, distributed systems (if they add the course),
grad-level networks or security). I'm not sure if it would be
worth the time/money to stay another semester, though, and am
wondering if I should just apply for full-time jobs now and not
worry about doing another internship/semester. Thoughts?
\_ It won't affect your job prospects. If you'd enjoy another semester
in school, take another semester; if not, don't.
\_ You will make more money over the course of your career
by going to work now, if that is the question. Is there
any chance that later on you will get a MS or MBA?
\_ The question is whether it's worth going to work 6 months
later in order to take a few classes which interest me,
but may not be relevant in the long run. I would like to get a
MS at some point. What difference does that make here?
\_ It is certainly not "worth it" if you just want to maximize
lifetime income. Taking a few more classes won't make you
any money, but working another six months certainly will.
If you are trying to decide life satisfaction vs the money,
it really depends on how much you enjoy school. I have
enjoyed working more than being a full time student. YMMV.
If you plan to get an MS, you will probably be more attractive
to graduate programs with the extra coursework and might
even be able to get more out of the MS, so that should be
a consideration.
\_ you'll always find ways to make more money in your lifetime
but there will not be many opportunities to take classes
from a really great university. Chances are, when you start
working, you will be too busy to want to take any new class.
\_ Agreed. I graduated two decades ago with honor (which already
meant a broader list of courses) without taking 184 (Graphics),
188 (AI), or 268 (Networking). Now I wish I took those courses.
--- !OP
\_ Why do you wish you took them?
\_ Because now I feel that there are holes in my CS education.
When
When people talk about these areas, I feel bad that I don't
know anything even though I graduated from a prestigious
university. AI may be obscure all right, but graphics and
networking are common.
\_ Just read books and stuff. Sheesh.
\- your brain size has been classified as: small |
| 2011/12/4-2012/1/10 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:54248 Activity:nil |
12/4 "Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'"
http://www.csua.org/u/uvz (news.yahoo.com)
"(Princeton sociologist) Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed
a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as
white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100."
\_ Cal has a race blind admission policy, but I wouldn't be too
surprised if some of the elite private schools discriminated
against Asians that way. They used to discriminate against Jews
the same way. I wonder if he is removing the effect of "legacy
admissions" or not. Private schools reserve about half of their
admissions to children of graduates. How do you think someone
like Dubya got into Yale?
\_ "A look into Harvard’s admission policies in the 1990s showed
that, after preferences for legacy students and athletes was
removed, there was no discrimination against Asians based
on race."
So white kids get in through their parents, blacks via athletics
and Asians have to compete on academic talent alone.
\_ Where did this quote come from? It's not in the article
above.
\_ It is from a different article. Google for it.
\_ note to self: must procreate with another race so my offsprings
have a better chance of survival. Societal vigor =~ hybrid vigor. |
| 2010/9/8-30 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:53951 Activity:nil |
9/5 http://www.ehow.com/how_4451629_become-actress-hollywood.html |
| 2009/12/11-2010/1/13 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:53590 Activity:nil |
12/11 "Should Your Kids Pay for College Themselves? - Yahoo! News"
http://www.csua.org/u/ppw
"They found that 63 percent of those who graduated from college said
they received some financial help from their family. Only 42 percent
of those whose parents didn't help managed to graduate from college."
"Some college financial aid officers say that finances alone might not
explain that 21 percentage-point difference in graduation rates."
The author is probably one of those who didn't receive help from the
parents and didn't graduate from college. He couldn't even get his
math right. |
| 2009/9/23-10/5 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:53395 Activity:moderate |
9/23 I'm in grad school part time, and the professor I was trying to get
to advise me just sent me "What you suggest (remote, part-time, topic
formulation) doesn't fit my advising style..." Does anyone know
what "topic formulation" might mean in this context? I come with
funding from work, but the topics I can choose are somewhat limited.
Could be a reference to that...
\_ whatever it means, "doesn't fit my advising style" nullifies
the probability of having him/her as your advisor. Most advisors
hate remote (communication problems), most hate part-time
(full-timers just have more entropy), and most want to control
the topic. You should consider finding another advisor who is
more desperate for students and is willing to get someone
onboard for free. IMHO, I've seen a lot of remote & part-timers
and it's just difficult for both parties, and I can understand
why they don't want a remote & part-timer grad student even
for free.
\_ To be honest, I think it's academic snobbery. A coworker of
mine applied to and got accepted to both USC and UCLA for PhD.
When UCLA found out he wanted to be part-time while working
they sent him vibes similar to the above. USC didn't care.
The guy is brilliant and an excellent student who finished a CS
master's at the same time as his Aerospace Engineering PhD. UCLA
turned their nose up at him just because he didn't fit their
narrow definition of what they thought they wanted to deal
with. Screw that. They need to be more aware of who is paying
the bills, which is another reason why universities need less
state funding: students are an afterthought.
\_ What the hell is a part-time PhD? 12 year plan? Most PhDs
take 5-6+ years working 40-60 hrs/wk.
\_ Part-time PhD means taking a part-time load of coursework
and passing the exams. This takes maybe 2-3 years.
After that, you work on your research on a part-time
basis. The people I know who did a PhD while working
ended up working about 30 hours/week and spending about 30
hours/week on school. This is no big deal for a good
student. There are full-time students who screw around
and never make any progress. I remember one who went
full-time for 6 years and still wasn't done. That doesn't
mean you can't get it done while wasting less time. It
helps a lot, too, if some of your day job contributes
to your research.
\_ Point me to a C.V. of someone who earned a "part time"
PhD. 30 hrs/wk? Average PhD is 5-6 years @ 60 hrs/wk,
so sounds like a 10-12 year PhD. urlP = #f
\_ I know at least 5 people who earned their PhD
this way and it didn't take 10 years. Most of
them already had an MS before doing the PhD, though.
This is one of them:
http://tinyurl.com/yceq86t
I have no idea where his C.V. is online, but you
can see that it took him about 6 years based on
this update in 2002:
link:tinyurl.com/yccjl9m
"After graduation, I spent a year at the Lockheed
Martin Skunk Works doing structural dynamics
and flutter testing on the Joint Strike Fighter. In
November 2000, I joined NASA-JPL in the Navigation &
Mission Design section. This fall I am still at JPL
but am concurrently enrolled part time at Cal Tech as
a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering."
He earned the PhD in 2008:
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~murray/wiki/Main_Page
You sound as narrow-minded as the UCLA profs.
Luckily, Caltech is more than happy to educate
people who are smart and want to be educated.
\_ 6 years for a part-time PhD after 7 years of
full-time BS/MS. Seems about right to me.
(Source: http://linkedin.com)
\_ That's exactly right. This is the reason why you can do
part time MS in Stanford and Cornell and other nice schools
but good luck doing part time PhD in schools like Stanford
and Cornell. People laugh at the MS program so you can
get by a lot like MS, but many professors have a lot of
snobbery in that they think you should do full time research.
In their mind, if you do part time PhD, you're not really
serious about doing meaningful work. Now whether that is
true or not, I don't know, but that's just how it is
in schools like Stanford and Cornell. P.S. USC should
not be compared with Stanford and Cornell. Completely
different leagues.
\_ I think some of the most famous professors are those that already
have a lot of funding so don't care about having a freebie. They
want a grad student who is young and can slave away at the ideas
that the professor started in order to gain even more recognition
and funding. In academia, there isn't a shortage of hungry,
driven, young guys who will do whatever their advisors tell them
to do, so that's why schools like MIT and Caltech are full of
profs with this type of attitude. In the end, it's like a free
market. There is a lot of supply of cheap laborers but not enough
professors so they can afford to be total assholes.
\_ This guy is actually at the other end of the spectrum. He has
no students. He works pretty much exclusively on his own
little project that no one else cares about. But he has tenure,
so he doesn't have to do anything else. -op
\_ ah, tenure, that's the problem. Based on my experiences with
tenured profs, I'd say the majority of them burned out their
candles years ago and don't really give a damn today. Yes
there are a few good ones but they're rare. May I ask
which prof rejected the proposal and why are you requesting
an advisor who likes to work on things that no one else
cares about?
\_ I don't think I want to identify the professor. The motd
does show up google. He's not a prof at Cal.
I wanted to work with him because he has a good reputation
as an adviser. I knew student who was advised by him and
I understand that he demands good work, but does not
abusively move the goal posts like many profs do. He
is also one of the only profs at the school that works
in my research are.
in my research area.
\_ what area is that? |
| 2009/8/3-11 [Finance/CC, Academia/GradSchool] UID:53233 Activity:low |
8/1 http://www.eyeweekly.com/print/article/55882 "Quarterlife Crisis" Too many options == no goals in life. \_ Really good read. Enjoyed this article a lot, though it also was fairly depressing. It seems like there is quite a bit of freedom for young people, but all that means is they have anxiety about making the wrong choices. -mrauser \_ Thanks, am trying to kick up the motd a bit. \_ If it wasn't for that last sentence I would call this a bunch of self-indulgent drivel. Poor bastards, they are too privileged and are suffering for it. |
| 2009/7/14-27 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool, Computer/Theory] UID:53139 Activity:nil |
7/22 (redux)
To those in academia, how do you organize the journal articles
you keep (hard copies, that is)? By date? Author? Subject?
Something else? Thanks.
\_ I am not in academia, but author makes most sense. If you want, you
can group by subject (Sun Spots, Solar Wind, Solar Flares) and then
by author within that. Depends on how broad the topics span and
how many papers you have. For the well-known papers within a
field people are going to know them as "Moore, 1972" which is why I
suggest authors rather than topics.
\_ I assign each subject a prime number, e.g. Sun = 3, Flare = 7, then
I file Solar Flares in the 21st spot in my library. It is left to
the reader to see why this works
\_ High school math about uniqueness of prime factorization. (But
then how many slots are there in your library?) |
| 2009/6/3-5 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:53074 Activity:nil |
6/3 David Eddings RIP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eddings |
| 5/16 |
| 2009/2/19-25 [Computer/SW/Languages/C_Cplusplus, Academia/GradSchool] UID:52600 Activity:low |
2/19 Student Expectations Seens as Causing Grade Disputes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html
\_ "I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do
and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C."
All well and good, but the problem is that 2.0 is perceived
as almost failing. Maybe once employers and grad schools
realize that 3.0 is not a minimum effort but a pretty good
student then students will adjust expectations accordingly. I
got a B in a very difficult upper division math class and I
had a recruiter tell me "You must not be very good at math."
I told her I was very good and where did she get that idea.
"Your report card." So as long as students have to deal with
that crap then hell yeah we won't accept a C for spending 40
hours per week on a class even if it's "what we deserve"
because the perception is that a C is really a D (pass for
credit, but that's about it). Perhaps this is a result of grade
inflation, but I don't think students spawned it. Competition
did. It used to be fairly easy to get into schools like Stanford
and very few students took the SAT. If 80% of the class got
C's that was fine. It's not fine anymore and from what I can
see from my nieces and nephews kids are working harder than
ever even at young grades. My 3rd grade nephew has like 3-4
hours of homework a night. I think we have to do this to
complete as this is common in places like Japan, but the older
people in the system don't realize how much things have changed
and have not adjusted expectations accordingly. You won't get
only the top 5% of students in college anymore at most
universities and the kids that are there are less motivated by
learning. They need that B to be able to survive while at the
same time there is a perception that C = poor student.
\_ C *IS* poor. My parents used to tell me that C is for
inferior native kids, B is for second generation immigrants,
and A is for people like us. -hard working immigrant
\_ Not with the definition professors are using:
"I tell my classes that if they just do what they are
supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that
they will earn a C." By the way, your parents sound
like real pieces of work.
\_ I agree, kids these days have no sense of perspective. They
want 100 column terminals, good grades, friendly professors,
&c. Back when I went to Cal everyone knew that a C- was the
mean and working your butt off to get mean was standard
operating procedure b/c the mean student was an asian
overachiever just like you. An A was a mythical promised land
reserved for future nobel prize winners - the ones who sat in
the front row and could correct the mistakes of the nobel prize
winner teaching the class.
\_ Wasn't there a CSUA'er who took like 39 units in a semester and
ended up with a 3.9+ GPA? calbear? I wonder if he's gonna win
a Nobel Prize. I had a crap GPA while at Cal but knew lots of
people with 3.7's who didn't study 24/7. College just seemed
easier for them, like how High School was just easy for most
Cal students.
\_ I went to HS with calbear. He was wicked smart. Last I
heard he dropped out of the PhD program at the farm. But
he might still win a nobel prize though.
\_ I thought he completed his Ph.D.
\_ http://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~calbear/resume/mr.htm
\_ Guess I heard wrong. |
| 2009/2/2-8 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:52501 Activity:low |
2/2 Is there a PC application for creating movies, which is sort of
similar to iMovie (in terms of simplicity and power)? Thanks.
\_ MS MovieMaker is free but doesn't meet your requirements.
\_ Adobe Premier
\_ Sony Vegas. stay away from Pinnacle, I've seen some real badnes. |
| 2008/11/12-26 [Finance/Banking, Academia/GradSchool] UID:51942 Activity:nil |
11/12 Harvard looks to tighten its belt
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2008/11/11/harvard_looks_to_tighten_its_belt
Why is a Uni with a $30B+ endowment worried about spending cuts?
\_ For the same reason that companies with $30B in the bank are
worried about the economy; the fact that you have that money
is already factored into your plans, so loss of other money is
a problem. -tom |
| 2008/11/11-26 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:51910 Activity:low |
11/11 lulz Anyone have sex with someone who holds a PhD? Any tips?
\_ Sure: Don't think about the PhD.
\_ Make sure it's a liberal arts PhD.
\_ gag them. say "Shut up and look cute" alot.
\_ PhD in Coptic. Hottt
\_ How do you say 'ZOMG lolz wtfbbq' in Aramaic?
\_ they secretly want to be punished by someone smarter. ob fear of
advisor.
\_ is she at least decent?
\_ Do you consider an MD an equivalent?
\_ An MD is a technical degree, a PhD is an academic degree.
\_ ^technical^professional^?
\_ MD, JD, MCP, MSN, a few grad students, but no PhDs, no.
\_ I keep waiting for her to bust out in Ancient Greek
\_ IEOR PhDs have extremely efficient sex.
\_ I'm going for a tenured one over the holiday. lol. |
| 2008/10/9 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:51450 Activity:kinda low |
10/9 Has anyone gone to UofC, undergrad or grad? Is it still filled with
smart, conservative, nobel prize winners or has it gone left? I like
the freakonomics blog and Levitt, and it seems center-left to me.
\_ I know some people who got their MBAs there. They went. They
graduated. They got jobs in the banking industry. They haven't
been laid off yet. What more do you want?
\_ For what major? Also considering the way the right has drifted
in this country reality is now center-left.
\_ selecting your grad school on whether its 'left' or 'right'
makes you sound silly, unless you're applying to Liberty University.
\_ It depends on your major, seriously. I have a friend who is
liberal who went to Tulane for grad school because they offered
him the best package, even though I recommended he go to UT Austin
instead. He could not get any advisor to agree to sponser him
because he wanted to write his thesis on the Wobblies impact
him the best package, even though I recommended he go to UT
Austin instead. He could not get any advisor to agree to sponsor
him because he wanted to write his thesis on the Wobblies impact
on the Mexican Revolution. He ended up having to drop out with
a Master's. This was a history major.
\_ UofC = University of California?
\_ Univ. of Chicago
\- The University of Chicago has a reputation of being a "serious"
school. They send many people back into academia, they have hard
grading etc. In some ways they are like a private UCB ... except
they got rid of sports. You may enjoy reading about Robert Maynard
Hutchings. Example story: UCB undergrad in one of the dumber depts
here graduated with a good rank in her department ... was quite
sleazy, for example turned in papers written by friends who took
the class the year before etc. Went to UChicago in their grad
program in that area [got $$$], her bullshitting approach [think
Sarah Palin] couldnt cut it there, so then went to Harvard and
apparently did fine. I spend several hours recently talking to
the younger sister of a close friend of mine and her fiance,
both from UChi, and was very impressed with them as "serious,
smart people". So along with UCB, MIT, CalTech, UChi is a real
"no bullshit" school. |
| 2008/10/8-9 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Academia/GradSchool] UID:51424 Activity:kinda low |
10/8 http://tinyurl.com/4pyc3o The difficulty with the evaluating the Chicago Challenge is that Chicago schools improved dramatically overall during this study. There were already vast improvements happening within Chicago Schools when the Annenberg Grant came through. It was difficult to tell what improvements were the result of the challenge and what improvements were the result of other improvements already in play. The Chicago Challenge failed only in our inability to reach conclusions based on the data. Chicago's schools faired far better than the other cities studied (including Gulliani's New York). The fact is that the Challenge very well could have improved all Chicago schools. We simply can't know this for certain based on the research. \_ Now how is this related to Obama having weekly dinners with a domestic terrorist? \_ Weekly? Is there a legitimate source for this? \_ You are so cute when you foam at the mouth. |
| 2008/8/22-29 [Academia/UCLA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:50942 Activity:nil |
8/22 College ranking again: http://www.csua.org/u/m5o Stanfraud: #4 Cal: #21 \_ What. The. Fuck. They told me Cal is as good as Furd. They lied. \_ Proof that privatized education >>> Public education. Jackie Johnson is hot. \_ UCLA #25. Uh... \_ The US News rankings double- and triple-count advantages for private universities; they count endowments, and then lots of things that endowments buy you. -tom \_ An interesting thing was to look at the rank as given by guidance counselors. While not infallible, it's a different viewpoint: http://tinyurl.com/5hk8sw Of course, Forbes did their own ranking this year and put Stanford at #23 and Cal at #73 (!). \_ URL? Forbes did a "how much do graduates make at mid-career" ranking and Cal was something like 20th. \_ http://tinyurl.com/6qwr9z Where's the URL you saw? \_ http://preview.tinyurl.com/65r7a3 Cal is #1 for public universities \_ And #12 overall \_ Forbes has no public universities in the top 60, and has such luminaries as Kalamazoo College higher than any public university. Their rankins are bunk. -tom \_ UVA is #43 \_ Ah, missed that. So it's only Cooper Union, Kenyon College, and Franklin and Marshall that are better than any public university. And of course Swarthmore and Williams are better than Yale, MIT, and Columbia. And something called "Centre College" in Kentucky is better than MIT, University of Chicago, Stanford, and all public universities. Bunk. If you invent a metric, you have to see if it passes the smell test before you make a fool of yourself by publishing it. -tom \_ "Of course, no ranking system is perfect, but for Forbes to publish and promote a list of rankings that are based 50 percent on "Who's Who..." (a for-profit corporation that makes its money getting its "invitees" to pay a fee to have their names published in its vanity publication) and "Rate My Professors" (a self-selected website that represents, at most, 1-to-2 percent of any given college's student population) is beyond incomprehensible. It is inexcusable. Forbes owes everyone in this country an apology and explanation, as do the so-called "academic statisticians" who lent their "credibility" to this publication." \_ URL? |
| 2008/8/21-26 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:50921 Activity:nil |
8/21 So I am trying to apply for a senior/staff job position at this
place and I'm wondering if I should apply directly, or ask a
headhunter to represent me. Mind you, I'm an old fart and have had
a lot of bad experiences where the company gave me a hard time
during the interview process and negotiation process. On the other
hand I've had one really good experience where the headhunter did
everything she could to negotiate with the company and got me the
exact salary I asked for and the job I wanted. Obviously, I don't
have a lot of data points, but I wonder in general, is it good/bad
to ask a headhunter to represent me? I can see tons of arguments
from both sides and I'm just wondering what you guys think. Thanks.
\_ When did this trend of starting with "So" start?
\_ الله أَكْ! |
| 2008/6/27-30 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Academia/GradSchool] UID:50404 Activity:nil |
6/27 Milton Friedman still ticking lefties off even from the grave
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/06/milton-friedm-1.html
My personal view on this whole affair is: what a knee jerk reaction!
Obviously, all these lefties do not seem to realize that
Milton Friedman's pro-free market views have become mainstream economic
thinking. Read his "Capitalism and Freedom" and compare it with
any freshman economics textbooks used virtually at any school, from
community colleges to private universities. There is no difference.
I read his text after being exposed to economics in college and, having
heard so much about the author before, I was actually quite surprised
how balanced, carefully thought out, and predominantly non-partisan
his views were. It actually gets quite boring after the second or
third chapter because you realize that it mostly echoes your
principles of economics textbook.
\_ Who are you talking to?
\_ Whom
\_ To whom |
| 2008/2/28-3/4 [Recreation/Dating, Academia/GradSchool] UID:49296 Activity:nil |
2/28 A worthy response to the execrable garbage of the "Campus Rape Myth"
op-ed posted below:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-macdonald27feb27,0,6130673.story
\_ Long on opinion, but short on data.
\_ Worthy in that it's just as lame?
\_ How many of that are in California? Are they US Citizens or
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?
\_ Obviously, the government is cost ineffective running jails.
I know the FREE MARKET INVISIBLE HAND will take care of this
"problem." -dimwit #1 fan |
| 2008/2/25-29 [Recreation/Dating, Academia/GradSchool] UID:49249 Activity:nil |
2/25 The Campus Rape Myth
http://city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html
\_ My girlfriend was raped while in college at a conservative
school in Missouri. The perpetrator was a guy she knew who
was friends with friends of hers. He went on to rape two
other students there before being reported and caught.
This article is a load of reactionary slop, particularly
because it ignores well known facts about the psychology of
rape victims. The author, Heather Mac Donald, is a fellow
at the Manhattan Institute and regularly writes for
National Review and the Weekly Standard, so I'm not
surprised to see the ideological bent. She also wrote a
book with the title, "The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern
Intellectuals Misshape Our Society."
\_ Ummm.. the article doesn't claim that it never happens,
just that the issue is way overblown, and raises questions
about how you define rape. She does, however, over-state
her case. she doesn't seem to acknowldge date rape as a
possibility, which is obviously wrong.
\_ Girl I dated briefly upon walking past random dude I'd never
met: He's a rapist!
Me: What? Who?
Her: Him! That guy! (pointing)
Me: OMG, what happened? Was it reported? (changes direction
to go find phone/authority_ figure/dunno_what)
Her: Oh, uhm, well not like that....
Me: Huh? What do you mean? If he raped someone he shouldn't
be walking around!
Her: Well, like he saw my friend across the room at the party
on Saturday and was leering at her and raped her with
his eyes!
Me: ....
\_ Hi, lost interest in this after page 30 or so... this article
is pretty long and i have work to do. I will chime in here with
City Journal is a well known right wing journal with a bone
to pick with people, so of course the writer wants to offend
someone. Plus my gf got raped once in college (NOT BY ME).
I will happily jump to conclusions about anyone who writes
regularly for the Weekly Standard and National Review,
what a bunch of tools.
\_ This is a good article. -city-loving liberal
\_ This is a good article. -liberal |
| 2008/2/16-21 [Computer/HW/Laptop, Academia/GradSchool] UID:49171 Activity:nil |
2/16 Illinois grad student psycho:
- Sent to psych ward by parents after high school -- constantly cut
himself and refused to take meds
- Kicked out of Army after 6 months on psych discharge
- Worked briefly as 21-year-old prison guard
- Wrote paper on prisoners cutting themselves
- Republican
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/16/university.shooting/index.html
\_ Yes, I'm sure that's a factor. |
| 2008/2/15-18 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:49159 Activity:nil |
2/15 http://preview.tinyurl.com/32e2w6 (latimes.com) Shooter was UIUC grad student. Weapons: 12-gauge shotgun, 9mm Glock, 9mm Sig Sauer, Highpoint 380. Discharged: 6 shotgun shells, 48 handgun rounds. Casualties: 5 killed, 16 wounded, 1 suicide. \_ Does the allow students to carry? Or was this nutjob walking into an unarmed room? \_ Maybe MALL NINJA has the right idea! \_ Shooter was ex-military and ex-prison guard, too. I bet you won't see that on Fox News! \_ Considering he was kicked out of the military for Phych reasons.. |
| 2008/1/28-2/2 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:49028 Activity:nil |
1/28 Does my McDiploma come with Fries?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080128/ap_on_re_eu/britain_mcdonald_s_high |
| 2008/1/13-16 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:48937 Activity:high |
1/12 I am thinking about purchasing a PhD in CS. I really like parallel
programming and high-performance computing. What are some
interesting research areas that take into account my interests
that I might explore? I am researching grad schools and it's hard
to know where I'd be a good fit. Also, what are the long-term
prospects for CS PhDs? Also, does Cal have such a thing as
"limited status" where alumni can take classes (grad or undergrad)
without being in a degree-granting program? Say I want to take
Italian or I want to take a grad class in Math.
\_ Well, we have quite a few CS PhDs here at LLNL. Sounds like you
could go for scientific computing. -jrleek
\_ Did they skip the scientists in the layoffs?
\_ ANYONE can enroll in Cal courses through the concurrent enrollment
program (subject to seat availability and instructor's permission).
That will cost you about $1500 fror each 4 unit course though.
\_ Awesome. I thought you could through Extension, but I forgot
what it was called. I found the application now that I knew
what to look for. By the way, fees seem to be about
$150/unit which isn't bad. BTW, if you are a community
college student you can enroll for $18/unit (up to two
classes per year). I never knew that.
\_ Lots of interesting problems in parallelism: hardware, compilers,
programming models, tools. Check out ParLab at Berkeley. Check out
the Supercomputing proceedings. GPGPU is a nifty field as well. |
| 2007/11/1-2 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:48513 Activity:moderate |
11/1 hi i'm too cheap to purchase Visio. What's an alternative?
\_ inkscape
\_ Some people use MS Paint.
\_ bit-torrent it
\_ MS Word.
\_ MS Word. It's good enough for simple diagrams.
\_ OpenOffice Draw is better.
\_ OmniGraffle |
| 2007/10/11-15 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:48291 Activity:kinda low |
10/11 How a secret backroom deal between The Governor and
The Chancellor have sealed the UC into a permanent low
level of funding:
http://www.csua.org/u/jpe
\_ So, bad as this is, 2011 is not "permanent."
\_ Um, bad as this is, 2011 is not "permanent."
\_ While I don't support op or the article's editorials, the way
I read it, the author is pushing the idea that by 2011, UC
system may have lost much of what made it great, making it
difficult, though probably not "permanent" to regain its
excellence and status. I mean, would you have decided to come
to Cal if you had to pay 10-15k tuition a year to attend
a university where half of the classes are taught by TAs and
faculty members were mediocre? You'd have to throw a lot more
money at the problem if it ever gets that bad to fix it.
\_ how is that different from most research universities
including most of private ones? TAs for most part "teach"
the discussion sections only. The only class that I had
including most of private ones? At Cal, TAs for most part
"teach" the discussion sections only. The only class that I had
that was entirely taught by a grad student was RHET 1A/B.
When research universities hire new faculty, no one really
cares whether the candidate is a good teacher anyways. It's
all about research. That's the reality of the US research
universities, and I kind of like it, because it teaches people
to fend for themselves and not to expect to be spoonfed
all the time.
"teach" the discussion sections only. The only class that
I had that was entirely taught by a grad student was RHET
1A/B. When research universities hire new faculty, no one
really cares whether the candidate is a good teacher
anyways. It's all about research. That's the reality of
the US research universities, and I kind of like it,
because it teaches people to fend for themselves and not
to expect to be spoonfed all the time.
\_ TAs leading discussion section is fine, but at least
at when I last took summer sessions years back, many
summer sessions were taught by non-professors. I also
agree with you in that one of the stronger teaching tool
present at Cal compared to, say, Stanford, is the "fend
for themselves" nature. It may just be that I'm not as
capable as you are, but I do wish there was a just a tad
more hand-holding for me when I was an undergrad. That
aside, even if as a college-bound high school student or
a parent of one, if you had to pay similar amount of
tuition to send yourself/kid to a "public" school with
the "fend for yourself" mentality or a private school,
would the choice have been easy to make? And what if
there weren't even good *research* faculties at this
public school? I mean, why did you choose Cal, instead of,
say, Irvine or other UC's? Quality of faculty, regardless
of whether or not they're good teachers, matter. And the
article is suggesting that we are losing out on bid for
quality faculty members due to lack of funds. -pp |
| 2007/8/23-27 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:47734 Activity:moderate |
8/23 CS dudes you all suck and Phil Greenspun is here to tell you why.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/08/23/improving-undergraduate-computer-science-education
\_ That's an interesting reading of the link you posted. Notably,
there's not much new content here. Not that I don't agree with
some of his points, but Greenspun's been banging this drum for
years. -dans
\_ "The calendar was designed for rich families, [so they can have]
Grand Tour of Europe during the summer" Wha? The summer break was
designed for farmers who needed the kids at home for harvest.
Now people go on vacation during the summer because that's when the
break is. What a maroon.
\_ Why would you want to be in the EU during summer?
\_ Farmers did not begin sending their children to University in
significant numbers until long after the University calendar
and the semester system were chosen. You seem to be conflating
the University calendar with the public school calendar. -dans
\_ Well, I'm assuming college inherited the calander from
secondary education.
\_ "calendar"
\_ "colander" |
| 2007/8/2-3 [Politics/Domestic, Academia/GradSchool] UID:47507 Activity:nil |
8/2 US high school education in action:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01education.html
Kinda odd that the teachers are allowed to talk about a student by
name.
\_ This would violate FERPA if they never got a written permission
from the parent(or the student if she was 18):
http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
The writer definitely was one-sided, but it does remind us of
some problems that is probably wide-spread. (like budgetary
pressure on the schools to pass kids and parents who fail to
see the fault of their kids or themselves regardig school
matters.) For a young mind that becomes a teacher because s/he
wanted to make a difference, the situation this teacher was in
is certainly difficult. All the while, the areas where these
same minds want to make difference in are also the same school
districts with the budget constraints. Chicken and egg problem.
But I do think a teacher that wants to make a difference should
have given the student a retake on the final to force her to
at least for one day in her life. |
| 2007/7/21-23 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:47370 Activity:nil |
7/20 Queen's Brian May finished his PhD thesis more than 30 years after
he started it:
http://urltea.com/116l (inquirer.net) |
| 2007/6/29-7/2 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:47120 Activity:low |
6/29 I can't wait for the Fairness Doctrine! I've been waiting for a 50/50
split of ideology in public Universities and schools.
\_ You clearly have no idea what the Fairness Doctrine is. You may
stop talking now.
\_ Good luck. The Unfairness Doctrine isn't going anywhere and it
wouldn't apply to anywhere but the free market of ideas.
\_ The Invisible Hand: groping your ideas without your knowledge or
consent since the American Revolution.
\_ Adam Smith doesn't like your tone --the invisible hand
\_ Adam Smith doesn't like your tone --iHand
\_ Adam Smith doesn't like your tone --ihand |
| 2007/4/2-3 [Academia/GradSchool, Academia/Berkeley] UID:46177 Activity:nil |
4/2 Cal makes the MPAA's Piracy Top 25 list:
http://urltea.com/38u (arstechnica.com) |
| 2007/3/26-28 [Reference/Law/Court, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush, Academia/GradSchool] UID:46097 Activity:nil |
3/26 Alberto Gonzalez just keeps on lying. Now I personally
think that NO ONE should be surprised that the bush administration
has been firing US Attorneys for politically motivated
reasons. It's just the sort of thing they would do. Yawn.
I wonder why Gonzalez gives new and exciting reasons for
it all happening every day. His masters should tell him
to quit talking to the press. |
| 2007/3/9-11 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:45920 Activity:nil |
3/9 Trinity College Dublin switches to gmail for all its student
accounts: http://preview.tinyurl.com/ynpp2c (tcd.ie) |
| 2007/2/10-11 [Academia/GradSchool, Academia] UID:45702 Activity:nil |
2/9 Prof. Solove's Guide to Grading Exams:
http://www.rvc.cc.il.us/faclink/pruckman/humor/grading.htm |
| 2006/11/6-7 [Academia/GradSchool/MBA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:45180 Activity:moderate |
11/5 Anyone here get an MS in CS? Did it help your career advancement
or earnings? Do you wish you would've gotten a different MS
degree instead? Was it worth the time and expense?
\_ I was working on a MS in EECS when I went to a law school open
house for the free pizza. Switching to ls has been the best
decision I have ever made. My starting salary (w/o bonus) is
1.5-2x what I could have made as an engineer w/ a MS. [ I know
that you asked wrt another MS degree, but if you are considering
grad school, I think you should keep an open mind re the subject ]
\_ Well, assuming you could make $150K with the MS, are you
saying you are *starting* at $200+K, because I find that hard
to believe. If true, maybe we're all in the wrong field.
Also, did you go to a top-ranked law school? What about the
loss of earnings while going to law school? Most of the
better ones are full-time, unlike, say, MS EECS.
\_ $150K w/ a MS EECS? I think you are overestimating the
starting salary for a MS EECS. I'd say it was closer
to $100K (at least that is what we would offer to new
hires w/ a MS EECS).
Re loss of earnings: You can do part-time at many ls.
I worked part-time as an engineer and did school full
time to avoid loosing money. Its harder but at least
I'm graduating w/o any debt.
Re top rated law school: I went to a mediocre ls, but
I was near the top of my class and I went into patent
work (which pays more than say a DA or transactional
work b/c of the initial burden). The salary is even
higher if you were to go to a really good ls. The main
problem is that you have to deal w/ a lot of jackasses.
work). The salary is even higher if you were to go to
a really good ls. The main problem w/ the law is that
you have to deal w/ a lot of jackasses.
\- so how annoying are the legal people? ... like
annoying face to face or keep you up at night
grinding your teeth annoying? also do you think
this is just the personality of some of the people
in the field or a product of the nature of the
field ... e.g. rather than cooperating to find an
efficient solution, people pointlessly being
difficult, or shoudl i say dillatory, just to
be a pain in the ass and raise costs to the other
side.
\_ Some are keep you up at night grinding your
teeth annoying, some are just annoying in
that the way they practice law is to be as
difficult as possible on every single thing.
I think that the profession attracts people
who are agressive and egotistical and rewards
that type of behavior in many cases.
\_ I didn't say *starting* salary for a MS EECS. If you
meant that, I apologize. I took "what you could make"
to mean "what you could make" and not "what you would
start out at with no experience".
\_ Sorry, I misunderstood. I agree that you might be
able to make ~ $135-$150K w/ MS EECS + experience.
But that is about as high as I've seen people go
(principal engineer, sr. staff eng., &c.). In
comparison, $135-$150K is what one makes right out
of LS and it keeps going up after that. Even if
you decide to not work at a firm and go to work in
gc's office of a decent sized co. you will be making
approx. what a sr. staff makes but w/ 9-5 hrs.
\_ Don't IP lawyers make quite a bit more money than
your average corporate law drone?
\_ Corporate law drones may make less than
the number above, but if you already have
a BS EECS, why would you do anything but
IP (Patent) Law?
Not all IP Law pays as well as Patent.
Trademark, for instance, pays somewhat
less and there isn't as much job security.
Copyright is okay, but you pretty much
have to live in LA or NYC to get really
good work.
\_ The range I gave above, is for patent
work. Sorry for not making that clear.
You are right, not everything pays as
well as patent work. Copyright, Trademark
and IP licensing (all "IP"), pay a little
big less.
bit less.
Corporate can pay the same as patent, but
it really depends on how well you did in
school and whether corporate law is in
vouge when you graduate. There are lots of
of other practice areas that pay less than
being an engineer (Crim, Transactional,
Estate Planning, Family Law, Real Estate,
Civil Rights, &c.), but if you have a BS
in EECS, there isn't really a financial
reason to go into something other than
patent/copyright practice.
\_ Does a phd give you a bump in pay as a
patent lawyer straight out of school?
\_ Depends on the field. PhD in any
pharma related subject (o-chem,
immunology, &c) can give you a $10K
or more edge. In EECS, materials,
&c. I don't think so.
\_ $140K right out of law school? That seems high
compared to the salary calculators on the web,
unless you went to Harvard Law. What about law
school vs. MBA?
\_ I don't know what the salary calculator say
but this is the starting rate at most reasonable
sized firms in the Bay Area and NYC.
\_ Please see above. The number I gave was for
patent work. I'm guessing the salary calc.
are based more on general practice at mid-
to large sized firms, which doesn't really
pay as well.
\_ I'm in business school but will probably make <= when I
graduate. I was making $87k + ~$10k bonus/stock before I went back
to school. But I'm getting my MBA b/c I don't want to be an
engineer anymore. What's the ROI/payback of my MBA? I don't know,
I could probably have transitioned into business at my old job,
but getting the MBA is more general and involves more drinking. |
| 2006/10/10 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:44748 Activity:nil |
10/10 HeadOn, apply directly on the forehead.
HeadOn, apply directly on the forehead.
HeadOn, apply directly on the forehead. |
| 2006/9/23-25 [Academia/GradSchool, Academia/Berkeley] UID:44505 Activity:nil |
9/22 Yeah, Economist:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7945858
\_ "When the University of California, Berkeley briefly considered
introducing means-based affirmative action, it rejected the idea
on the ground that 'using poverty yields a lot of poor white
kids and poor Asian kids.'"
Yeah, we wouldn't want more of those hard working poor asian kids
who like math and science and will become contributing members of
society to come to Cal. That would just be WRONG, now wouldn't it. |
| 2006/7/18 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:43708 Activity:nil |
7/16 Dear self righteous German John. I challenge you a game. I will
learn enough English and graduate from America's top public
\_ "to graduate"
\_ "to be graduated"
university, you and you will learn enough east asian language to
\_ superfluous "you"
graduate from any sub-tier university. May the best man win.
\_ Congrats on your accomplishment. John's point that you
should sharpen your English skills because it'll enhance
your success in the real world is valid, though. Face it,
just as in the motd, the real world is full of assholes
who'll judge you on your language skills. --PeterM |
| 2006/6/12-14 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:43357 Activity:nil |
6/12 http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060612/cm_usatoday/heygradshaveyoufiguredouttherestofyourlifeyet Damn new grads are unmotivated and damn lazy and many are boomerang kids but that is actually a good thing because they learn a lot from bumming around. \_ Nothing wrong with being unmotivated and lazy right out of school. Although going to live back at home is pathetic, if you can eke out Although going to live back at home is pathetic, if you can eek out enough to survive on your own there is often good reason to spend some time out of the rat race. I'm sad I didn't wait a few years before going to school for instance, I would have gotten a lot more out of my classes had I been ready. On the same vein I'm quite glad I spent a few years after I graduated not focused on a career and a living. So I may have missed a few years of income, but I'm happier and well adjusted and am now making good money doing things I like. |
| 2006/6/1-4 [Politics/Domestic, Academia/GradSchool] UID:43249 Activity:nil |
6/1 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060601/ap_on_re_us/mixed_up_victims See, all blonds look alike. They all do. -!caucasian |
| 2006/5/19-22 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:43113 Activity:nil |
5/19 "Churchill falsified, fabricated and plagiarized" research, but
only 1 of 5 committee members recommend firing him? Wha??
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060517/ap_on_re_us/embattled_professor_5
\_ Letter from his wife, J.D. Yale
http://www.onepalestine.org/resources/Ward_Churchill.html
ob I don't support suicide bombers
"The message is clear: politically unacceptable speech will be
punished, in one way or another."
\_ Interesting. It's as if a man commited arson, then was
accused of murder and burglary as well. Later the charges
of murder and burglary are dropped, so Miss Saito argues
that the arson charges should be dropped as well.
\_ perhaps that's why none of the committee members recommended
that he suffer no consequences. also, Saito disputes the
severity of the "arson" claim:
"... University of Colorado has, thus far, been forced to
retreat to arguments over what constitutes compliance with
academic standards in a tiny fraction of Ward Churchill's
publications". I don't know whether what she says is true.
\_ She doesn't really dispute it directly, she just kind
of implies that they must not be true because some of
the other charges were dropped. It's not unusal to
drop all but the strictly, certainly proveable
charges.
\_ I think it would help this discussion if someone
found the committee report. But I can certainly see
a situation where the plagiarism was bad enough to
warrant suspension (mitigated by merits), but not
bad enough to warrant firing.
In contrast, I can also see a situation where four Col.
hippy bush-hatah professors are fighting the power
and not voting for firing. Which is more accurate?
I don't know.
that he should suffer no consequences
\_ Faculty take the idea of tenure very seriously;
it is extremely rare for any tenured faculty
member to be fired for any academic offense. -tom
\_ That makes sense. Hwang Woo-Suk is probably
an easy one, though. Though the dog was real.
\_ That's not "taking the idea of tenure
seriously" that's just plain old corruption.
"We take acedemic honesty very seriously,
except when it might threaten my friend's
job."
\_ I don't think Churchill has many friends
at the university. -tom
\_ They don't care about Churchill, they care
about the tenure system. By protecting
him they protect themselves. |
| 2006/5/12-15 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:43030 Activity:nil |
5/11 http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/10/perpetual.student.ap I can't believe you can be an undergrad for 12 years. I guess he gets a lot of women or something. \_ How long was PSB a grad student? I think he has this guy beat. \_ I don't think PSB was ever a gradstudent? Just an undergrad taking grad level courses? How about it Partha? BTW, did you ever graduate? That isn't meant as a smear--you're probably better educated than I. --PeterM |
| 2006/5/3-6 [Academia/GradSchool, Recreation/Humor] UID:42913 Activity:nil |
5/3 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=47 Funny only if you're a PhD student. \_ Comic author speaking on campus today. |
| 2006/5/1-4 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:42872 Activity:nil |
5/1 The Sheldon awards!
http://csua.org/u/foa |
| 2006/4/26-27 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:42833 Activity:nil |
4/26 I hate modal dialog boxes. I realize its probably not possible to
make all application-modal dialogs non-modal without breaking a million
things, but in WinXP is there any way I can globally demote all
system-modal dialogs to be application-modal? |
| 2006/3/13-14 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:42204 Activity:high |
3/13 Is it hard for new-grads (CS/EE) to get entry-level jobs in this
market?
\_ The type of jobs that I've been involved and have been interviewing
people for in the last 10 years require excellent coding skills
as well as thorough thought processes. The best coders are those
that come from decent schools and have decent GPAs (above 3.0).
Interestingly, some of the WORST programmers I've hired have
really high GPAs (above 3.8) or those that have PhDs. They are
smart and are good theorists, but they aren't necessarily
hard workers or good team players. They are brilliant in their
little own worlds, but have very little common sense and don't
embrace the work culture. Many of them are lazy or think that
existing code is trash ("I'm holier than thou") thus don't
contribute much except for their snide and occasionally
insightful comments; but talk is cheap, and they contribute
very little. They also tend to get bored and leave quickly, or
apply to MBAs/grad school and leave. I don't hire super smart
overachievers anymore. So don't worry about your GPA and such. Just
present yourself clearly and do well on the interview and you'll
be fine. -old alumni
\_ There is always a job for smart, likable people. The obnoxious
and stupid will have a hard time in any market. Right now, things
have/are switching back to the job seeker's side.
\_ What's the salary like for an average new-grad from an average
school? What about for someone with kinda good GPA, say 3.5,
from Cal? I don't mean the super-talented. Thanks.
\_ Entry-level jobs are some of the easiest to get. Who doesn't
like smart people for peanuts? Yes, they are sometimes
not immediately useful, but that doesn't seem to matter.
By the way, why do you think your GPA matters? With a 3.5
you could go to a good grad school, which is what you
might want to consider. That's a very good GPA and your
employer won't even care. They will most likely lump you
in with the guy who got a 3.0 at San Jose State. Grad schools
will care a lot more, if that's important to you.
\_ I heard that there are many really cool companies where
programming staff, HR, etc is dominated by alumni from top
CS schools and they generally do pay attention to where the
applicant is coming from. Of course, the university degree
is only a part of the equation.
\_ Sure, they look at where you went to school. However,
I doubt they care about your GPA. If they do, I
would question why they do. I once had an interview
where the woman asked me why I was so bad at math,
because I had B's in most of my upper division math
classes (I was a math major). I wanted to slap her
and say "If they were all A's I'd probably be
at Princeton right now and not applying for your
crummy job."
\_ Well, I generally filter new grads based on school
and then gpa. The school filter is mostly practical.
I'm more likely to find pearls amongst a pool of MIT
grads than among a pool of Bob's State U grads. Not
that there are noone excellent from Bob's; it's just
that they are rarer and take more effort to discover.
Also, interviewers tend to know more about the program
at the big noise schools (e.g., I know to be suitably
impressed by someone who did well in 6-111), and
that makes the resume screen more meaningful. At least
for me, GPA usually works as a high-pass filter, and
I don't stress too much over the difference once the
\_ Well, I generally filter new grads resumes based on
school and then gpa. The school filter is mostly
practical. I'm more likely to find pearls amongst a
pool of MIT grads than among a pool of Bob's State U
grads. Not that there are noone excellent from Bob's;
it's just that they are rarer and take more effort to
discover. Also, interviewers tend to know more about
the program at the big noise schools (e.g., I know to
be suitably impressed by someone who did well in 6.111),
and that makes the resume screen more meaningful. At
least for me, GPA usually works as a high-pass filter,
and I don't stress too much over the difference once the
GPA meets the reasonable criterion.
\_ Personally, I don't put my GPA on my resume, and never
have. It's a terrible filter, because it automatically
filters out smart, creative hackers that don't care about/
are bored by school. That may be okay for large software
companies writing, say, tax software. It's disasterous
for companies that want to be nimble, and hire the best.
I am in no way insinuating that all people with bad GPA's
are bright creative hackers, or that all people with good
GPA's are dumb automatons. Putting your gpa on your
resume implicitly supports this practice. Not putting it
on there may at least earn you a call back inquiring for it
which gives me the opportunity for me to explain why it's
not there. If a company still refuses to move forward
after that, I say ``Thank you very much for your time, but,
if you are unable to flex on this, I don't think I'd be a
good fit for your company culture.'' Incidentally, my GPA
sucked, but it has never gotten me filtered out of a job
once I reached the interview phase.
-dans Disclaimer: tom believes I am Paolo's stooge/tool.
If you're not with tom, you're against him, so
you may want to ignore the preceding, lest you
incur tom's wrath.
\_ Was it really necessary to stir this up again?
Why is it so important that you get the last
word in this argument?
\_ Who's stirring things up? I'm providing a
public service. In fact, when I have time,
I'm plan to write a utility that allows
people to add a disclaimer they write to
their own motd posts. Additionally, it
will allow everyone to write disclaimers
about others. All these disclaimers will
be viewable via the web, but only the most
popular (as chosen by majority vote) will
be added to entries on the motd. Of
course, it would be against policy to run
this tool automatically via cron or script,
so people will need to run it by hand. I
also plan to add an option to run it that
strips out disclaimers, so people who don't
like the utility can remove them. -dans
\_ Well, the utility does sound pretty neat,
but I was referring to your referencing
the Paolo Incident. Repeatedly spamming
motd with it doesn't seem to be resolving
anything. Oh well. n/m -mice
\_ Wow, you must really enjoy losing debates
badly, to bring it up again. -tom
\_ Seriously, you two ever graduate from
grade school? You bicker like a couple of
10 year olds. Grow up. -jrleek
\_ Tom, we already know that, insofar as this
matter is concerned, you have a completely
and utterly distorted view of reality.
Frankly, I have no interest in arguing it
with you any further as I am not your
psychotherapist. If I was, I would
recommend medication since you clearly
haven't responded to talk therapy. -dans
\_ Dude you are no better. Tom's view wasn't
"utterly distorted". He simply claims
Paolo violated policy, wasn't punished,
and lied about it. You have not shown
that to be wrong. You've just written
pages of allusions to secret concerns
about hate speech and stuff that is
frankly not a plausible explanation.
The fact you're bring it up again shows
maybe it hits you harder than you let on?
P.S. I don't know what the new grad market is like, but my
anecdotal sense is that the market is good and getting
better. If you know your stuff, you should have no
difficulty finding a job. The disclaimer applies to this
as well.
\_ There are real problems with hiring people with
good GPAs. Some of these are the same problems I
find with hiring people who are perhaps overeducated
for a particular job. They get bored easily and
bored turns into lazy, for example. They question
decisions made above them. In short, they are not
always good worker bees. You *can* have too many
chiefs and not enough Indians. Everyone wants to
feel important and everyone wants a challenging
job with opportunities for advancement, but no one
wants to work with someone who feels that they are
'doing time' until something better comes along
or they run off to grad school or whatever. Real
life story: I had a Caltech CS grad and a guy who
dropped out of a liberal arts college with the
equivalent of an AA. The latter guy was so much
better. He worked hard. He asked questions. He
put in extra hours. The Caltech guy had to be told
what to do and when he was done he showed no
initiative or desire for increased responsibility.
He saw work as a series of tasks to be completed.
He flirted with medical school and then grad school
and we all knew he'd be gone. We were glad when he
was. He was a smart guy who coasted along doing just
enough to get by. He was a terrible employee with
an inflated sense of self-worth and he was bad for
morale with his attitude. He really didn't care for
hard work and getting him to do mundane crap (as he
was, after all, entry level) was impossible. When
he did get a real task he'd suddenly take off skiing to
Mammoth with his friends, missing the deadline. In
short, a high GPA means you will probably do well
in grad school, not that you'll be a good employee.
\_ Nod. I've had this discussion with many people, and
I'm glad to see that support exists for this
viewpoint on the motd too. -dans
\_ Companies don't care about GPA now? When I graduated
in 1996, Intel would only talk to people who met the
"cut-off GPA", which was 3.5. AT&T's cut-off point
was 3.0, so was TI. And these requirements weren't
from individual hiring managers but from their HR
department.
\_ Yes, and it's stupid. So someone graduates from Cal
with a 3.4 and is rejected, while someone from, say,
Stanford (being generous) with a 3.5 is interviewed?
Stanford, while a good school, has incredible grade
inflation. Maybe they should hire based on SAT scores
or GRE scores or something. I think that would
actually be more meaningful than comparing GPAs
across programs and across universities - even as
a simple high-level filter.
P.S. I realize that a GPA shows a remarkably
different aptitude than a standardized test, but at
least the test scores can be compared reliably - at
least against others from the same testing year.
\_ I'm sure that many companies today do care about GPA,
and will continue to do so. I simply have no interest
working for a company that a) cares about GPA and b) is
so rigid wrt a) that a group or hiring manager can't get
them to ignore it. It's a personal choice, which, thus
far, has done well by me. -dans
\_ Removing the GPA from my resume was the fastest way
to turn getting no responses to lots of responses.
Turns out most people didn't really care, and it
only served to reduce offers. I'm sure it would
have helped if I had a 3.8 GPA. I still have an
almost 100% interview:job offer ratio.
\_ Last I talked to Google (2004), they kept
telling me over and over and over again that
they placed a lot of value on GPA. I
suspect they still care a lot about it now.
\_ Yes, this is true. Google places a lot of
value on GPA for new college grads. Which
means that, if you put your gpa on your
resume, it is below their threshold, and you
submit your resume cold (i.e. not through a
contact that works there), it is rejected
outright. They may reject what appears to be
a ncg app outright if it does not include a
gpa, in which case, if your gpa sucks, damned
if you do, damned if you don't. Or the
absence of a gpa may get it past auto filters
and into human hands, which is what you want.
Also, note that Adam Bosworth works for
google. He would utterly fail the gpa/degree
test. But he's a superstar so, he's not
necessarily pertinent to the discussion at
hand. -dans
\_ New grads? I had been working for 10
years when I interviewed with them. I
could only assume it was their polite
way of saying, "sorry, your GPA sucks".
Needless to say, they didn't extend me
an offer.
\_ Now that they're post-IPO why would
anyone want to work there anyway?
If you're a superstar making $1MM plus
stock a year to do whatever you want,
sure. But for the smart but otherwise
normal people out there? They have
nothing to offer anyone like that now.
Hours are long, pay is below average,
without a PhD you're going nowhere.
\_ Just what exactly do these PhDs
do at Google, anyway? You only
need a few good guys for
algorithm development. Isn't
Google basically a marketing/media
company at this point?
\_ You've been working for 10 years, and
you still include your GPA on your
resume? That looks kind of pathetic
and desparate. -dans
\_ 12 years now. I didn't include
my GPA. Google insisted on
knowing that information before
second round interviews.
\_ To me this is just another data point that
Google's hiring criteria are stupid. I know
people working at Google I'd never hire,
but they look good on paper. From what
I know of the hiring process they make
you feel like you should be lucky to be
working for them. Any company that does
that sucks. It would be interesting to
note when Google's hiring policies changed
and why. From an outsider point of view
they seem to be hiring 'superstars' more
for PR than to address actual needs, because
they can. I've seen this lead to disaster
when all of the rats desert the sinking
ship after they've cashed their options.
I'm not saying it will happen again, but
I think it's been shown time and again
that teams of superstars (whether sports,
entertainment, science, or business) tend
to underperform relative to the hype. I
view it as Google's way of creating a buzz to
fool sucker drones into thinking that they
have a better job than they do.
\_ Google has put a lot of effort into
recruiting phd physicists to work there,
with hiring ads in Physics Today etc.
As a phd physicist, this strikes me as
totally retarded. I'm a pretty good
physicist, but you'd have to be an idiot
to hire me to write code. I wouldn't hire
me to write code.
\_ I assume the job isn't writing code,
but instead working on a technology
to transform the heat from all of their
servers back into electricity. Duh.
Either that or the warp drive they
are building. Remember, Google is
not just a search engine. It's a
conglomerate that is going to change
the world.
\_ Which doesn't do evil! (well, unless
it has no other convenient choice).
\_ Um, that's a nice rant, but the sensible
conclusion is that you don't want to work
for google because you feel their hiring
practices are stupid, and leading to
disaster. It's a perfectly reasonable
opinion, but others may differ. -dans |
| 2006/3/9 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:42154 Activity:nil |
3/9 The latest SAT scoring debacle is yet another proof that ETS is run
like Enron; slow, inefficient, and full of crooks who are free to
do whatever they wish because they are not accountable for anything.
\_ Huh? Url?
\_ I assume OP means:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/03/07/sat.scores.ap/index.html
\_ If so, I don't get what OP's talking about; the article
indicates that the error was restricted to one sitting, not
a systemic problem. |
| 2006/3/2-4 [Politics/Domestic/Crime, Academia/GradSchool] UID:42062 Activity:nil |
3/2 Nancy Grace is the new James Frey
http://www.observer.com/20060306/20060306_Rebecca_Dana_pageone_nytv.asp |
| 2006/2/27-3/1 [Academia/OtherSchools, Academia/GradSchool] UID:42018 Activity:high |
2/27 http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/06/pf/college/professor_pay/index.htm I'm making more than my professors! HAHAHA! Proof that academia is for suckers. \_ As I recall, CS professors make a LOT more than that. The 100s of useless English PhDs are throwing off the numbers. \_ Indeed. I know physics profs at top, well-funded research schools can start out at over 100k, when they're assistant profs. \_ Well, they have tenure. See you in New Dehli. \- The Chronicle WEEB site had the list of the compensation of a lot of the top paid University staff ... most of the big $$$ were medical school faculty and CS/Engineering profs but strangely Vaugn Jones was one of the top paid profs. Also, this doesnt factor in a lot of perqs like number of hours expected, outside consulting income, jobs for spouses, sabbaticals, travel opportunities etc. \_ Professors usually make a lot more through, as you say, outside consulting income. They also receive perks like free travel to conferences, free computers, and so on. I know that at Caltech, for instance, certain well-compensated faculty receive use of Caltech facilities, which can include university-owned housing. Even at Cal the Chancellor gets use of a house. At Caltech (at least 8 years ago) tenured faculty often received $400K interest-free to buy a house with the condition that they split profits proportionally with Caltech when/if they sell the property (and pay back the $400K) I know one particular professor received $1M interest-free for housing when he took an offer at Caltech. This is their way of retaining faculty in an expensive place like California. Certain individuals receive large bonuses, large payments to their retirement plans, free medical for life, and so on. There's a lot more to compensation than mere salary. \_ Vaughn Jones is one of the top paid profs because he's a fucking Fields Medalist. Winning the Mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize when it's not even awarded every year is a big deal. I imagine UCB's Turing award winners are similarly compensated. -dans \- yes i know VFJ is a Field's Medalist. I also know the other fields medalists and nobels and turing award winners are nowhere close by in the compensation list. the highly compensated people in CS were people list (i do not recall what year borchards and mcmullen left). the highly compensated people in CS were people like patterson, not KAHAN. BTW, the 2006 FM should be interesting because of the uncertainty over the age of that strange russian fellow. see wall discussion etc. also there are some giant figures here much more famous than the "avg" fields medalist, e.g. CHERN. i think the fields medalists may be better compensated by the university than econ nobels or turing award winners because they have less scope for outside income possibly. actually after some thought, my guess is somebody tried to capture VFJ [as with CMCMULLEN and say PSCHULTZ] and UCB managed to hold on to him [unlike CMCMULLEN, PSCHULTZ]. because they have sless scope for outside income possibly. \_ Compensation for faculty is largely set by hiring and retention cases. So the faculty who are most highly paid probably got that way by getting a lucrative offer from Harvard/MIT/Stanford and getting Cal to match it. -tom \_ Clearly VFJ is a better negotiator than those other Field's Medalists. -dans \_ Which is different from "Vaughn Jones is one of the top paid profs because he's a fucking Fields Medalist." And the question still remains, do the compensation numbers significantly miss some of the accomodations to faculty ... maybe one guy got a spouse hire in lieu of +40k to salary." And why did VFJ beat superstars in say English [this was post-GREENBLATT leaving, also post [this was post-GREENBLATT leaving, alswo post KARP etc.] \_ Sciences bring in money, and English doesn't. When a top science research prof brings in a 5 million dollar grant the University taxes that at something on the order of 50%, in addition to \- believe it or not, at a research university a 50% burden is pretty good. isnt harvard's burden around 80%? also i am aware of this, however somebody like GREENBLATT [or stanley FISH] are special cases, in case you are not familar with them. and this is also nicely seen on small scale ... like people who work on practical stuff liek microprocessors [PATTERSON] vs airy fairy theory people. the tuition that they charge the grad students which gets paid out of the PI's grant. I would also claim that science benefits society and creates new ideas, whereas academic English "scholarship" does neither. Obviously this is subjective, but I'm clealy not the only one who thinks this way, and that is reflectded in salaries. \_ A society is more than the flashy gadgets it creates. If we don't support the arts then we're nothing as a people. \_ I couldn't agree more. The fact that you automatically equate university English "scholars" with the arts is laughable, however. They're not writing novels, they're cranking out endless unreadable academic shit that no one but themselves will ever read, and that has no bearing on real \- well not everybody is a JUDITH BUTLER. for example an associate of mine did his phd in the english dept here ostensibly on HFIELDING but wrote a bunch on the history and develoment of copyright [since you need some protection for to make writing a career your could make money at] and he now teaches in at HLS. so some of this is actually interesting work which touches real world issues and isnt just trendy inscrutable humanities nonsense. of course he was sort of a rockstar here and the other eng phd i've met writing on thrid rate authors would be serve society better plugging holes in dikes/ dykes. writing. Their role as teachers is extremely important to society, but that always comes second at a school like Berkeley. \_ A second quartile science/engineer is more likely to produce something of value than a second quartile medival historian. This is why an avg engineer gets $100k say for his dayjob and an avg musician needs a dayjob. \_ I had no idea that being a prof was such a poorly paid job. I'm glad I choose law skool over grad skool. \- I'm glad I chose CS. --mstonebraker \_ FYI, starting salary at a Tier-1 research school (top 50) for a 9-month appointment for CS/EE fresh-PhD assistant professors is in the $75k-80k range (so $100k-110k or so including summer salary, which is typically part of the startup package for a couple of years but needs to be covered by the professor's research grants in the long term). Benefits are typically very good compared to industry, but of course no stock options. \_ There are plenty of Cal professors who have become filthy stinking like Prof. Brewer *cough*__/ rich during the .com boom. So there are lots of side benefits. Haven't you ever had Hilfinger talk about being an expert witness, talking on the phone for a few hours and making a killing? |
| 2006/2/15 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:41871 Activity:low |
2/15 new grad CS salaries slipping:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/13/pf/college/starting_salaries/index.htm
\_ ME higher than CS? How did it happen?
\_ MEs build stuff. It has to work. CS monkey's sit around im'ing
and playing WOW while siping latte's. If the code doesn't work,
release note it. |
| 2006/1/20-21 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:41449 Activity:nil 87%like:41448 |
1/19 http://csua.org/u/eph (Yahoo News) Watch out, the idiots are fighting back in liberal universities \_ I'm not sure the researchers understand the difference between illiteracy and apathy. Also, what the hell do you have against 80 col formatting? \_ It's finally happened. We've turned into /. This is a dup. |
| 2006/1/20 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:41448 Activity:nil 87%like:41449 |
1/19 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_go_ot/literacy_college_students Watch out, the idiots are fighting back in liberal universities |
| 2006/1/19-21 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:41440 Activity:nil |
1/20 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_go_ot/literacy_college_students Most new college grads cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. One more reason why I would never hire fresh out of college kids these days. \_ How old are you? \_ Umm, yeah. And "Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation." So, then Mr. Adult, you're saying that would be you? |
| 2005/11/23-28 [Academia/GradSchool, Transportation/Airplane] UID:40718 Activity:nil 88%like:40709 |
11/23 White flight in Cupertino:
http://tinyurl.com/8lpcn (wsj.com)
\_ That article was hilarious. |
| 2005/11/23 [Academia/GradSchool, Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:40709 Activity:nil 88%like:40718 |
11/23 White flight in Cupertino: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB113236377590902105-lMyQjAxMDE1MzEyOTMxNjkzWj.html |
| 2005/11/19-21 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:40654 Activity:nil |
11/18 Suppose you have a CS PhD but you don't plan to go to academia
or research. What is the expected salary range on the west coast
for a CS PhD vs. CS MS, as a programmer IV or programmer V? Since
most programming jobs count years and not education, does
the time you spend getting a MS/PhD count as work experience?
\_ At a big company like Intel, they have a base pay rate for EE Ph.D.s
(~$80K last I heard) and M.S. degrees ($65K?) who are just
starting out, then they adjust it based on where you live.
\_ Where I work (JPL) every year in school is counted as a year
of experience. An MS with 2 years is the same as a fresh-out
PhD. Why bother with a PhD if you don't want to do research,
though? |
| 2005/10/27-28 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:40294 Activity:nil |
10/27 Are you worried that scammers will pose as job recruiters to
steal your identity or your money?
\_ If a scammer is tech savvy enough or is working with enough tech
savvy people to convince me it's a real job application situation,
he deserves my money. OBTW, there has been at least one similar
scam with a scholarship application.
\_ "Please do NOT recommend any of the positions to anyone else
that you feel is qualified for a position. This letter is
intended solely for the recipient." |
| 2005/10/21-24 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:40218 Activity:kinda low |
10/21 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051021/od_nm/heiress_dc WalMart heiress Paige, a former USC student paid money for her term papers and other assignments. She voluntarily surrendered her USC college degree after allegations. The Walton family could not be reached for comment. Oh well, at least she went to school, unlike Paris. \_ My high school math teacher went to USC, and paid his way by writing papers for the basketball team. \_ Paris is too busy starring in her own porn video production. \_ Ha this is funny. So if you have 2 bums and one bum walks into a library and guns everyone down, you'd say "Well at least that bum has been in a library". The implication that going to school and cheating like crazy is somehow more honorable than not going at all is amusing. \_ Ostensibly, one goes to college to *learn*. The degree is only a certifcation that you learned something on a particular curriculum. There is no degree for some of the more important things one learns in college... \_ If someone writes all of your papers for you then the only thing you have learned is how to pay someone to write all of your papers for you. \_ But that's one useful skill for climbing the management ladder. \_ Outsourcing ...? \_ Haven't you heard of the osmosis theory of learning? \_ What about exchanging sexual favors for term papers? Is that considered unethical? \_ Depends on how hot the term paper receiver is. \_ This seems vaguely appropriate: http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20051022 |
| 2005/10/21-24 [Academia/Berkeley, Academia/GradSchool] UID:40216 Activity:low |
10/21 Why does chemistry deserve its own college, while other science fields
like physics, biology, CS, etc. are all cramped together in one college
which also houses the arts fields?
\_ I'm not really sure, but I'm betting on "historical reasons."
\_ Cursory research indicates that the CoC was one of the early
colleges. While some colleges (CivE, Mechanics, Mining, etc) have
since combined into larger colleges such as the CoE, the CoC has
never done so. It looks like the decision to merge was made by
the various colleges, not by the university, so it's not like
there was some sort of decree to merge down. Incidentally, UCB
has 14 colleges/schools, so it's not like chem is the only small
college on campus. -gm
\_ Why does it matter? I'd prefer my department not waste resources
supporting an entire 'college' and instead share administrative
and other non-academic duties with other fields leaving more time
and resources for academics. And isn't that what it is all about?
What do you see having a "college" does for Chem students that
'merely' being in a 'cramped' department with all those 'arts'
people doesn't do for all those non-Chem students? Of all the
things I could bitch about my time at Cal, Chem having it's own
College never came to mind.
\_ I was in L&S, but I had a friend in Chemistry. It was much
easier for him to deal with his college in all aspects. As
you know, dealing with L&S is crazy. Even dealing with
the College of Engineering (when I had to) was easier than
L&S. L&S has so many students. The details are fuzzy, but I
know that CoC provided services that L&S did not.
\_ I agree that L&S was a busy place but you only need 2 things
to get anything you want from them: 1) you have to make
friends with any one guidance person/advisor and 2) you must
understand that any and every rule can be broken if someone
is willing to sign off on it; see item #1 above.
\_ Berkeley is the only university in the U.S. to have a College of
Chemistry. It's for historical and political reasons. Certainly
in any sane organization, Chemistry would be under L&S. -tom
\_ What's the political reason please?
\_ Once a unit has autonomy, it never wants to give it up. -tom
\_ College of CHemistry is number #1 in the world. so they get lots of
money from the oil companies. - chemical engineer
\_ Would they get less money if everything else was the same except
they were under L&S? Would CS get more if it was the College of
CS?
\_ Why does a Physics major get a BA while an Engineer get a BS?
\_ Who cares? Once you graduate you're either going some place that
can spell "Berkeley" or you're not. If you're not it won't
matter which degree you have. If they can spell it, they already
know the program and understand and don't care.
\_ Traditionally, I think it was Trade vs. Knowledge.
\_ What's worse is that a Computer *Science* major gets an AB while
a Business Admin major gets a BS.
\_ "BS" is appropriate.
\_ lol!
\_ aol |
| 2005/9/24-26 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:39847 Activity:nil |
9/23 A friend of mine needs a master's thesis topic. Perferably in
graphics, but he also has OS experience. Any ideas?
\_ It'll totally depend on the school and advisor. What school?
\_ Chico State. (Cue jokes) |
| 2005/8/25-26 [Academia/GradSchool, Academia/Berkeley] UID:39284 Activity:nil |
8/25 Does anyone know if retaking a course you got a D or F in should result
in getting both grades counted in your GPA or just the latter grade?
I intentionally failed a class a few years back and retook it, but
just now realized that I got an RD and both were included in my GPA,
bringing it down quite a bit...
\_ I got an F, re-took the course, and the new A grade took precedence.
The F is still on my transcript, although not counted in the GPA.
BTW, what is an RD grade?
http://csua.org/u/d5r (UC)
\_ i think you can do this for up to 16 units. then it gets averaged
into your GPA..
\_ Yes, it's something like this. It's still on the
transcript, however.
\_ here's a link, it says only 12 units
http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/resources/regs_part1.html
\_ thanks much! i guess i have to go through registrar hell.
\_ RD = "Original D grade; units attempted, units passed and grade
points counted"
\_ http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Records/courserep.html
Is orreg@uclink the best email to use to contact the registrar to
get my GPA fixed? Anyone have any experience with this? |
| 2005/8/21-22 [Academia/GradSchool/MBA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:39204 Activity:high |
8/20 Say I want to score well in GRE test (just general test) and have some
time to study. Should I consider enrolling in one of those Kaplan
courses? (either classroom or web based)?
\_ Get the Kaplan CD.
\_ computer practice exam is good.
\_ It depends how well you do on these tests already and what score
you'll need for your target school. If you want a top notch
school with a 99th percentile rank, it is extremely unlikely you'll
get that sort of score without the in person class and taking and
retaking the zillions of tests on file in the Kaplan library. If
you just want to get into any random second tier school, buy the
CD for some practice. Third tier? Spend the CD money on beer
the night before the test.
\_ I think the key thing the op is looking for is FULFILLMENT.
I thought the exact same way you did. I graduated in the
mid 90s and joined the dot-com crowd with my friends. I
did ok, but I didn't feel fulfilled. It was fun writing
code, designing apps, writing backends, and the pay and
stock options were awsome but I really didn't feel like
I made a difference in people's lives. I worked for 6 years
in the industry, started as QA->code monkey->project lead
and even did 6 months as a PM. I think it all depends on
the attitude and what your goals and priorities in life are.
Most of my friends just wanted to make big money and
retire, and two did exactly that. Many are now 30s, have
kids, have a house, and have a big ass mortgage to pay.
There is one I know who is depressed because of his
sense of feeling "stuck." There were obviously a few
who went back to law school and one even did a joint
law/MBA (he is a 3.98 Cal guy), and took up jobs
that they thought more more suitable to their needs. When
I talk to them, yes, they were glad to give up a few years
of their lives to attain something they could never get
anywhere else. What that 'something' is, depends on who
you are and what makes you happy.
\_ Bullshit. I got only ok scores when I took a practice test,
used the Kaplan CD to study for a couple months, then took the
real thing and got excellent scores, and got into a 1st tier
school. The class may be useful if you have no self-discipline
and can't motivate yourself to study every night on your own, but
if that's the case grad school is a bad idea anyway.
\_ Yes, my general advice is BS next to your personal anecdote.
Congratulations on getting into grad school despite using a
lesser study method.
\_ [idiotic response self-censored by poster]
\_ Depends on who you are I guess. I got a 99% with no study.
\_ I taught Princeton Review(TPR), and I took the test on my own
before that and scored excellently. A couple comments: 1) Figure
out where you're at, and where you want to be, then decide.
2) TPR, and to a lesser extent, Kaplan, _will_ raise your score
with the work put in correctly. 3) working from home will also
raise your score. 4) The former is likely to be more effective,
if your score needs a lot of raising _and_ you put in the full
amount of time(and more) that the course guidelines suggest.
5) Raising your score on these is all about prep work and practice,
contrary to the definition of aptitude tests. oh, and 6) TPR is
definitely better than Kaplan. I started Kaplan training, too.
There's an immense difference. Also, within TPR, there's an
immense difference among their teachers. Talk to the TPR center
and see if you can find their best(star) teacher to take the
course from if you decide to do it.
\_ I'd recommend Princeton Review any day over Kaplan. I used
to work for Kaplan, and they are an evil company. All they
care about is profit, and their products suffer because of
it.
\_ Does TPR have some sort of self-study equivalent to their
classroom courses (i.e. not just a study book?) I'd like to
take the GMAT in a bit, but am unlikely to find a good
classroom review course where I'm at next year. -John
\_ http://csua.org/u/d40
they have online classes. I can't vouch for them, though
I'd still personally go for them over Kaplan based on
my experience with Kaplan. -sax
\_ Are there any evaluation tests that can estimate how well
one would do on GMAT? I bought this GMAT book and tried
2 sample tests. Out of the 7 sections of the tests, I
get like 1-2 wrongs on some sections, and 4-5 on others.
Each section has around 21 questions. The book's
analysis rated me as good on some sections, and
excellent on others, but that doesn't really mean
anything to me. |
| 2005/8/8-11 [Academia/GradSchool, Academia/UCLA, Industry/Jobs] UID:39055 Activity:nil |
8/8 Any students actually read motd? The Yahoo! Login and Registration
team is looking for a fresh college grad to write perl and
shell scripts. This position is for fresh college grads only.
If interested, send resumes to atom at yahoo-inc dot com
\_ I'm a starving PhD student and I am desperate for money. How
much do they pay and are they near UCLA? And how much referal
money do you get, and would you like to split with me? I'll take
33% of your referal. |
| 2005/7/26-27 [Recreation/Humor, Academia/GradSchool] UID:38838 Activity:nil |
7/26 Was it a Douglas Adams book that had an offhand joke about the
Committee For The Study Of The Exceedingly Obvious?
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005071201040 |
| 2005/7/26-27 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:38826 Activity:nil |
7/26 Spam filtering for grad students:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/comics.php |
| 2005/6/28-29 [Academia/GradSchool, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:38347 Activity:nil |
6/28 Well, I have to admit. This is the first I've heard of the trial
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=11044
\_ Wow, U. of South Florida College of Engineering Outstanding
Teaching Award in '93? Why don't we have wiretaps on Brian
"potsticker" Harvey? |
| 2005/6/27-28 [Politics/Domestic/911, Academia/GradSchool] UID:38319 Activity:nil |
6/27 Not sure what to major? Now you can have a degree in
Homeland Security in University of Connecticut
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/06/24/homeland.security.ap
\_ "Students spend five weeks of the 20-month program at UConn's
main campus in Storrs. The rest of the program will be done online."
Online... what kind of credibility can that possibly have. -mrauser |
| 2005/6/22-25 [Politics/Foreign, Academia/GradSchool] UID:38239 Activity:nil |
6/21 So I'm in my late 20s and I've noticed that many of the nerdy,
awkward, and unpopular kids in HS have turned quite successful.
Many of them are doctors and lawyers. On the other hand, many
of the popular kids are now doing menial jobs. For example one is
still doing retail and the other one doing import/export crap.
Is this odd, or do you guys think there's a logical explanation?
\_ I think this depends very strongly on where you went to highschool.
All the really popular kids in my highschool went to college, most
to top colleges, and an irritatingly large fraction are now lawyers.
I had quite a few friends in highschool, but I think if any one of
the people I knew who were happy and successful at my highschool
had gone to a typical middle America football-first type school
we'd be hated because of being different. In highschool, normal=
popular, and in America at large ignorant=normal.
\_ Lots of lawyers because those people drank their way through
college while pursuing a degree in anthropology or something.
While working at KFC as a manager for $12/hour they decide
to do something with their lives and end up going to law
school (true story). Engineers often don't bother with grad
school, because they get good jobs right out of school. I know
so many nitwits who are now lawyers that I fear for myself if
I ever need serious legal advice. (There are smart lawyers
to be sure, but you have to sift through a lot of flotsam
to find them.)
\_ Is it that easy to get into law school? I thought it's as
hard as getting into med school, where you need to have
maintained a good GPA in undergrad. Not something you can fix
after graduation.
\_ I'm in LS now and I'm surprised at how many "characters"
there are. I have no idea how these people managed to
get decent scores on the LSAT or decent UG GPAS, my only
guess is that a humanities major somehow prepares you to
get by w/ very little work and LOTS of bs/guessing.
The only upshot of there being so many bad students is
that if you study like you studied in engineering you can
get mostly A's/B's (unlike in engineering where you could
still easily end up with a C).
\_ It is *way* easy to get into law school. Plenty of
jerkoffs went somewhere like San Jose State and majored
in Sociology or English with a 3.2 GPA and got into
law schools a *bit* less prestigious than Harvard Law.
I got A's in all my classics classes *AT CAL* (let
alone CSU) while spending all my time studying for
engineering, chemistry, physics and math classes. Same
with all the anthropology classes I took. My roommate
at Cal majored in Spanish and went to law school. He
was Hispanic and already spoke it fluently before
entering Cal. I am not sure he ever had any homework
other than reading and a few papers.
\_ Where did you go to High School?
\_ A public school in West Hartford, CT.
\_ I wonder how many of your ignorant "normal" Americans can write
a post that doesn't generate massive parsing errors.
\_ Uh, the unpopular nerdy kids were the smart ones?
\_ Import/export has a potential to make one quite rich. I know
many people who made small fortunes doing that. What I found
is that the mediocre students were more likely to have graduate
degrees. It seems odd, but the reason is (I presume) that they felt
they *had* to go to school. So many of my mediocre classmates
are lawyers (especially), psychologists, doctors, MBAs, and such.
None even touched science or engineering and yet they did quite
well financially. I think that overall scientists/engineers are
smarter and work harder with fewer financial rewards. By the
way, the girls that were kinda cute are now extremely hot and
the hot girls look mostly run-down. If only we could go back to make
decisions then based on what we know now...
\_ What's the difference between hot and cute? And yes all the hot
people became losers. This one hot girl got pregnant and she
never even went to college. On the other hand I got my BS/MS...
made good money in the Valley and have a nice house and a nice
car. ha ha, SUCKERS! That's for dissing us nerdy people.
\_ So, do you have a hot wife? If not, I would say that all
that other crap is just your way of dealing with the fact
that hot chicks don't like you and never did. I submit
you not knowing the difference between hot and cute as
evidence.
\_ There is no save/restore feature in the Life game. Maybe it'll
be available in an upcoming patch you can download.
\_ In my high school, very few of the popular kids even *went* to
college, are you kidding?
\_ ^Import/export^Real estate
\_ Almost anything has the potential to make one quite rich.
\_ Agreed. And the popular kids/jocks have nice cars and are
pretty successful, at least financially speaking. But unlike
many motd'ers, I didn't think that they were all assholes.
They went to either Cal States or UC's. --LA HS Guy
\_ I went to school in San Jose and I've seen this phenomenon too.
Most of the popular kids (ie the ones that played sports, drank,
had gf's) didn't end up in high paying jobs or going to good
schools. The nerdy kids (debate, AP classes, Community College)
ended up going to top schools and mostly went on to grad degrees.
The moral of the story is that if you optimize for short term
"fun" you often do so at the expense of long term security, but
if you choose to optimize for long term security, you may have
to pay a short term price (not being "fun").
To some extent these aren't "choices" per se: your parents don't
really care about education and prefer to see you have fun, so
you start haning w/ the "fun" crowd OR your parents can't afford
for you to participate in all those "fun" activities so you stop
going to them and start studying in the library instead OR you
just can't handle the math need to survive the "nerdy" classes
so you stop being interested in studying and start pursuing "fun"
instead.
Personally, I think the kids that turned out the best weren't
necessarily either the popular kids or the nerdy one (some of
these people have the biggest damn ego's you've ever seen) but
the ones who were able to put some balance into their lives. |
| 2005/6/6-7 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:37992 Activity:low |
6/6 Question for those who work at Google, how is it? If you have a
PhD, is it the PhD paradise it's made out to be? Do all the PhDs
do interesting things, or are there also PhD code monkeys?
\_ I've heard it approaches game-company-like demanads on long hours.
\_ Are you a PhD? What's your field?
My professor once said that the best 1st tier PhDs do postdoc then
eventually end up teaching at top rated universities. The 2nd tier
PhDs teach at other colleges, or do research at corporations or
government agencies where the result of their research is often not
useful immediately. The rest of the PhDs do research at companies
where their research is driven by the purpose of making money rather
than pure research... they also have the lowest publication rates.
I see Google as a company with a lot of bright people but the
stuff they do is really driven by businesses rather than pure
research.
\_ No, I'm not a PhD. I'm asking for a friend who is and has
an offer from Google and another company. I know there are
a couple of people who work at Google here.
\_ I've heard the same thing but some companies offer postdocs.
A good friend of mine wants to do his postdoc (physics) in
quantum computing at Almaden, but is also considering other
academic institutions like MIT.
\_ This statement that '1st tier PhDs' end up teaching at top
universities is stupid bias on the part of your professor.
Remember Claude Shannon? Or the inventors of the FFT?
Although he may be right that top rated universities will
tend to make offers to people proven to produce stellar
research, going to google will not condemn you to academic
mediocrity. There's only one thing that can do that. On a
vaguely related note, the Pagerank paper is one of the most
cited papers in computer science. -- ilyas |
| 2005/6/1-5 [Academia/GradSchool, Computer/SW/OS/Windows, Computer/SW/OS/OsX] UID:37924 Activity:nil |
6/1 Update on notetaking software. After trying all the different
freeware and shareware programs, I settled on Microsoft OneNote 2003.
It's a big program like most MS products. But it has the right
user interface and integration with the rest of the MS Office apps
that we all use.
\_ I use OneNote as well. It comes with my TabletPC which is really
awesome. I use it to take notes the exact same way I use regular
paper. The character recognition is pretty good as well. And if
I want to input something really fast I can always ditch my pen
and use the keyboard. OneNote works well with a tablet pen.
\_ what kind of tablet pc do you use?
\_ Notebook and Notetaker are both popular(?) Mac apps.
\_ By the way did you ever fix your notebook networking problem, where
after you unplug your notebook it becomes really slow? What was
the root-cause and how did you fix it? |
| 2005/5/20-23 [Science, Academia/GradSchool] UID:37780 Activity:moderate |
5/20 I read that the number of computer science majors is shrinking,
and the number of business majors is shrinking, but the number of
people attending college is growing. What is everyone going into
these days? Bio? Poly Sci?
\_ Healthcare fields? I heard that nurses make as much as senior
CS engineers these days and they work four days a week.
\_ A Male Nurse? FOCKER?
\_ Yup, Gaylord Focker. Besides, we've seen male nurse on ER and
such.
\_ law, business
\_ OP says the number of business majors is shrinking.
\_ This is the new America. College networking good. Edumacation
bad. God good. Science bad.
\_ Bio is probably a good bet. We will need a lot more doctors in
the next 15+ years. Maybe some people are going into other eng
or science fields. I was MSE as ug but have been a coder for many
years and I think that doing a real science is far more interesting
than coding.
years and I think real science is far more interesting than cs.
\_ I don't think bio in terms of doctors, but in terms of
biotechnology. I think hard science is more interesting, BUT
there is a lot of competition for dollars. You have to slave
away as a grad student and at the end of it you may or may
not have a good job. It is so much easier to, say, go to law
school. There are too many scientists competing for too
little money and the rewards for being a scientist are small
but for a few.
\_ Biotech seems like a big hype job to me. Sure it is
interesting and all, but most of work in the field is
low pay lab rat type stuff.
Funny you should mention LS. I'm currently in LS and I
find it much harder than grad school (I'm enjoying LS
more than grad school, though). You are spot on about
the money; it is far easier to make money as a lawyer
than as a scientist/engineer (which is why I'm in LS).
\_ what law school. What was your UG GPA and LSAT?
Thanks.
\_ gpa 3.03, lsat 168. I'm going to santa clara
b/c it is the closest to my house (I'm in sj).
\_ Where did you go to grad school and in what field? |
| 2005/5/3 [Uncategorized/Spanish, Academia/GradSchool] UID:37487 Activity:nil |
05/01 interno de verano, grad reciente, posiciones mayo'es del revelado'
at. Para una idea del tipo de trabajo vea, dig dis:
http, dig dis://csua. Sheeeiit.o'g/u/bxo
dough para el interno, posiciones recientes del grad (no
job C++ y/o 'espuh'iencia e interés de Java en seguridad
may sea suffcient.
-- cielo |
| 2005/4/28-30 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:37402 Activity:insanely high |
4/28 Why is there so much opposition from liberals to a high school exit
exam? Supposedly, 83% of kids have passed it. I know it is bad for
self-esteem when a kid is a fuckup, but maybe failing the exam
will help that lower fifth realize they need to work harder. The
funniest comment I heard was the exit exams will hurt graduation
rates. Yeah, I guess they will. If a kid can't pass an easy exam
they have been preparing 3 years for then maybe they shouldn't
graduate until they do. Why are these people teaching our children?!
\_ Uhm, why would you need an exit exam in the first place?
Instead of making kids pass an exit exam before graduation, we
should just make the classes harder. We don't need an
exit exam to get a degree from Berkeley, we just need to
pass all of our classes. -moderate
\_ Lots of universities do have exit exams.
\_ Interesting, which ones? What do they test on?
\_ Well, for example, UC Santa Cruz. It's a
department-level requirement rather than a university
one. The exam covers general knowledge, but a list of
study materials is provided ahead of time.
\_ How do you enforce that all classes meet a certain threshold of
quality and grading levels are meaningful across schools? Hell,
forget K-12. How do you do that at the college level, so that
graduates of 'fraud with a A- GPA knows as much as a Cal grad?
\_ Uhm, give more money to schools so that they can hire better
people to A) Administrate them and B) Teach the courses in
the K-12 level? As for the college level, in order to pass
a compsci class you need to at least know how to program to
a minimal level of proficiency to pass, at least at Cal. As
for other schools, well, the ones that don't matter and have
easy classes have bad reps and nobody cares about them. The
ones that have easy classes (like Stanford and Harvard) have
a built-in selection mechanism to ensure only bright people
get in or their parents have enough money to ensure that their
kids have a minimal threshold of education to start off with,
so society takes care of them. Anyway, if you want better
HS graduates what you need to do is change the culture and
the curriculum. I don't get how a standardized test achieves
either. In a sense, we already have a standardized exit exams
for college bound high school students, the SAT, so an
additional test of that sort would be redundant. If you want
better schools you first need to get better administrators
and second you need to get better teachers and third you need
to get better infrastructure. All of the above require lots
of money, which is why prep schools and other private
institutions blow public schools out of the water in general.
Also, if you take a look at school districts that are part
self funding like the one in Contra Costa County you see
a world of difference. It's actually pretty simple, want
better schools? Increase school funding. The question is,
do you want to pay?
\_ The money arguement is provably bullshit. If you look
at the spending per student at different schools around
the state(which I just did for my home state), you'll
see shitty, crime-ridden inner city schools often spend
more money per student than the suburban schools, which
in my state gave the prep schools a run for their money
in terms of test scores and admission to top colleges.
\_ You're forgetting the amount of money that schools
raise on their own through fundraisers plus the
infrastructure that parents contribute to the schools
in suburban communities (i.e. the PTA in suburbs is
MUCH more active than in inner cities and a LOT more
people are privately funding things behind the
scenes). The reason why inner city schools get more
money is because they have to deal with a lot more
problems, i.e. security. A suburban public high school
in a decent neighborhood will equate to an inner city
prep school. You can't simply look at the raw numbers
that the state provides you. Kids in suburbs cost a
lot more to raise per capita than kids in inner cities.
Parents have the means and are willing to spend that
kind of money on kids in suburbs, but parents in inner
cities do not. Again, it's just a function of money. If
you want higher test scores and smarter kids, be willing
to spend the money to upgrade their environment. Again,
are you willing to pay?
\_ As usual, you miss the point. The point is that
*no* amount of money will solve the problem of
bad inner city schools. The kids in the public
school I went to got higher test scores because they
were in a culture that encouraged academic
performance. Most kids I knew were read to by their
parrents before they even got to school, which
gives us an advantage that no amount of spending
can make up for. I'm not proposing a solution,
I'm just saying that lack of money is simply not
the problem. Calling greater parental involvement
in schools "infrastructure", as though you can just
add that to a town budget is just plain stupid.
\_ Uhm, no, you miss the point of my previous post.
I never said that just adding in money will result
in better schools. I said that you need to change
the administration and the teachers and the
infrastructure of schools to get higher test
scores. In order to do that you have to pour in
resources into the schools, which basically
equates to money. Obviously pouring money into
an existing infrastructure that doesn't work
will not work. I'm saying you have to change
the system. Changing the system requires a lot
of money and a lot of political will power. The
question is, are you willing to spend time/money
on this problem? It's also naive of you to think
that good schools can't make a difference in
a young person's life. Ever see the move
Stand and Deliver? It's a true story. I actually
was close to the district that Garfield High was
in. Thinking that Latino or Black kids can't learn
Calculus was wrong and was racist. Give the schools
the right infrastructure, and you can turn out
inner city kids that can ace the AP Calc exam.
Case closed.
\_ I think the point here is that the inner
city schools receive about the same
funding, so why does their infrastructure
not work and yet in suburban schools it
does? Sometimes this happens at different
campuses in the same school district (e.g.
LA Unified).
\_ Grade inflation is rampant throughout higher ed, including
at Berkeley.
http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html.
50% of Berkeley undergraduate grades are A's, 35% are
B's, and less than 5% are D's or F's. -tom
B's, and less than 5% were D's or F's. -tom
\_ The grade distribution never looked like this for
the classes I took (mostly math). Didn't the
Physics Dept. mandate a bell curve with 50% at C+?
If you scored the mean on a test you didn't usually
get an A (or even B+). That might be different in,
say, anthropology or classics where I got A's
without really trying.
\_ They note that there are differences across
disciplines. -tom
\_ Indeed. They do mention that in Physics just
15-20% of students earn A's. "The Physics
department began monitoring lower division
GPAs at one point when it was discovered that
instructors were giving mostly B's."
\_ Robert Holub hosted the event. Any relationship to tom?
\_ No. -tom
\_ Definitely good news for people who had a hard time
graduating, like t** and p**
\_ "A significant increase in the GPA occurred during the
Vietnam War when students received a draft deferment
if they remained in good academic standing."
Who says draft is a bad thing now? :)
\_ The SAT is for entrance to college, not graduation
from high school. The idea behind an exit exam is that
it gives more value to a HS diploma and is also a
metric that schools/teachers can use to see how well
the students are doing at all levels, not just
college-bound students.
\_ So my question to you is, why not just make the SAT
a metric that employers can utilize to gauge students?
If you are so concerned about gauging the metric
of the average H.S. grad, make them take an existing
standardized test. Why should the state take up the
burden of creating another standardized test? Anyway,
companies like UPS already utilize standardized testing
to screen applicants, making the whole point moot.
\_ It's not for the employers to 'screen', but a
metric for the schools. They could use the SAT,
but they have no control over it.
\_ Exactly... you say bad colleges get bad reputations.
That doesn't work at the high school level. They are
providing public services and need to be held to some
minimum standard. They can never be equal but there's
no way to enforce "making classes harder" other than
having harder standardized tests.
\_ How do you know if schools are getting better or worse
without testing? What metric do you propose? How does
that metric compare to direct testing of the output?
\_ Perhaps you should give your examples of "liberal opposition".
The progressive take on this is not necessarily that exit exams
are bad, but that standardization with negative reinforcement is
not the way to help an ailing school district.
\_ I gave my examples. Bad for self-esteem and lower graduation
rates. Obviously not all liberals feel this way, but all of
the opposition is indeed liberal.
\_ I meant examples of liberal opposition. Not the factors to
which you say they object. How 'bout an article or two?
Transcript to a news show?
\_ Find them yourself. It's easy enough. It's in the
headlines right now.
\_ It's your argument, man. If you can't support your
own assertions with evidence, or show how you reached
your conclusion aside from faulty logic or opinion,
then you're in serious danger of being labelled
(quite justifiably) a troll. If you can't even
support your own argument with evidence, why the fuck
should anyone else?
\_ I am assuming I am debating with informed
individuals. If you are not informed then it is
easy to become so. Use Google. Otherwise, I don't
have time to search for and post links. This is
in the headlines. It's like asking for a link to
who Schiavo is. Read the Chronicle, which said:
"Leaders of the teachers unions are adamantly
opposed to the exam, as are groups representing
the minority students with the lowest pass rates."
I'm not a frickin' newspaper. Read one once in a
while.
\_ why do conservatives support stealing money
from public schools to give to rich families?
\_ Because public schools apparently aren't
worth shit according to the standardized
tests. However, most wealthy conservatives
not only put their kids in private schools,
but contribute to public schools as well.
\_ So you're saying conservatives don't care
about the non-wealthy (which is most of
them) conservatives?
\_ They probably don't, however which part
of "contribute to public schools as
well" did you miss? Whether they care
or not, they are helping anyway.
\_ If by "liberals" you mean "teachers", then I can tell
you it's because they look at education as a continuing
process, while those who implement std'ized tests look
at it as a race with an endpoint. In a perfect world,
they would have small enough class sizes that they could
give the necessary attention to each student. In their
world, the number of students who passed whatever test
was set in front of them would be much higher than
83%. As it is, it's a deadline put upon a system with
limited resources. When budget cuts are linked to
poor performance on these tests, it creates an incentive
to "teach to the test", to the detriment of actual
education.
\_ This is a load of shit. So "teach to the test"
then. At least we're sure they are teaching
something, as opposed to now where kids get by
w/o learning shit.
\_ Dim, you're a load of shit, as you make clear
any time you post here. Talk to a teacher about
this sometime. Pick one you respect. You'll be
surprised how much you don't understand.
\_ I've talked to a lot of teachers and I
think they are mostly afraid of facing the
reality of their situation. No one said
teaching is easy. I respect that. However,
standardized testing is not supposed to be a
panacea or a way for kids to learn more.
It's just a metric. If you want to propose
something akin to a thesis to graduate high
school I am all for that, but personally a
simple test seems a lot easier for the
teachers if less accurate.
\_ So you've talked to the teachers and
dismissed what they've said out of hand.
Grow up.
\_ Yes, it is a sign of immaturity that
I do not take what teachers say at
face value. Heck, my sister-in-law
is a teacher. I find their arguments
lacking. Most of it is touchy-feely
bullshit about catering to the
lowest common denominator. These are
the same people who don't want to be
paid for their performance. I can't
even imagine having a job where my
performance wasn't tied to my
raises. Why would I want to make the
same as someone who does less than I
do? For teachers somehow this is OK.
\_ Yes, not everyone in the world has
the exact same worldview as you.
That does not mean that they are
"wrong" and you are "right."
\_ I have the freedom to label
them 'stupid'. Many of them
are booksmart, but have no
clue how anything works. It
comes from being around 8 year
olds all day. Not wanting a
raise for performance & not wanting
the underperforming teacher in the
next room replaced is idiotic
in every worldview but theirs.
If schools were run by
businesspeople instead of
'educators' more shit would
get done. In fact, this is
closer to how private schools
work.
\_ I'm amused that you think you
have a clue about how things
work.
\_ I get a feeling you are
easily amused. I'm
saddened that you think
I don't have a clue.
\_ This is a load of shit. How is 'teaching to the
test' equivalent to an education in any
rational sense? Memorizing a set of answers
without any context or any ability to apply
that knowledge isn't education.
\_ Our education system, including college,
is the best in the world. We must be
doing something right.
\_ Nah - I think our collegiate educational
system is the best in the world, but our
lower level educational system(s) are
desperately in need of attention.
\_ Your claim that high school graduates
are the worst in the world is hard
to reconcile with the fact that our
college graduates are the best.
\_ Uhm, ehr? I never made the claim
that our HS grads are the worst in
world. You should reread my previous
post, dude.
the world. You should reread my
previous post, dude.
\_ Maybe most of our college grads
are foreigners (this is certainly
true in the postgraduate level).
\_ Really basic math skills, history recital,
and English language ability should be
easily testable. And yes, a lot of kids would
fail that. And if they do then they aren't
ready to graduate. Obviously we expect that
an education should have been provided along
the way, but a basic test can at least stop
blindly pushing kids through a system without
even meeting the most basic of educations.
Ideally basic tests should be given in earlier
grades to catch problems earlier. Kids in a
certain grade should be expected to have a
certain skill level. Smaller class sizes are
good to a point, but only the kid and his
parents really have the ability to make sure
a kid learns actual skills, and not sit around
in no-pressure environments where everything
is the right answer.
\_ Err, I'm not taking a stand for or against
the notion of an exit exam. Reread, please.
I'm objecting to the fuck-stupid notion
that teachers prepping students to pass one
very basic test is in any way meaningful.
\_ The problem here is that kids aren't
passing the tests EVEN WHEN the
teachers teach to the test. This
implies that when they are not
teaching to the test the results are
about as dismal. So teach to the
test and get 98% of the kids to pass
and then worry about if it is meaningful.
\_ And yet our fully contextual students get
clobbered annually in achievement tests by
students in countries big on memorization.
And we lament when our colleges and grad schools
couldn't import more of those memorization
drones. Amazing.
\_ 'Fully contextual'? Are you nuts? The
problem has more to do with crappy quality
of education and (depending on who you
speak with) a bloated administration that
soaks up any money thrown at it. If you
think that memorizing answers for one test
is going to magically fix everything,
you are so deluded or ignorant it makes my
teeth ache.
\_ college admissions use mostly GPA and SAT
to select students. even the private ones
who are free of government garbage. so
the free market thinks standardized tests
are a good indicator of academic prowess
for their student body that they want to
be the best possible to generate good
alumni etc.
\_ 'The free market'? LOL. Thanks.
That actually made my day.
\_ Do they make the tests available ahead of
time? Or the questions? If not, how do
you memorize the answers? Or do they
make a study guide available? Go ahead,
memorizing that would be a good start.
\_ Yes, actually they do make the tests
available ahead of time. That's
a rather large part of the origin of
this debate. That's why you need
tests that can't be taught to.
\_ URL please. Giving out tests early
seems stupid enough to require
substantiation. If all they give
out is a study guide, then teaching
to that seems quite reasonable. It
would be even better if they called
it a "study guide" but it's really
a "text book".
\_ That rocks.
\_ In fact, that seems to be exactly
the case. "Teaching to the test"
means teaching the subjects known
to be in the test, rather than
teaching the questions (or
answers as you claimed). See
http://csua.org/u/bwm for example. I'm
still awaiting proof of your
claim that tests are given out
early.
\_ Find them yourself. It's easy
enough. You know *nudge,nudge*
google? Yahoo?
\_ I can't find any. Of course,
it's impossible for me to
prove that it doesn't exists,
prove that it doesn't exist,
hence my plea of a positive
instance where the test was
given out early, since you
made the claim. You can't
find one either, huh?
\_ "The abscence of evidence,
\_ "The absence of evidence,
is not the evidence of
abscence."
absence."
\_ One would think that
you made the claim
with a particular
example in mind...
Otherwise why would
you make the claim in
the first place? So
you're saying you made
the original claim of
tests being handed out
early to students
*without* any basis at
all?
\_ No, I was just
making fun of
Rumsfeld for
saying that during
the WMD debate.
\_ So where is the
reference to
tests being
given out early?
Again, one
assumes you
have made the
claim with some
basis in fact.
\_ I am not the
same guy who
made that
claim. I am
some other
jackass.
\_ Your assumption that he
ever looked may be
somewhat specious.
\_ I listened to an interview on KCBS radio. Teaching
to the test is big. The interviewer asked, "Is
that because the teachers are teaching to the
test?" The researcher said, "No, we use an
adaptive test that cannot be taught to."
Interviewer: "How about this other measurement
that declined? Could that show teaching to the
test?" Researcher: "No, it's impossible to teach
to our test. Our data don't show why that other
measure declined." 3 questions later, the
interviewer asked: "Does this show the teachers
are teaching to the test?" Researcher: "We don't
know yet. You can say that if you want, but we
haven't done the analysis yet." End of interview,
interviewer: "Apparently teaching to the test is
causing an improvement in test scores."
\_ I'm a liberal and support HS Exit Exams.
\_ I'm a liberal, and I'd support them if they reflected the results
of some sort of organized curriculum of basic material.
\_ I'm a liberal and I support gays, lesbians, and welfare.
\_ You would understand the opposition if you looked at the
composition of the 17% who fail the test.
\_ Yes! I forgot this argument. It's racist! Tests are racist
plots invented to keep minorities down! Oh, except Asians
\_ Standardized tests are culturally biased in favor of those
cultures that value education.
\_ Have you actually considered the possibily that standardized
tests have cultural bias? Nah, probably not. You sound
too smug and arrogant to ever consider the possibility
that your assumptions might be incorrect.
\_ This arguement is laughable, and makes me ashamed to call
myself a "liberal", since it seems to be only liberals
who actually believe it. Maybe you can explain what
Irish, Jewish, Indian, Japanese, Korean and Scottish
immigrants have in common that somehow makes tests biased
in favor of all of them. I'm pretty sure that if the
tests were somehow geared towards people who were raised
in, say, a Japanese household I would have failed. And
if they had a "jewish" bias, I'm sure the same would be
true of most asians who also kick ass on the tests. I'll
say it again: standardized tests are culturally biased
for exactly one cultural trait: valuing education.
This is why affirmative action for higher education makes
sense.
\_ Are you the same guy who mocked the the notion that
there was bias in the tests? You are talking out of
both sides of your mouth, if you are. And yes, I can
explain how it might be so, but I will not bother
wasting my time with someone who is mind is so
obviously already made up.
\_ Fucktards like you are the reason we keep losing
elections. Maybe you should take your giant brain
over to the republican party.
\_ Old jungle saying: You can lead a girl to Vassar but
you can't make her think.
\_ Apparently they're culturally biased for Asians.
\_ Is that what you think? Perhaps they are simply
biased toward the wealthy:
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/ati/gb80211.htm
\_ Asians (Jews, too) didn't always have it so
good. I am not sure it's genetics, but it
certainly is cultural. They are wealthy because
they worked hard and studied hard. You have your
cause and effect mixed up.
\_ At least you are thinking, unlike Mr. Your
Argument Is Laughable fellow above. There
is probably some kind of virtuous cycle that
is taking place. Whether you want to call
this evidence of bias or not is up to do.
Here is a great paper by a Harvard researcher
talking about cultural and language bias:
http://gseweb.harvard.edu/hepg/freedle.html |
| 2005/4/9-10 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:37126 Activity:low |
4/8 Whao, what happened here? Did we even enter?
http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/Standings.html
\_ Uh, let's just say '04 was not a good year for us.
\_ The US restrictions on foreign students are, predictably, improving
the student pools at universities in other countries. How long
will it be before the US's cultural and business dominance of the
world are just a historical footnote? -tom
\_ US restrictions on foreign students have almost zero effect on
any undergraduate population in the US. I share your concern
about grad populations, but the ICPC is mostly undergrad. |
| 2005/4/6-8 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:37089 Activity:nil |
4/5 Stat Consultant job posted
for PhD in Statistics, Applied Statistics, Economics, or Mathematics
/csua/pub/jobs/DKstat
\_ What's the hiring timeline? I'm still finishing my PhD. -nivra
\_ No set timeline. I'd encourage anyone on track to graduate
to apply anyway. |
| 2005/3/29-31 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:36957 Activity:high |
3/29 Porn shooting in CSU Chico. How come this never happens @Cal?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/03/29/life.porn.reut
\_ What is the value in that? Watching is not doing ..
\_ didn't some dude in unit 2 do that?
\_ What is the value in that? Watching is not doing ..
\_ Porn shoots are kinda gross, dude.
\_ How so?
\_ http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/03/29/life.porn.reut
\_ For those "good" shots, you need to get it properly lit
and in focus. That means getting in close. Real close.
Splash distance.
\_ hm, they're phukt.
\_ Cal students are smarter than that?! Plus, can you imagine
the protests by the women's groups?
\_ Cal students are smarter, so they don't get caught.
\_ Cf. College F*ck Fest series of amateur sex films.
\_ Cal men are not sufficiently equipped.
\_ Cf. Campus F*ck Fest series of amateur porn.
\_ How come almost every reply to this post has been deleted? |
| 2005/3/29-30 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:36940 Activity:kinda low |
3/29 How early can I apply for a US passport renewal? Mine expires in 6
months. Can I apply now? Anybody know?
\_ Apply now. Most countries won't even let you enter with a passport
with expiration less than 6 months away.
\_ Just do it (tm). I just renewed mine about 9 month before
the expiration date.
\_ Related question: if your passport got lifted or lost, do you need
to file a police report? (I just haven't gotten around to it yet.) |
| 2004/12/8 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:35211 Activity:nil |
12/8 Here's one for the grad students:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/comics.php |
| 2004/11/4-5 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:34667 Activity:kinda low |
11/4 Did you take a GRE prep course (e.g. Kaplan)? If so, which one?
Would you recommend it? It's a bit expensive.
\_ I strongly reccomend the Kaplan cd/book. I think it's about
40 bucks, but I'm positive that I got a much higher score
than I would have without it. I don't think the classes
are useful unless you lack discipline. All of the test
reverse engineering is there in the book/cd.
\_ Depends on what you need. If you have decent math skills,
then any decent book will cover most of the basic types
of questions you'll deal with on those sections. The
best thing for vocab I found was to study the "hit list,"
of frequently used words on the test (I think it's in
the Princeton review book). It's not that many words to
learn, but they really do pop up quite often. If you're
gonna take the computer version, you might also want to
make sure to get a cd with practice tests in that format
just to get used to it.
\_ Take a practice test and see how you do. If you get below
2000 I'd take the class, it will help you raise your score
at least 200 points, provided you actually do the hw and
take the practice test on the recommended schedule.
\_ GRE is now out of 1600 (800 for verbal & 800 for quant) with
a analytical writing section out of 6.0. I used the Kaplan
GRE CDs & helped a bit when i took it last year. |
| 2004/10/19-20 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:34235 Activity:low |
10/19 This is a doozy, I'm asking about the Federal GS pay scale and
qualifications. It says a B.S. is equivalent to a GS-5. A B.S. plus
X years of specialized experience is equivalent to what GS level?
\_ Every year of college is counted as a year of experience. So
a BS + 2 years is the same as an MS and so on. Without knowing
X you can't expect any more of an answer.
\_ I've worked 8 years. I HAVE A PHD!!! I'm elite!!! |
| 2004/9/14 [Computer/SW, Academia/GradSchool, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Others] UID:33518 Activity:high |
9/14 I've tried to contact a grad student about some of his work, but my
email hasn't been responded to. Anyone know Jordan Smith? I'm
interested in his work here:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordans/research/classes/meshes/voronoi/held
If he's got a paper out on this or source code available I'd love to
see it. Anyone know him? |
| 2004/7/9-11 [Computer, Science, Academia/GradSchool] UID:32205 Activity:low |
7/9 Subject: Graduate School
A copy of your e-mail to our Admissions Office has been forwarded to
me. I will send you information about our graduate program,
however, I wanted to be sure that Crop Science was the department
you are interested in. Your e-mail indicated a bachelors in
computer science.
Please let me know if your request was directed to the right
department. |
| 2004/6/18 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:30899 Activity:nil |
6/18 Reality show application:
http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/application2.shtml |
| 2004/6/17 [Computer/SW/Languages/Java, Academia/GradSchool, Computer/Theory] UID:30880 Activity:nil |
6/17 http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~nivra/Day_life.html Good stuff, read it before he deletes it! |
| 2004/5/20-21 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:30314 Activity:very high |
5/19 Is it difficult to get into San Jose State Univers MS program
in CS right now? is it impacted?
\_ call them. how would anyone here know?
\_ cuz MS is Masters Degree program
\_ so? call them.
\_ It's not difficult to get in, but the classes most likely will be
full. I was on the waiting list for all my classes.
\_ which college is the CS MS under?
\_ I am just curious. Assuming you got a CS BA from Cal, why on
earth would you go to SJSU for a higher degree?? Isn't it worse
than having none?
\_ snob. no it isn't. which is better? cal or cal+sjsu?
\_ No. It is not worse than having none. Dropping out of
Harvard is more difficult than graduating from most state
schools, but a degree earned is a degree earned. It shows
that you can complete goals and that you are interested in
the field. It's not as impressive as a degree from somewhere
else, but would you honestly take Cal BS + no MA over Cal BS +
SJSU MS? I don't mean when hiring. I mean when evaluating
level of educational attainment. Something is always better
than nothing and many HR people are too dumb to notice
otherwise.
\_ I think it goes like this:
harvey mudd dropout >> cal+sjsu >> cal
\_ is this just a shot at tom?
\_ Holub brings it on himself. Take a look at
his "Position" /csua/archive/officehours.damn.old.
\_ gee, now kchang is stalking me instead of lila.
I suppose I should be honored. -tom
\_ From recent experience with Harvey Mudd grads, no. |
| 2004/5/14-15 [Academia/GradSchool, Recreation/Travel] UID:30226 Activity:moderate |
5/13 Some what related question: I'm going to grad school in August.
When should I notify my employer that I'm leaving? Can they
fire you for planning to go to grad school? I don't think I will
get fired. I want pick a time which is equitable to both
parties.
\_ 30 DAYS NOTICE! 30 DAYS IS THE STANDARD!
\_ http://www.nylawyer.com/lawlorn/00/ad042400.html
\_ http://www.i-resign.com/uk/letters/letters.asp
\_ If someone fires you *after* you've given reasonable notice without
a *very* good cause you have an easy lawsuit. They will not fire
you even if they are the most stupid people in the universe.
\_ The Vogons would fire you.
\_ they'd probably put you out of an airlock and *then* fire
you.
\_ but not without a poetry reading |
| 2004/4/21-22 [Academia/Berkeley/Classes, Academia/GradSchool] UID:13318 Activity:nil |
4/21 A tangent from the underrepresented minorities in CS/EECS
thread below: Why don't many Cal grads apply/get Marshalls
or Rhodes Scholarships? In my experience teaching at both
Ivy League and BIg Ten universities, it's certainly not
that Cal undergrads aren't up to it. COuld it be that
the university doesn't do enough to promote the
scholarships (the RHodes interview, from what I've heard
requires a bit of coaching)? Or that perfectly accomplished
& brilliant Cal undergrads, after four years of getting
their egos bashed, just want to apply to grad/prof.
school and move on with their lives? Just speculating. -elizp
\_ I believe it is mostly because Cal undergrads have
a lower opinion of themselves than is warranted. -ausman
(in general of course, there are many exceptions)
\_ That sounds right.
Remember, boys & girls: don't let the system get
you down. Seriously. -elizp
\_ After a few years at Cal, I felt pretty bashed. Then I entered
the real world where falling into the 92% range wasn't an "F"
any more and recovered. In fact, the rest of the world is so
dumb compared to the weakest Cal grad that you can skim by in
life doing 35% and still do just fine. I'm on cruise control
at 70% and doing really well. The bell curve in life is much
different than the bell curve at Cal. The fact that almost
every Prof and TA will happily treat you like shit doesn't help
students either. Screw Cal, join life, win big.
\_ I know of 2 Cal undergrads who later got Marshall scholarships.
One (EECS ugrad) declined a Gates Scholarship (this is a wannabe
Marshall / Rhodes scholar), and another got a Luce scholarship.
\) cal has one marshall scholarship this year but the farm has 5
http://www.marshallscholarship.org/profiles2004.html
\_ Cal had a Rhodes scholar last year.
\_ ankur. eecs & business.
\_ ``Cyrus is a black belt karate instructor, a downhill skier,
and a published photographer. He is also blind.'' --rhodes scholar
How can that shit be real?
\_ I can explain the black belt, I think. A lot of modern black
belts are meaningless. -- ilyas
\_ Don't nitpick, Ilya. You still don't get handed one for
walking in the door and being able to write your name. -John
\_ As long as sparring isn't a part of promotion I'm confused
as to why a blind person wouldn't be able to learn karate
anyway.
\_ A lot of such scholarships are just jokes.
\_ If it's free money, why not apply? |
| 2004/3/31-4/1 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12955 Activity:moderate |
3/31 How long are grade records kept in Sproul? If I apply to grad school
20 years after I gradulate, will I still be able to get a Cal
transcript? Thanks.
\_ email orreg@uclink.berkeley.edu
\_ Kept forever. I've seen grades from people back in the 1800's
on microfiche.
\_ What kind of classes did they have back then?
\_ Only psb knows.
\_ I beg to differ. --john sculley
\_ Negro Studies
\_ "Sodomy and Buggery in Modern Literature" |
| 2004/3/20-21 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12776 Activity:nil |
3/20 (ssssshhhh!) Restored: White's only scholarship. Hurry, apply now!
http://tinyurl.com/222cs
\_ http://www.rwu.edu/about+rwu/fast+facts
hmmm.... 20,000 dollars tuition for some shitty noname east
coast school. I'd say I got the equivalent of a 40,000 dollar
scholarship from those people just for going to a public school.
[Restored. If you keep censoring it, I will keep restoring it.] |
| 2004/3/5-6 [Academia, Academia/GradSchool] UID:12535 Activity:high |
3/5 Are scholarships that are offered to certain racial groups
legal? If you open up an offer such as this to the public,
shouldn't it be made available to everyone?
\_ Private scholarships can be given to whoever they want. You have
a constitutionally-protected right to be a racist.
\_ Yes if it's not for whites.
\- there was an east coast school that had a white only scholarship
but it was a disingenuous thing to either get into court or
just get coverage. --psb
\_ anything that doesn't fit your worldview is just a stunt,
huh? how very open minded of you.
\_ That what they say they are trying to do - get
people to think about race-based scholarships. -!psb
\_ There are a couple tiny funds run by white supremacist orgs.
\- it wasnt a stunt, it was a calculated decision.
unclear whether the reason was publicity or legal
standing, but the persons setting up the scholarship
didnt really even deny that. --psb
\_ let's grant for a moment that it was a stunt, why do
you think they felt this stunt was necessary? is it
simply that they are just hateful racist or is there
something more to it.
\_ it is likely that they are trying to convince
themselves that whites are the oppressed race,
despite all evidence to the contrary. |
| 2004/3/1 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:29843 Activity:nil |
3/1 dear grad students, say university mails you a letter and says they'll
fund you 50% and pay Y money. Does Y cover tuition, or you gotta
pay yourself? |
| 2004/2/12-13 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12234 Activity:high |
2/11 A relative in high school is looking for SAT, AP, and other test
prep courses. I'm wondering if any of you took them before getting
into UCB. I didn't take any of those when I was in HS so I don't
know. I heard of Princeton Review and Kaplan and there might be some
smaller neighborhood test prep business. What do you recommend?
Take a course or just get some books with CDs, etc? I think his
parents wants him to take a afterschool or weekend course. Thanks.
\_ I didn't use anything for the SAT, but I can say that for the GRE,
the Kaplan CD + book was *really* helpful, and definitely much
better than the Princeton Review. I got 780,790, and 680 on
the math, quantatative, and verbal respectively. I think the
SAT is similar enough to the GRE that the same advice holds.
\_ I didn't take a SAT course (my score was ~ 1400 on the old SAT,
but as my major was mse, 4's on the Chem & Calc APs and 750+ on
Chem and Math achv. offset my low SAT score).
My brother took Princeton Review and got a 1570 on the new SAT
(he needed it as his major was BioE).
I would recommend taking a class (PR and Kaplan are both good)
if a 1500+ score is required for the planned major (EECS, BioE)
otherwise just studying with a book/cdrom is probably enough.
I wouldn't recommend taking a AP prep class unless the AP class
at the school is really crappy. Most schools do a good job of
preparing people for the AP tests. The prep classes that some
of my brother's friends took didn't really prepare them for 5's
they seem more for people who just wanted 3's.
\_ I'm an old fuck so in my day, no, it was a waste, but these days
I'd say yes. You want courses that focus on the academics of the
test and the trick questions. Some courses focus on bullshit like
how racist the tests are which is interesting but not useful.
\_ The SAT is culturally biased in favor of those cultures that
value education.
\_ Funny.
\_ Don't bother. Just buy the Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc. books,
and work through them. I trained one summer to be a Kaplan bitch,
and basically all the classes do is force you to go through the
workbook. Why pay $800 or more for the same thing you get from a
$50 book? -dans
\_ This is true for Kaplan. For TPR, the teachers are usually
more skilled. Depends on the franchise, but TPR teachers
generally make more $$ than Kaplan, and TPR stresses teacher
skills more. That being said, I didn't take any courses for
either SAT: 1440, but then studied off TPR & Kaplan & Vocab
books for GRE: 2330. -ex-TPR instructor & Kap-teacher trainee
\_ Maybe, but my understanding was that Kaplan spends MUCH more
on research, so their core materials are better. Also, I
believe that on average, Kaplan students show bigger
improvements than TPR students. Of course it's easy to lie
with statistics so I'd believe that the same could be said of
TPR students and both statements would be true in a manner of
speaking. -dans
\_ Numbers for 2003 were something like:
Kaplan: $4-5mm research for 20+ tests.
TPR: $2+mm research for 8 tests.
\_ Maybe the studying helps. I got a 1550 (old SAT) but only
a 2290 on the GRE. Both without studying.
\_ Oh yeah? I got a 2310! My penis is _TWENTY POINTS_ bigger
than yours!
\_ I'm female. That makes your penis _TENTY POINTS_.
\_ I'm female. That makes your penis _TWENTY POINTS_.
\_ Hi lea!
\_ BZZZT! Next?
\_ Hmmm, alice?
\_ the new gre has a max of 1600&an essay (from 0 to 6..
i think) !!! :) analytical section is wacked. :(
\_ seconded. I just bought a Princeton Review book many years
ago for GRE. It was actually humorous to read back then.
A high school classmate took a Kaplan course instead. She
must have had much higher SAT score than I did, but I am
than she, 4 year later. Of course, I would not attribute
quite confident I did better, maybe a lot better, on GRE
than she, 4 years later. Of course, I would not attribute
all this too TPR. :)
\_ The Mercury News had a big story on prep courses yesterday:
link:www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/7921147.htm
\_ I took a cheap SAT course at my local JC, and a simple test taking
tip of circling the answers on the booklet and fill in the bubbles
in groups gave me enough time to recheck my answers couple of times.
Raised my score by 100 points. It was just a one Saturday morning
class.
\_ I took a cheap one at my local community college, and their
book of sample exams had an inappropriate question (it was a
brain-teaser) and had the wrong answer. The whole experience
was a waste of time and money. |
| 2004/2/9-12 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12167 Activity:nil |
2/8 Any alums working for a company developing Organic LED technology?
Kodak, duPont, Philips are some big names. I may start PhD research
next year involving OLEDs, and would like to start building
relationships with companies. Any kind of headstart would help.
Please email me with info. -sax
\_ some of the censored responses lead me to elaborate. I'd like
to obtain samples this year, so that next year I can develop
real tech specs. The payoff for a company willing to work with
me will really be in the 4-6 year range, and will be in free
publicity, free research into functional uses for the material,
and in the end large purchase orders when I get to that part
of the funding cycle. Plus it's an artistic endeavor, so any
donations are probably tax deductable. -sax
\_ what is your GRE score, smart ass graduate student?
\_ "billions upon billiona upon billions..."
\_ hello PhD candidate. I know you're very good with GRE/written
qualifying exams/theory shit. But I just wanna know how much
common sense you have. Like, are you good with managing money,
interacting with people, and doing other stuff? -curious
\_ you are a stupid dick. Saxby works at the art museum and
draws his own comics. He's better at "interacting with
people" than you apparently are. |
| 2003/12/3-4 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:11305 Activity:nil |
12/2 To those who got NSF funding, what were your GRE (general & subject)
scores? I have a good GPA but my GRE scores suck so I'm not sure
whether it is worth my time applying. Thanks!
\_ They are primarily looking for quality research. You should
talk to your advisor about this. The motd is just going to tell
you that "you don't understand how it works" and that you won't
get money without promising to agree with the opinions of the
evil environmentalist jewish scientist conspiracy. They do
expect top grades and scores, but primarily look at the
research project description. I did not bother to apply
(also because of lousy grades), but I know people who've gotten
it who's grades were not quite tip-top, and I know people who've
been involved in the selection process who said that grades are
not their top criterion(although they are important.)
\_ 1. it's too late for this year by a month already. 2. flavour-of-
the-year research is useful. 3. write in short, non-brainpower-
consuming sentences, at least according to my advisor. 4. apparently
you need to claim that this work will have REAL, BIG, NON-
CONTRIVERSIAL impact, and that this imact will apply to the world
at large. 5. human rights and protecting people's ability to
communicate in the face of repressive regimes is apparently
\_ Are you a liberal America hater?
\_ Yes, she is. -- ilyas
\_ A concise illustration of why
anonymity is preferable on the
motd.
\_ Would you rather have the
motd consist solely
of disembodied jokes, for
fear someone will take
something seriously, get
offended and sue? -- ilyas
\_ Disembodied jokes? You're
a sharp guy, ilya, but
sometimes you're kinda
weird. -mice
\_ Who said anything about
fear or lawsuits? The
motd is just more fun
when you don't have to
worry about actually
offending anyone in
particular.
not something you want to put in your SoP. -chialea, who doesn't
have any NSF fellowship, but has another one, and just applied
\_ has another what? non-NSF fellowship?
\_ DAMN! So when was the deadline, and can continuing
grad students (2-4th year MS/PhD) apply? Do they look
at your undergrad GPA?
\_ oh, for fucks sake, just rtfwp:
http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/dge/programs/grf
\_ chialea, I'm desperate for $ and I missed the deadline. How
about FAFSA, is that a viable option? -poor grad student
\_ errr... beats me. there are lots of other fellowships which
have january deadlines. email me at leak@cs.cmu.edu and
tell me what year you are and so on, and I'd be happy to
give you a list culled from cmu. -chialea
\_ You could always sell yer ass for $20.
\_ medical research and taking sruveys are good instant sources of
cash |
| 2003/12/3 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:11300 Activity:very high |
12/2 Whatever happened to all the former active CSUA members who are
now grad students? Why don't they post? Are they too busy with
their thesis or somethin'? Any one of them profs now?
\_ They got a clue and stopped wasting time here?
\_ here's a scary question: do any CSUA'ers have children?
\_ I know one that has 7.
\_ Children come from fork()ing.
\_ Some CSUAers do the fork()ing required to have children.
Norby and tabloyd have 2. Others I know of are expecting.
Any more?
\_ Depending on your religious convictions I have one or
will likely have one in April. -crebbs
\_ Is it from a sodan-sodan union or is she not
a sodan?
\_ Not even a Cal Grad. (UCSD) -crebbs |
| 2003/12/2 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:11271 Activity:kinda low |
12/2 Grad school is cool. I play games and watch a lot of TV and meet a
lot of people and I'm really enjoying it. But before you go there you
gotta ask yourself whether you want to make financial sacrifices.
For example, can you live on Burger King/speghetti all over again?
Do you want to live in Berkeley-like apartments again? Can you live
without traveling (funny rule of thumb, work=lots of money/no time
to travel, school=lots of time to travel/no money). Can you spouse/
gf/family live without your support? It's a lot of sacrafice. I'm
still trying to figure out whether it's worth it or not. In the
mean time, I've decided to take a huge loan. Heck the interest rate
is low and I don't have to pay as long as I'm a student. -ucla stude
\_ With English like that, how the heck did you make the cut into
graduate school?
\_ different programs are different. i'm required to travel quite a
bit as a grad student, and have been able to pay off about
half of my undergrad debt on my grad student stipend. And I
don't live on junk food. I also work(in the lab) 60-80 hrs/wk.
-physics grad student |
| 2003/12/1-2 [Academia/GradSchool/MBA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:11272 Activity:nil |
12/1 Anyone tired of coding? How long till you burnt out?
Any other alternative fields for you?
\_ Why are you sick of coding? Maybe you should try to get a tech
lead type job so you do more management than coding? Maybe
it is the job, do you think you'd enjoy coding more if you were
working for yourself/something you believe in? Other ideas are
try to get a producer/manager/marketing job in the software
industry. There is a serious shortage of good technical people
in those jobs and if you have to people skills to do a decent job
you will be in high demand. But if you just want out of tech, well
you can always go back to school and get a masters or PhD.
\_ as a grad student i can tell you right now that going back
to school just because you don't know what to do with your
life is a bad idea. as it happens, i *do* know why i'm here,
but those who don't tend to end up just as unhappy as they
were before, only with less money. grad school is for those
who *really* know what they like, not for those trying to
figure it out.
\_ True. I'm not advocating going back to school just because.
Although if you aren't sure a Masters program might be a
good way to tell.
\_ I dissagree. As a graduate student your mentors are
all people who think an academic career is a great idea
and who will try to convince you of this even if it's
not right for you. Even on full scholarship, the cost
in lost wages for a two years masters program would buy you
an awful lot in the real world if there's something
else more fulfilling you're missing out on.
Unless you already have pretty much made up your mind,
it's a bad idea to even fill out the goddamn application.
\_ Look, if there is something you've wanted to study
but didn't grad school is an option. It isn't for
everyone and you always have the option to drop
out if it is going badly. I'm just saying that
sometimes poeple don't even think about going
back to school to do something other than what they
decided on in their early twenties. People here
graduated from Cal and are smart and can go back
and learn something new and it will be obscenely
easy this time around. So you won't make that much
money for a few years, so what? Obviously money isn't
buying this guy much happiness as it is.
\_ I'm not claiming that money buys happiness, but
I will claim that fulfilling jobs tend to
pay well. An abrupt career change for a
successful but unhappy software guy is likely
to lead to something that pays enough to
own a home and start a family...unless he
decides to go to grad school. Obviously
the benefit of grad school exceeds the cost
for some people, but I am claiming that many
people underestimate the true cost.
\_ While some things (married/have kid/have house)
may make it harder to go back to school, they
can be worked around. However worrying about
the cost of being out of the workplace for
a few years seems counterproductive. A lot
of people find themselves hating coding because
they worried more about what paied well than
what they enjoyed. If you are youngish, have
been paied well for years (and should have some
savings) it really isn't an issue. Does a year
here or there really matter?
\_ fine. you've convinced me. i guess being
in a 5-6 year grad program distorts one's
perspective a bit.
\_ Well a phd is a lot more commitment than
a masters.
\_ Master's or PhD in *what*? History?
\_ Do you love history? Do you think you have what it takes to
get a job as a history prof/lecturer? Go for it. There are
of options outside of the tech field, they all have tradeoffs.
\_ The point here is that the typical tech guy is only going to
be able to get a PhD in a tech field without a *lot* of
additional schooling. Not so law school or MBA.
\_ Are you FUCKING NUTS? Are you saying a CS PhD requires
less schooling than an MBA? What color is the sky on
the planet you are from?
\_ I had to read it a couple times to parse, but I think
he was comparing a) PhD tech b) PhD nontech and c) MBA,
and saying a < b, and c < b. Or something.
\_ A CS PhD for a CS major is less additional schooling
than a history PhD for a CS major. JD and MBA are less
than both and probably as satisfying.
\_ Grad school pays more than unemployment. |
| 2003/10/27 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:10811 Activity:nil |
10/27 Stay in school, kids. Here is salary vs education for sysadmins
from your latest SAN survey:
PhD 70080
MS 69739
BS 64029
Some College 60853
HS 53900
The numbers get even more pronounced after 10+ years experience.
\_ And SANS is such a unbiased organization.
\_ PhD is USELESS then. Poor nweaver, dpetrou, paolos, etc. who are
isolated in the ivory tower. You guys want a job? Make me coffee.
-sysadm
\_ No, the closest you can get is that PhD is "USELESS" compared
to a masters for sysadmins. The above data is pretty useless
without standard deviations or similar. --Jon
\_ so I don't see how wasting 4-5 more years in school and
making marginally more than the other people is not
considered useless.
\_ if you get a PhD and wind up doing system administration,
it's fair to say that your PhD is largely useless.
System administration is a craft, not an academic
discipline. -tom
\_ Too much info to put in the motd. The whole thing is
online at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/salsurvey |
| 2003/10/27-28 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:10808 Activity:nil |
10/27 Anyone here taken the GRE subject test in CS lately? I'm wondering
how similar it is to the "sample test" published by the GRE folks,
which is a full decade old. Also, has anyone tried to take a GRE
subject test via "standby" (i.e. show up with cash, see if there's
room at the testing site)? P.S. I hate ETS.
\_ The sample test was not revoltingly different from the real thing
or anything. Of course they don't cover the exact same specific
per-question topics on the sample test, but the format is the same
and the general distribution of topics is similar enough. See
the outline ETS puts out for a full list of topics, since some
of them are rare enough to not show up on most tests, sample test
included. -alexf
\_ speaking of hating ETS, never trust those fuckers to send your
scores anywhere. Always call up the place they were supposed to
be sent to make sure they really sent them. I've seen ETS
not send scores, and of course the grad school will assume it's
your fault.
\_ no, we're all old bitter alums who took that sample test when it
was the real test 5 years earlier.
\_ I thought they discontinued GRE because of cheating in India
(half of the schools had solutions to the LATEST tests for the
past couple of years allowing Indians to have really high scores)
\_ They only cancelled a couple of test dates. It's back now. |
| 2003/10/9 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:10564 Activity:nil |
10/9 nweaver, dpet, and other grad students... do you guys actually have
time to enjoy yourselves (e.g. Warcraft, Counterstrike, movies,
fine dining, etc)? -thinking about grad school
\_ depends on lots of factors... (advisor, group, research
area...). I've enjoyed grad school, and know a lot of others
who also did so. -mds |
| 2003/10/8-9 [Industry/Jobs, Academia/GradSchool, Computer/SW/OS/Linux] UID:10530 Activity:low |
10/7 Anybody know of a free solids-modeling application for Linux?
\_ you can try poop. either your own, or someone else's if they're
willing to donate it. best when not too wet, but not too dry.
and the best part is it's totally free and cross-platform.
\_ of course if poop were really a Linux application, there
would now follow a two page flame war about dog poop vs.
horse poop. |
| 2003/10/1 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:10395 Activity:nil |
9/30 My friend says Berkeley CS MS is reserved for Berkeley CS PhD
rejects-- in another word if you kick ass and applied PhD but
got rejected, they'll offer you the MS with the possibility of
going into PhD. Is that a rumor or is that true? Any UCB grad
student wanna confirm this?
\_ The question is about Cal, but I believe this policy tends to
be true for all schools.
\_ It is true for Texas aerospace eng. and Cal math at a minimum.
The master's is a consolation prize. This probably varies
by dept. as well. Public policy has a thriving master's program.
--dim
\_ don't have an answer, but if it were true then isn't it better
to apply to PhD and hope you'll get deferred to the MS program
rather than applying to MS directly?
\_ no, no, it's if you get IN to the PhD program, pass your classes
and quals (if applicable) but either a) choose to leave the
program at that point or b) are asked to leave before you finish
your defence. Thus "consolation prize" -- you're trying to get
a PhD, you don't make it for one reason or another. This
sort of thing is confined to things where you tend to go for
a PhD stright from undergrad, like CS. Exception: Stanford-style
pay-throught-the-nose-support-the-PhD-students terminal
masters, and some speciality programs (HCI at CMU) -chialea
\_ There are two ways to get a masters. One way is you get in on a
masters program and you do your time and you get the degree and
alls well. When you do that you tend to take a very different
course load than the first 2 years of a PhD program because well,
you know you are only going to be there for 2 years. The other
way is you start out as a PhD, and after a few years there you get
a masters somewhere (depends on the program, but at some milestone
most PhD programs give a masters) and then realize you really don't
have what it is going to take to get a PhD, drop out and voila,
you have a masters. |
| 2003/9/17 [Industry/Jobs, Academia/GradSchool, Academia/Berkeley/Classes] UID:10219 Activity:nil |
9/16 New Graduate Salary Survey Quiz. What was your starting salary if
you've graduated in the last two years with a CS or EECS degree?
< 35K:
35-40K:
40-45K:
45-50K:
50-55K:
55-60K:
60-65K: .
\_ 2 years ago, didn't graduate.
65-70K: .
\_ and my company is hiring if anyone is interested
\_ which company?
\_ hm, it seems we have a ucla ee/cs guy problem
> 70K: .
still looking for a job: . |
| 2003/8/29-2004/2/14 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12258 Activity:nil |
2/13 How many job listings have you seen which asks for people
from top schools to apply?
\_ Lots because is usually good if peoples from top school has
good command of Engrihs language. -John
\_ op finds this funny.
\_ Almost none. You ever worked with/for the kind of people who
insist on this? 100% assholes. |
| 2003/8/29-2004/2/14 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:12241 Activity:high |
2/12 How do I apply to Berkeley's CS Masters program as an undergrad?
\_ Fill out the forms and turn them in.
\_ No I mean most schools like MIT, Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, UCI,
etc etc allow their undergrads to fill out an application
and apply to their MS program directly without the trouble of
of taking the GRE and letter of recommendations, assuming
the've met the GPA requirements. I can't find such info on
the http://www.cs.berkeley.edu website.
\_ Berkeley doesn't tend to do this. Most departments prefer
to accept candidates who have experienced more diverse
educational upbringing, i.e. gone away to other institutions.
Not to say they'll turn you down, I just wouldn't expect
there to be any easy way in, apart from the fact that maybe
you know your professors here and can get letters of rec
with better influence.
\_ This is correct. I have never heard of a Berkeley student
getting sweethearted into the graduate school in the way
of the other schools you mention (most notoriously MIT).
You go back into the general pool and pretty much go the
way everybody else does. If you have a relationship with a
prof already, it will help, but that's true anywhere.
\_ In fact, it is *more* difficult to get in to Berkeley
(PhD anyway) as a Berkeley undergrad. Not only does
your "general pool" stuff have to be acceptable, but
a professor has to want you here. I know a guy in
physics who got into MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Chicago,
and Berkeley (and one other I am forgetting, but he
applied to the Top Six) who was most shocked that he
got into Cal because of this fact.
\_ wasn't there a honors program from eecs where one can go
on to a masters in eecs (required at least 3.7 gpa) ? |
| 2003/8/15-16 [Academia/GradSchool, Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:29358 Activity:low |
8/15 Why did the writer of the MSblast worm wrote it to screw up everything
on the infected machine? If the worm isn't as intrusive, I think many
people will be happy to ignore it intentionally and let their infected
machines take part in attacking the MS web site tomorrow.
\_ what--were you never 14?
\_ I guess he got low grades on "worm coding" in school? |
| 2003/8/5-6 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:29235 Activity:high |
8/4 Question about the computerized GRE: Does one just walk into a test
center and ask for a time? Does one call the test center? I come from
the age of paper tests and filling out forms, etc., I am not familiar
with this "first come first served" policy that http://www.gre.org states.
\_ talk to the gre people. I think you have to schedule ahead of time.
\_ uhhhhh, going back to grad school in the rat race?
\_ urrrr. doy?
\_ rofl i haven't heard doy in ages!! :P
\_ you can't just walk it, they're usually booked up 1-2 weeks in
\_ me either. we used it at my HS in the mid 80s. it's
better forgotten.
\_ you can't just walk in, they're usually booked up 1-2 weeks in
advance. Bay Area is around 3 weeks. Make sure you go to the test
site first and see what it's like. Not all test centers are the
same.
\_ which ones are the "nicest?" (oyster point, alameda,
100 california in SF?
\_ I went to the one in Pleasanton (north of Walnut Creek),
I loved it there. Not crowded, easy parking, and people
were nice. Then I was kind of disappointed with my score
and decided to take it with other people in San Jose. Do
NOT go there! Parking sucks, you'll be taking the test
with other people (and a lot of them will happen to type
fast and loudly cuz they're taking the LSAT/GMAT with
essays) and the air stinks. Lots of distractions, and the
proctors don't care about you. SAN JOSE SUCKS. I scored
100 less than the first time. Ok good luck.
\_ Pleasanton isn't north of Walnut Creek. Do you mean
Pleasant Hill?
\_ it's all on the other side of the bridge n tunnel
so who cares? |
| 2003/7/23 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:29109 Activity:nil |
7/22 Regarding the grad school thread, thanks for all the replies. |
| 2003/7/22-23 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:29097 Activity:moderate |
7/21 Hi, I'm clueless. How hard in general is it to get into a "good"
grad school if you've been working for a while? How important is the
GPA and such from undergrad, and at what point would other factors
be more important? (This question is not limited to engineering schls.)
\_ I know some guy who had like a 2.x GPA and didn't seem too bright
in the melon get into USC's pharma program. He was an MCB
major that I got stuck with as a lab partner during my final year.
I dropped the class because I was doing independent research
already. USC isn't too shabby in terms of bio, also, I know what
a certain alum who went to CMU for the PhD program who didn't
do too great in physics (he used to copy my homework). Apparently
if you know people I think it's a lot easier to get in, i.e. you
know research profs well in a certain field. Other fields look
somewhat like a crapshot. Don't know about now, but since everyone
is reving to go to grad school maybe you should just stay in the
sector, being lemming like doesn't usually pay off.
-williamc
\_ depends on your definition of "good". Top 10? Top 20? Top 30?
Check out US World News Report, there's a section on engineering.
For top 10, you should have AT LEAST 2100 GRE, 3.5 GPA, and at
least 2 solid recommendations from PROFESSORS. Industry recs
count very very very very little unless that person does a lot
of active, quality publications in ACM and other reputable
places. Note that these requirements are MINIMAL. By the way
many people are going back to grad school these days and
competition is pretty fierce. Even if you get into grad school,
profs treat you like dirt because there are so many grad students.
For example my school's enrollment increased by at least 20% while
the TAship and RAship dwindled because my advisor is stupid.
Hope this helps. -ucla cs guy
\_ by the way, I just want to take this time to talk about
my gimp prof. For 2 quarters he promised RAship for
this summer. 2 weeks before summer started he said he
ran outa funding and asked me if I wanted to work for him
for free. Turns out he spent the money on other postdocs
(2 of them are new) and did the same thing to 1/2 of his
other students, many of which are now working for him
for free because they just want to compete and graduate.
-ucla cs guy
\_ Just curious, does *anyone* have any _good_ professor experiences?
\_ yes. lots, but never in engineering. In engineering, those
who can do, those who can't teach.
\_ I've had a great experience with my advisor. In CS, no less.
I don't know about teaching, but she's certainly extremely
smart, and easy to work with. There certainly are good
advisors out there who don't screw you on funding. -chialea
\_ I've had a great experience with my advisor in EE. Although
my advisor is brilliant, fairly well-known, and well funded,
I think the single most important quality which makes him
a good advisor is that he genuinly cares about his students.
Many advisors view students as employees who work to benefit
the themselves and the advisor. This kind of relationship
can work, but ideally you want someone who thinks of you as
a protege. Make sure you talk to a prof's students and get
a feel for the prof's personality before signing on. If you
are applying to or starting grad school, I suggest reading
a book like _Getting_What_You_Came_For_ instead of learning
the pitfalls of grad school the hard way. Good luck. -emin
\_ Ditto the above two posts. My advisor is great, and there's
not a day that goes by when I do not thank the lord that I'm
in his group. No joke. One of the best advice that I got
while choosing grad schools is: choose the people, not the
school. It's the people (prof + students) that you'll have
to work with. The school just goes on your diploma. One of
the best things about Berkeley over other good schools is the
web of inter-group/cross-departmental collaborations. Know
what you want and look for it.
Regarding applying to grad school, GPA and GRE scores are the
basics. Berkeley requires at least a 3.7 if I remember
correctly, and 95 perc+ for GRE. Not having these is grounds
for automatic rejection, unless you're really really good and
can prove it with a substantial pub list and glowing recs.
Having good grades and good GRE scores, you still need GLOWING
recommendations from well-known and respected profs. Recs
from your manager/coworker have next to no weight. Personal
statements rarely make a difference, but bad ones can kill
your app. I'm generalizing a little. Also, I don't know
how things are at other schools, and I don't know about other
departments. But competition is fierce everywhere.
-- alice
\_ I agree with the sentiment that nice profs are an exception
to the rule. The professors I know are interested in seeing
how much they can abuse their grad students with as little
money as possible -- to save money for next quarter's more
talented recruits (which is fair, in a way, but not what I'd
say is "nurturing"). They've also developed an ability of
covering their own ass very well. Professors play a LOT of
politicking in their quest to look like the hot new thing,
or in trying to continue to look hot. I'd say if you get
a prof like this, it's not much different from working
in a company -- except you get paid a lot less, you get a
Ph.D. in the end, and you come out cynical since going back
to school to learn about interesting things was not what you
thought it was. |
| 2003/7/14-15 [Academia/GradSchool/MBA, Academia/GradSchool] UID:29026 Activity:moderate |
7/13 Similar to the MBA post below, how useless is a MS in engineering?
If everyone has a HS degree and companies prefer HS or better, then
doesn't having a BS give you more advantage? By the same token,
if everyone has a BS degree (which is the case esp. in Silicon
Valley) and companies prefer BS or higher, then isn't it better
to have a MS degree? And by the same token, if MANY people in Silicon
Valley have a MS degree, isn't it better to have a PhD or at least
a MS degree?
\_ personally, I used MS degree as a way to change major, essentially.
Other than poor timing (i got my CS Masters at 2000 spring),
I actually think it's worth it, mainly because I like the subject.
For other who are thinking of getting a degree in the same subject
as your undergraduate, you really need to use your time wisely
during the 2 years in school. It is almost too short to get
much accomplished, and you kind of need to accomplish something
while you are in school to extract the most of the degree. This
means you need to be specific on what you want to do and work with
a professor in that subject beginning in the first semester.
\_ Depends on what you want to do and what your other skills are. If
you're trying to get by on a degree alone that won't cut it. You
*must* have many years of job experience today to get a decent job
no matter what academic paperwork you've got. Many places don't
care what you have as long as you have the minimum degree and then
they want lots of experience on top of it. More degree and less
experience isn't it most of the time. OTOH if you want to stay in
the ivory tower, you don't need any experience. Just keep racking
up theory classes and publish papers.
\_ companies don't prefer "BS or better". They want that as a prereq,
and then look at everything else. An MS might get edge you out over
someone else if you're close. Also, it might help you get a job that
they might not give to a BS at certain companies like Google or
Akamai.
\_ Google: be at One with the Net. Join the Google Cult today!
\_ Figure out how many other people in your field have MS and plan
accordingly. Be aware that if you're looking for entry-level
work (gods forbid), an MS may make you look overqualified.
work (gods forbid), an MS may make you look over qualified. |
| 2003/6/11-12 [Academia/GradSchool] UID:28708 Activity:very high |
6/11 Where did you see that DeBroglie's PhD was 7 pages?
Author: Broglie, Louis de, 1892-
Title: Recherches sur la théorie des quanta.
Published: Paris, Masson, 1924.
Description: 111 p. diagrs. 23 cm.
Location: MUDD, Stacks
Call Number: R10 Pa924
Dissertation: Thèse -- Univ. de Paris.
\_ http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2000/002/13.38.html
I don't know which site is more authoritative.
-op (posing the original question, yesterday)
\_ you can also buy it on amazon. it's >100 pages.
\_ You figure?
Title: Recherches sur la theorie theorie des quanta. Reedition
du texte de 1924.
Place of Publication: Paris: Masson & Cie.,
Date of Publication: 1963
Condition: reprint of the 1924 edition; [iv], 125, [1] pp.;
library hand stamps and other markings, else v.g.+ in paper
wrappers,
Keywords: quantum theory, history of science, physics
\_ Wasn't Einstein's PhD thesis on Special Relativity and really
short? Maybe that is the one you are thinking of.
\_ Einstein's PhD thesis was entitled 'On a new
determination of molecular dimensions', iirc it
was about diffusion and brownian motion.
Einstein's paper on SR ('On the Electrodynamics
of Moving Bodies') was ~ 20 pages long; what
\_ That's when I'm dragging a corpse down a
carpeted hallway and it creates static
electricity, right?
made it extraordinary (other than the subject
matter) was not its length but the lack of
references . --ranga
\_ Uh, do I need a UTF-8 capable pager & editor for the motd now?
\_ ED!
\_ No, you need to learn French, you ignorant baboon. -John
\_ s/French/Freedom/g - US Congress
\_ EPR is only 3 pages, but it's no phd thesis.
\_ I'm talking about the high-ASCII characters in the motd,
\350, \351 small e with acute accent, small e with grave accent
\_ I'm talking about the high-ASCII characters in the motd, 350
and 351 (octal). The small e with acute accent, and small e
with grave accent. |
| 2003/5/31-6/1 [Academia/GradSchool, Industry/Jobs] UID:28595 Activity:high |
5/31 "Tom Devlin, director of UC Berkeley's career center, said that 2 out
of 3 of the university's 6,000 graduating seniors are expected to be
working full time six months after graduating."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/31/MN254655.DTL
\_ Retail, burger flipping, and car washing count. The other third
are in prison on drug and prostitution charges.
\_ Oh, come on, it's not that bad. I had to get a job as a lookout
four a few months, but now I've got a good position in a major
cartel as a runner, and things are looking good.
\_ Hey that's great! I was in the back in the chemlab naked for
the first 6 months before they let me be a courier! What's
the secret to your success in our field?
\_ I put caltech on my resume instead of cal, and told them
i'd lived in the dorm that got busted for making smack.
it also helps to blow the pilots, since they have the
strongest connections to the higher-ups in colombia.
\_ Thanks for the resume tip. I'll switch to Caltech too!
\_ Nasty little men like you always get their comeuppance.
\_ you're an idiot. im going places. by xmas ill be
one of the top 10 guys in columbia. |
| 2003/5/30 [Academia/GradSchool, Finance/Investment] UID:28586 Activity:high |
5/31 If you want to know how much your degree is worth, go the library
and read: "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College:
An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables,"
Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 117, No. 4, November 2002.
\_ http://econpapers.hhs.se/article/tprqjecon/v_3A117_3Ay_3A2002_3Ai_3A4_3Ap_3A1491-1527.htm
\_ So now that you're all at Cal are you really going to read some
book and switch schools based on what it says?? A bit late, maybe?
\_ First, smarty pants, it's an article - not a book. Second,
there are many reasons to attend a selective school, not
just income. I think there a lot of great things about
Cal that go beyond your future salary. And yes, if you
want, you can change schools. It is not too late. Haven't
you ever heard of a transfer? |
| 5/16 |