Hey Seniors,

If you are applying to grad school you {are|should|wish you were}
writing your “Statement of Purpose” for your application.
A bunch of us are getting together on the 24th at 1:30 in the Irish
Room (674) to review each other’s essays – print out a copy, grab a
red pen, and come join us!

ACM-W Spambot

Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Info Session
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
EEB 303
11:30 – 12:30 •
Master of Software Engineering
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering
(CyLab Mobility Research Center)

Join us for lunch and find out about the exciting graduate
programs available at Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley campus,
in the epicenter of the software engineering industry. For more information, contact chris.zeise@sv.cmu.edu: 650‐335‐2810 http://sv.cmu.edu

From Evan Herbst (eherbst@cs):

NSF essay editing session next Wed (October 28) 1500 – 1630 in 303. There should be a decent number of grads to read yours, and you can read each others’. You can find readers anywhere but we’re trying to make it easy for you. The dept may be willing to provide snacks; that’s TBD.

From Evan Herbst, grad seminar coordinator:

The National Science Foundation fellowship is generally considered the most desirable fellowship for grad students in CS and related fields. All current seniors who are US citizens and permanent residents (and applying to grad school) are eligible to apply. The point of major fellowships is to pay for you to work on whatever you want in grad school rather than what your advisor, who can otherwise take away funding at will, tells you to. In this case, you get about $30k a year, but the important thing is you don’t have to stick to working on the project plan you present in your application–you can switch topics after you get to grad school.

Obama has kept up his campaign rhetoric about increasing research funding, and the little birdies say there should be two to three times as many NSF fellowships awarded this year as are usual. UWCS students (undergrad + grad) usually get about two a year. The more people who apply in the CS category, the more awards in the CS category there will be.

The CS dept. is holding an info/Q&A session on the NSF fellowship Friday 10/2 at 5 pm in cs303. You’ll hear from past NSF recipients and Prof. Ed Lazowska, who’s been on the NSF awarding committee. We’ll provide copies of past winning essays. And non-NSF-specific fellowship questions are welcome.

The application deadline is early Nov. Later in October we’ll provide essay-writing help. For now, come next week and open an application at nsfgrfp.org.

Thanks!

Reminder, the application for the fifth year masters (officially known as the combined BS/MS program) closes at midnight on June 1st.

http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/current/bsms/admissions.html

For those of you planning to apply to graduate school this year, this is important to keep in mind.

Hello Undergraduate and Graduate Advisors,

Many of you have already read President Obama’s speech to the National Academy of Sciences, April 27^th.    The plan is for NSF to triple its Graduate Research Fellowship awards beginning with the fall 2009 application round.  Please encourage your soon to be Seniors and First & Second Year Graduate Students to begin thinking about their applications and lining up mentors and support letters.  Applications are usually due the first week of November.

The COE Office of Research & Graduate Studies will host a workshop in the fall once the new NSF GRF announcement comes out.   I will be posting examples of outstanding support letters on the web.  *Essential elements besides good GPA:  A focused research plan, meaningful and detailed support letters, plus student integration in the science & engineering community through lab research and outreach.*

*************************************************

Excerpt from President Obama’s speech:

“My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships.  This program was created as part of the space race five decades ago. In the decades since, it’s remained largely the same size — even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed.  We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-National-Academy-of-Sciences-Annual-Meeting/

Mary J. Heusner

Director, Research

Office of New Initiatives
College of Engineering

The Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering is hosting an information session for all students interested in user-centered design and graduate programs in HCDE. We are hosting one session in Seattle (5/6/2009) and one in Bellevue (5/13/2009).

Seattle Information Session
What: UCD Certificate / MS in HCDE Information Session
When: Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 6PM
Where: Sieg Hall, room 420

Bellevue Information Session
What: UCD Certificate / MS in HCDE Information Session
When: Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 6PM
Where: 2445 140th Ave. NE (Park 140), Bellevue, WA
Cheers,

Gian Bruno
Academic Adviser
Phone: 206.543.1798
Email: gbruno@u.washington.edu
423C Sieg Hall
http://www.hcde.washington.edu
HCDE Blog: http://depts.washington.edu/tc/wordpress/

University of Notre Dame is launching a new one-year master’s program that may appeal to students considering the CSE Combined BS/MS program. The Notre Dame degree is designed for science, CS, math, and engineering graduates who will not go on to a PhD, but want to utilize their undergraduate degree in a different way.  There is some financial aid available. The deadline is soon, but the application is straight-forward and the GRE is not required this year. Read on for more info! (more…)

We want you to know about a Fellowship Opportunity. Prospective engineering and computer science students are invited to apply for a $30,000 interdisciplinary doctoral fellowships in computation transportation science (CTS) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Visit http://cts.cs.uic.edu <http://cts.cs.uic.edu/>  for complete program details and application information.