Information for Prospective Graduate Students

Thank you for your interest in my group. If you are already in the graduate program at Cornell, please stop by my office or drop me a note if you are interested in working with me. You can also talk to some of my current Ph.D. students to find out what we do.

Every year I get a large number of requests from students that would like me to "... evaluate their chances of admission ..." into Cornell's Ph.D. program, or asking me if I am interested in their application. Unfortunately, the number of these requests is so large that I cannot possibly respond to them in any meaningful fashion. That is why I have provided some information here that may prove useful.

Admissions Process. Cornell ECE has a graduate admissions committee that evaluates all applicants, and they do an outstanding job in selecting exceptional students for our graduate program. I do not interfere with the operation of the admissions committee.

• ECE Ph.D. program application process
• CS Ph.D. program application process

Your resume, GRE scores, etc. I personally do not care about GRE scores (unless they are exceptionally low without any explanation as to why that might be the case). Sending me these, a generic resume, or any other information that is part of your application file will not affect your chances of admission.

Masters-only students. I generally do not accept any M.S.-only students, unless the student is recommended to me directly (e.g. by a phone call) by a faculty member that I know from another institution. Almost no school covers the background material that is required for contributing to research projects in my group, and so a student doing research with me spends a year getting up to speed. This is why I do not provide RA support to any masters (M.S. or M.Eng.) student, and focus on Ph.D. students instead that will be in my group for multiple years.

Contacting me. If you are truly serious about being a member of my research group, I expect that you will have carefully looked through my group web pages, and even read some of my papers. In general, I will be more inclined to respond to a student that has taken the trouble to determine what my research interests are, and a student that has questions other than those of the generic type. This means more than just knowing that I am interested in "computer engineering" or "circuits" or "VLSI" or "asynchronous VLSI." Generic questions include "are you looking for students," "what are my chances of admission", etc.

Thank you for taking the time to read this page, and good luck with your graduate studies.