CS PhD Apps Advice - Graduate Application Support Programs

CS PhD applications will be open soon! I’m going to try to do a curation of blog posts on helpful advice for applying to CS PhD programs.

Today’s topic is - graduate application support programs.

Many universities will offer a program where prospective CS PhD applicants can apply for current PhD students to review their application materials. This includes feedback on the Statement of Purpose (SoP)! This is typically a free service, though there hasn’t been an easy way to aggregate the programs. Here’s my attempt at listing what I could find. Feel free to email me to update this list.

Typically you’ll apply via a google form, and the students organizing the program will reach out to you and pair with a PhD student. The PhD student will offer you feedback in a virtual meeting either once or a few times. This is also a great way to talk to current students about their experiences in the program.

These programs typically open up at the beginning of the fall semester - keep checking each week for when they’re open! Do note, sometimes these programs run every year and sometimes they don’t.

Here’s a site that lists submitted SoPs from current PhD students, so you can get a sense of the SoP format.

List of CS PhD Graduate Application Support Programs

• MIT Graduate Application Assistance Program

• UMass Amherst PhD Application Support Program

• Columbia University Computer Science PhD Pre-Submission Application Review (PAR) Program

• UW Pre-Application Mentorship Service (PAMS)

• CMU Graduate Application Support Program

• UCSB PhD Application Support Program

• Berkeley Equal Access to Application Assistance Program

• Northwestern PhD Application Feedback Program

I did notice that Andrew Kuznet offered a tracking dashboard for when these applications open.

Finally, do consider finding your CS subfield’s ACM mentorship program. These free mentoring programs typically pair you with a more senior person in the field, typically faculty. Sigplan for example has Sigplan-M.