General info for students applying to CS at the University of Utah(U):
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Disclaimer:

Trust at your own risk. The following information comes with no direct or 
implied warranty of any veracity or wisdom at all.
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One compelling reason to apply to the U is -- there is NO application fee
until you get an admission. You have nothing to lose, except may be your 
GRE and TOEFL score reporting fee (but you may be able to negotiate to 
send only the photocopies initially). So, unless you are absolutely
sure that you don't want to come to the U, do apply.

GRE:
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Any score that is above 1850, may be slightly lower also, is okay, I
guess. GRE is NOT the most important thing, but it is one of the
important things, for admission to graduate school. 

Subject GRE:
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Subject GRE is NOT required for MS or PhD. This is official now (Sep 2002).
You are strongly encouraged to take it but it's not required.

Aggregate %age or GPA:
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This is one of the important things. Mostly, relative GPA (or %-age)
in your undergraduate college matters more than the absolute
numbers. For example, 80% with a rank of 5 in your class is considered 
better than 90% with a rank of 25 in your class. You can always forget
to mention your rank though :-) 

SOP:
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This is the most important thing. You must write an 
SOP that can convince the faculty that you will be a good graduate student.
MS at the U has more research focus than other univs (non-thesis
option is an exception rather than a rule), so it's better if have
some prior research experience (it's not necessary though).
You can, and may be you should, target a specific lab, e.g., SCI,
flux, UV (visit www.cs.utah.edu/research).

LORs:
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This is another one of the very important things. Faculty gives a lot
of value to what your profs have to say about you. It's almost
necessary that you get good recos (and NOT get bad recos).

Financial Aid:
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U is experiencing some budget cuts...
Every CS graduate student used to be guaranteed aid for the first year of
school. This is changing now and some may not get guaranteed support.
According to the new directions, even if you get a TA in the first
year, you should find an RA after your first year. TAship is no more
assured to second year and older graduate students.

Duration of MS:
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MS at the U generally takes 2.5 years (you are required to do your
thesis well). People range from 2 (very few) to 3 years (common). Some
take 4 but that's another exception. So be prepared for about 2.5 yrs.

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In any case, don't worry too much about your scores etc. If you are 
interested, apply and leave the rest for the admissions committee to
decide. You don't have to be very good in everything, some parts of
your application (e.g. good SOP and LORs) can compensate for deficiencies
in other parts (e.g. low %age or GRE score).

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ppatel@cs.utah.edu