Potential Students

If you are not an admitted CMU student, please do not send me mail inquiring about whether you might work with me as a Ph.D. student.

I'm not saying this because I'm a jerk. Here's why:

In any given year, I expect to take on one or two new Ph.D. students. I will keep this page up to date if I'm not.

At Carnegie Mellon, the admissions process is handled entirely by an admissions committee, whose membership changes each year. Individual professors do not make admissions decisions, and I'm not a member of the admissions committee. As a result, I don't have influence over whether a particular student is admitted or not. Once a student is admitted, s/he has substantial flexibility in choosing an advisor to work with. All admitted Ph.D. students receive graduate fellowships from the department.

I encourage you to visit the CMU CSD admissions website if you have further questions about the application process.

Facutly receive an enormous number of these emails - you'll note that many faculty have little pages like this about how not to contact them. Our responsibilities are to our existing Ph.D. students, our teaching, and our universities, and time just doesn't permit a personal, thoughtful response to every email asking about admissions that we get.