As the latest Linux kernel (mainline) is released with a version matching my birthday (6.13 / June 13), today is the day of the announcement of candidates who passed the first round.
The evaluation for the first round is based on GPA, awards/activities, English proficiency (TOEFL), and most importantly the research plan.
17 out of 23 people passed the first round. Luckily, I am one of them. However, although 17 may sound few, it is just the number of candidates for the winter admission. For this year, 18 master’s program students is planned, and at least more than half of the seats are already taken.
This is not a secret or rumor, in an admission guidance the professors said it themselves. It’s recommended to take the summer admission because they are taking in more students so it’s easier.
Optimistically there are 1/4 of seats left (about 4 or 5) so the total candidates vs. accepted candidates rate would be 4 to 5, meaning 4 to 5 candidates fight for 1 seat. However, usually there are 1 to 3 extra accepted candidates, so the rate could drop to between 2 and 3. Not too bad.
Now I’m writing my bachelor’s thesis which is due in 4 days. Since I’m also planning to submit it to an international conference (surely it’s going to be a reputable one), I can’t disclose too much about it publicly yet. Nevertheless, I will be presenting what I have got now at the General Conference for IEICE.
Reflecting on the past couple months, I can’t say that I am particularly proud of my bachelor’s thesis. The topic and the quality could be much better but I’ve come to realize that this is what a bachelor’s thesis is meant to be. It’s no more than a first time for future researchers.
Recently I met M. Olivier, Director of the Sorbonne Universite Computer Science Master dept. He came to my university to renew the local learning agreement (exchange program outside of ERASMUS).
In one of the blogs I mentioned that the lab that I got accepted for NAIST has connections with Sorbonne, M. Oliver also knows about it and he has visited NAIST several times, too. BTW he’s going to visit the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) next week. I forgot the intention but probably learning agreement as well. Interestingly, Sorbonne and UTokyo has strategic agreement which allows students to attend courses or research as free as possible. However, for the past 5 years only 8 people had used this opportunity. I guess Sorbonne isn’t that popular for the most prestigious university in Japan.