HappyEngineer

If you find out that this is what you really want then going to undergrad for engineering is probably a good idea. After all, you need the formal training and the degree no matter you want to get into the academia or the industry.

I got accepted but without any financial aid : (

May is the latest I can wait. I can't think of any other application process that takes longer than this, not even a job application.

It doesn't really matter what combination. What matter the most is what you interested in. And I think that's a very good question to ask yourself of.

Okay, we got a badass here!

This is bad. This means that there will be less students admitted to the program. Students rarely want to take a loan out to study PhD.

I am still waiting on Boston University. They didn't even bother to reply my e-mail.

I really hope Davis will accept me. I have already got rejected from MIT and Texas A&M. Did you apply anywhere else?

That's good if that's the case. I E-mailed the department about my admission decision. And the lady said let her know if I don't hear anything after May. I don't understand why it takes so long. Maybe I have been put on the wait list?

I was thinking about doing composite structure, too. In the past, I wanted to study hypersonic flow. Now I am more leaning towards structure since it has a much better job prospects. You said they will assign professors to us? I thought we get to choose?

Usually at most grad schools MS gives you three options, course work only, project or thesis. It seems to me that most of the master students are not funded. MS usually takes 2 years, and Master of Engineering takes 1 year but it's more oriented towards professionals who want to go to the industry, A PhD is usually 4 years.

Professor Jae Wan Park, I am interested in fuel cell systems. Otherwise, I would work on composite materials. What about you?

Thanks for sharing that with me. I am curious if Davis gives financial aid to master students?

I am interested in fuel cell system, and stress of composite materials. My research experience wasn't that much relevant, either. I researched on manufacturing nano-composite materials to be used on aircraft. What do you think UC Davis look for in our application? GPA? GRE? research experience?

It's always nice to stay in California.I hope things will work out for you. What's your research focus?

I assume I will get a decision around mid April. UC Davis is not cheap. I did some math, it will cost somewhere around $43K a year including tuition, housing, food and everything else. Does that $15,000 including everything you have to pay? I figured it's not $150K, if that's the case, you can almost instead buy a ocean front house in L.A. area after five years.

tip3r, did you apply UC Davis' PhD program? I am waiting for them to make a decision. However, I applied to their MS program. I got rejected from MIT and Texas A&M. Still waiting on BU and UC Davis. Not sure what's going to happen next.

I e-mail them and they didn't reply. Wondering if anybody else is in the same situation.

I almost graduate from my school with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. I have took some engineering classes which either the professor doesn't care much about teaching or the materials are completely useless and boring. When I searched for intern jobs, the companies require skills in stress software that we never got to learn and won't be in the future. I guess I have to learn them on my own if I want to find a job. Does this happen to everybody?

I looked up the top 50 US universities' Mechanical Engineering Master program. Most of them either advertise 'funding for master is extremely rare' or 'funding is limited for master', only a handful schools said 'most of the students are funded in some way' but I bet lots of people would want to apply schools. So do most of master students have to pay decent amount of money out of their pockets?

You got some really good points! Thank you for sharing!

It seems to me that lots of Aerospace companies in US only hire American citizens. Anybody else got a different opinion on this topic?

I agree with you. And this makes a lot of sense. You really need tremendous amount of passion and motivation to advance your career into academia. And I think that's what I lack of. The professor that I did research for seems constantly stressed out. I guess the only thing keeps him going is his interest in doing research. Are you planning on to become a professor in the future?

That's some real wisdom you have. Thank you for sharing that with me! Just out of curiosity, why only about 15% of Ph.D. from top schools get post-doc positions? Is it because of it's too competitive?

That's very interesting of what you said. You seems to be very knowledgeable. I don't think I have a chance to get in those national labs. I am an international student. From what I heard those places don't consider international students for national security reasons.