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jake, "so that i surely get" - impossible!

There was one acceptance posted on the results page a few days ago for OR and one yesterday for IE.

Thanks! Yesterday I received an email with the offer. I applied back in November so they may do rolling admissions. My status was changed to "in review" some time ago, at least a month back if not 5-6 weeks. I wish you the best! BTW was rejected from Berkeley today. Again, the top 5 are pretty much all long shots for me, except (hopefully) Georgia Tech.

I hope you get in!

If you applied to Northwestern, go check your status now! I was denied admission, which I expected, seeing as they harp on and on about the importance of having gone to a top-tier college, which I did not do. Sad but expected. Hopefully some of you will be admitted!

Thanks! Oh, OSU are the Buckeyes, so I thought perhaps your name was drawn from that. My bad.

Buckeyeee, thanks for the info! I am anxiously waiting to hear back from the top schools like Berkeley. Did you go to OSU for undergrad? Did you apply for their PhD program?

Uche, regarding FSU, I don't think they even have their own engineering programs. Florida A&M offers all the engineering degrees. Anyway, congrats. NCSU, though, is overall much better, depending of course on what research area you want to focus on.

Regarding the differences in the two types of rankings, they address this in the FAQ: "[About the R-ranking] The basic idea was to discover discrepancies between the characteristics that faculty members said were important and the characteristics that they (perhaps unconsciously) seemed to value when they rated actual programs. (You might tell a surveyor that nutrition is the most important quality of a restaurant, but when you're asked to rate specific restaurant chains, it might become apparent that you actually value low prices.)" Personally, I think the r-ranking is more insightful. I want to know what academics in the field think about specific programs. That matters. But it's also important to look at, for instance, placements in recent years. So many factors are not captured in the rankings. Nonetheless, that does not mean rankings are altogether useless. One must wisely put all the pieces together to form a clear picture, and of course that is not easy. BTW thanks for the updated rankings!

I don't like US News. It seems like they are in it just for money and to create drama and hype over minute ranking changes. If anyone is curious, I am a fan of the NRC rankings, primarily if you are looking at PhD programs. The link below is for my field, but you can choose just about any engineering field, except for very specialized areas like petroleum engineering. http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124751/ Due to the added rigor of the rankings they are not updated every year. They give 90% confidence intervals for what they call s-rank and r-rank (note that research, student outcomes, and diversity are all factors included in the s-rank), and they state that both are equally valid. Click the link to the FAQ for more info on how they develop the rankings. Cheers.

I mean Upenn's stat dept. is housed in the business school, so it makes sense...

ankurshah, I somewhat agree with you. *Good* rankings are important in evaluating programs, IMO, especially the NRC rankings - see http://chronicle.com/article/New-Doctoral-Program/124634/%20%3Cview-source:http://chronicle.com/article/New-Doctoral-Program/124634%3E%3C/a%3E for how they come up with the rankings. Equally important, of course, is research fit, and also intangibles like how well you fit personality-wise and philosophy-wise with the department, none of which can be represented in a ranking. Regarding getting an unfunded PhD admit, I don't think any domestic students would take an unfunded admit either, unless, perhaps, they lived in the state before going to the university and thus would only pay the in-state tuition rate (which tends to be 1/3-1/2 the cost of out-of-state tuition).

You may have to set the bar lower. Just so you know, there are many great schools with lower rankings that have deadlines (with funding consideration) in February and March (and even a few in April). It might be worth adding at least 1 or 2 more schools of this variety.

Perhaps you are correct, but I don't trust US News and their non-scientific ranking scheme nor do I know any grad MSE students from Cornell

Are you applying for a MS or PhD? If PhD, you want to look at places that are doing research in what you are interested in doing. If Stanford has no one doing research in XYZ, then don't apply. In any case, if you want to go to grad school, a much safer bet is to apply to a lot of schools (say 6-10) and apply widely (some top 10, some top 30, maybe 1 or 2 top 50). I have not experienced this personally, but I can imagine nothing worse than only applying to the top five programs in the field and getting all rejects. You never know what can happen, you might not get great LORs or your SOP might be weaker than you think, etc. There is no point in taking that chance. Not to mention, you might get in to a school like UCSB with no funding and somewhere like ASU with funding. In such a case, you should probably choose ASU (assuming a research fit). Also, it seems Cornell is not so highly regarded: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124742/

Congrats 33 on the NCSU admit!

Thanks, 33. I was very pleased to be accepted there! And btw, no, I have not heard about Michigan's recruitment weekend. If I am invited, February is going to be SUPER busy.

I applied for supply chain engineering... is that what you mean? Manufacturing is listed as a research area but not a PhD specialization, if that makes any sense.

Behnam, I, too, saw the same status for my Georgia Tech application. Apparently all who applied for F11 and F12 (and posted results here) received decision notification by e-mail rather than by postal mail. So, hopefully, this will not be an issue! If I may ask, what specialization did you apply to?

Not me, didn't even apply there--no one doing SCM :/

I would encourage you to go by these rankings: http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124751/. US News is not as reliable. I would also encourage you to shoot for a few higher end schools like Georgia Tech and Stanford. You never know unless you apply! If you look at the NRC rankings, when ranking by "S-Rank High", you actually would reverse some of your categories. For instance, UF and ASU are (surprisingly) on par with Berkeley and UT Austin, while schools like Virginia Tech and NC State would be in the moderate to safe category. Keep in mind these are specifically PhD rankings, so perhaps it would include things you don't care about (i.e. research productivity, level of financial support for PhD students, etc.). One consideration, of course, is that in industry I am guessing name brand matters a lot. Hence, a school like ASU loses appeal, even though they have a top IE dept. Schools you should consider adding: 1-2 of the very top, i.e. MIT ORC, Stanford, *Georgia Tech, Northwestern, Berkeley *Note: GA Tech admits an unusually large number of students each year, so it might be worthwhile to apply here! U of Michigan Ohio State USC Hope this helps!

I don't think so. Stanford or Berkeley would be your best bets in CA.