electric

Hanyuye, I was a physics major, then civil engineering MS, now geophysics phd student. Keep in mind that petroleum engineering is very specialized. While you're surely capable enough from a math/science perspective, there would be a lot of catching up to do in other things, and many grad departments aren't flexible about this. Civil engineering, on the other hand, is very broad, and I was able to do research that could have easily been called applied physics. When I think of applied geophysics, along the lines of your interests, I think of a few other schools in addition to the ones you mentioned: Colorado School of Mines, Rice, UT Austin, and Stanford. All of these have reservoir modeling groups within geophysics departments, and close ties to oil/gas. And I do think you'll have much better luck at geophysics departments than petroleum engineering. Best wishes!

Stipends at UCs seem to vary a lot from school to school. I was accepted at three UCs this spring (PhD in a physical science discipline), one offering $21k, one $26k, and one $32k. Offers from private schools were mid 20s. Across the board, higher ranked departments had higher stipends.

Got the "wait list" email, too. I applied to civil engineering. I'm currently finishing an MS and starting a PhD next academic year. I'm going completely nuts with all the lingering uncertainty in my fellowship and phd applications!

Congrats rockbender!! I got admissions letters from Rice, UCSD/Scripps, and Colorado School of Mines, and a rejection from Caltech, all in the last week or so. It's interesting to compare the admits, especially info about financial support (RA/TA/fellowship) and advisors. The unknowns still outweigh the knowns, so I think you just have to go with the best school, primarily, and research group, secondarily. In any case, I'm excited that I met my goal of getting into one school! Good luck, everyone!

Congrats guys! @mylonite, I think it'll be a while before anyone hears from Mines. I got a mass email a few days ago that said they were beginning to review applications submitted by 12/20, and that the "backlog" won't affect the application review process, whatever that means. I don't know about you, but I didn't turn my application in until mid January.

First, apologies for not posting my info/stats yet. I'm going to wait until I accept an admissions offer. I recently received a phone call from UCSD/Scripps, telling me I had been "recommended" for admission and will be invited to the open house. I was also invited (flight+accomodations) to the open house at Rice U. Besides UCSD and Rice, I have applied to (and am waiting to hear from) Caltech, Stanford, UCB, UCSC, Colorado School of Mines, and Princeton. My concentration is geophysics. Anyhow, good luck to everyone. This is an unbelievably stressful process! I'll post updates.