airdonut41

No idea about TOEFL, but I assume your score is pretty good based on your GRE analytical and verbal. More relevant will be things like publications, research experience, and recommendations. Your math GRE may be a bit low for the top schools.

Their system won't send you anything. You should be able to access your Stanford email shortly, though.

I'll be there, but why would you be concerned coming from a small school? You've already been accepted, Northwestern now has to sell itself to you.

Thanks free_radical, you saved me the phone call. It would be nice to hear from them, though, considering it's now less than a month until decision time.

They don't have a recruitment day/weekend. Along with my UCSD acceptance, I got an invitation to visit (maybe yours is missing; it was sent from a different person). They said pick a day or two during the week (at almost any time) and they'll set up the meetings for you. If you didn't get that email, it might be worth contacting UCSD.

This link in the MIT rejections made my day. Thank you to whoever posted it as a response.

I have a professor who commented that Stanford's EE department notoriously doesn't offer funding, but said he's pretty sure that's not the case for other departments. I was just hoping that we'd have some specifics. I just turned down a visit weekend from a school that offered me funding, and it's still a little uncomfortable doing that in favor of schools that haven't mentioned specifics yet.

I've been wondering the same thing. There has only been one acceptance and one rejection on the results page, though. I'm not really sure what to think. Side note: Anyone have any idea about funding for Stanford or MIT? Timetable and/or likelihood?

I'm not sure if this is true for everyone, but I got an email with financial information as well as a FedEx overnight envelope. My roommate who got into a different program at Northwestern got the same thing.

I don't think they're very helpful/accurate at all. What really matters is your specific interest, and how good the professors are in that area. On a side note, I find phds.org to be significantly more helpful and more reflective of what I've heard from my advisors than USNews. It's also free.

I thought that might be the case as well. I'm considering responding to the professor who contacted me to ask whether or not she's accepting students into her lab, but I don't think it's likely that I'll actually do it. I don't know about any of the others, but I know someone who worked for Sinclair and speaks positively about him. My background is in induced superconductivity in metallic nanowires (and characterization), but I've also recently worked with a professor writing and editing papers for biosensing and MEMS devices (so no in-lab work, but lots of research in the form of reading/writing). That's part of the reason the personal email concerned me. I have three coauthors in biosensing/MEMS, and the personal email suggested that MIT was impressed with my experience in that area. I wouldn't, however, consider that my strong suit. I don't know all that much about photovoltaics, but a portion of one of my current lab groups works on DSSCs and I TA'ed a semiconductor device class, so that's what I'd count as my "in".

I think there's a mix. I may have been accepted early because I have spoken with several professors who would be willing to fund me because they know me personally. But I think the interviews in Feb. will decide admissions for quite a few people. I'm not sure though; this is all just speculation on my part. I was a bit shocked that I received the acceptance via mail as well. The other odd part about the mail acceptance was that it said nothing about materials, just that I was accepted to the grad school at Penn State.

Yes. If you look at the results from previous years, schools either send out waves of admissions or slowly and steadily send out a few at a time. If you didn't get in on the first round, it's not unlikely that you'll still get into one of the top programs.

My guess is that they divided accepted students among professors to send those semi-personal emails. I don't think I'm going to respond unless I have any questions before my visit, which I find rather unlikely. And as far as Stanford, I want to meet with McGehee, Brongersma, Dionne, and either Cui or Clemens. What's your interest/background? My original acceptance to Stanford said "A hotel room has been reserved to accommodate your stay at our expense for Thursday and Friday nights". I assume it was the same for everyone, but I'll be in a similar situation as you; I fly out at 8 the following morning.

Did anyone else who got into MIT get two emails? I got one from Angelita Mireles and a second from Dr. Van Vliet. I'm trying to determine if Dr. Van Vliet's email was a mass email, or whether it's something requiring a response. Her research doesn't seem to relate to my interests very closely, hence my confusion. Side note: I got my acceptance letter from Penn State today (I posted in the results section), but to those of you who applied to Penn State: don't be concerned if you haven't received yours yet. I'm an undergrad at Penn State, so the letter only had to travel a few blocks to reach me. Good luck to everyone who applied!