ak48

Did you visit the 3 campuses on their admit days? I imagine you would have spoken to profs then. Does Stanford do MS visits?

Hm, if you can manage to find a research professor now that can vouch for you in phD admissions (and has a bit of clout in the department), it may give you a good shot, as Stanford is probably the best school among the 3 for jobs. I was admitted to columbia and liked the professor a lot but committed to another school for similar concerns you have, (although I did not factor in the strong physics program there.) Columbia is very collaborative in that sense, which is a plus.

I can't imagine it makes that much difference, if you are publishing the same paper. Everything is so intertwined these days

Why not a phone call?

Would Stanford be a Masters leading to PhD?

I'd disagree with people here and say school A, because it's a Master's and not a PhD,

I've only had 1 year of research experience as an undergrad, but I definitely noticed the correlation between my mood and my research progress. When an experiment went right, I'd be giddy for days; long days of success drought led to irritability. It was actually sort of disappointing to me, to learn how volatile and capricious happiness could be, in light of how important we think other aspects of life are.

The CGS resolution does not apply to admission, only funding. Just because you "feel" that a document means one thing does not make it true, especially with explicit wording indicating otherwise. That said, you are correct in that funding and admission are intertwined, and so as a result many schools use April 15 as an admission deadline as well. The resolution is an agreement between schools, and not a real law (that you'd be able to sue with). Which is all moot anyway since your school is not on the list. As for going unfunded; there is reasonable debate as to whether graduate school with funding is worth it, let alone without funding. I don't know your situation, but i would apply again next year instead of risking unfunded graduate school.

Tough, you should have kept in touch with the professors especially if you knew about grad school plans. Are there any that would still know you? You don't want to get the generic letter. I know some schools accept LoR's from industry people for applicants removed many years from school. Perhaps you could do 2 industry letters and 1 academic one. Check the policy of each school you are targetting, and ask the offices if necessar.

Thanks for the info. We may be guaranteed GC spots, but no guarentee that they'll be the good ones!

http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=john+jay

I think having an investor advisor who cares about your success is very important, whereas research interests past a certain point aren't really. For me, I don't have such a clearly defined passion and a priori knowledge about Field X that would make me forgo a similar Field Y. So while the exact research topic isn't a 100% match, it doesn't matter to me because I know my research interests will probably change over time. It's not like at School B you'll be doing something completely different. At this point, I think you should relax. You're not even guaranteed admission into the 2nd school yet.

Do you "have to" switch departments?? Electrical Engineering and Material Science are so intertwined today that I'd figure that you could do all of your research work with an EE advisor (you haven't been paired with an advisor yet, have you?) but still graduate with a material science degree. If you really care about what the words on your diploma will say, you will probably have to transfer formally, but to do research? I don't think so.

I don't think this would be uncommon, seeing how "better" programs tend to have high retention rates and "less desperate" to attract students, whereas lower programs need to recruit harder to attract its admitted students into a yes.

did you have to sign up for meal plans already? I didn't think it was on my housing selection ballot.

While from a gut feeling i think you should go with school A, I don't think the logic above has merit. A given person in the department won't forgo giving you "support finding work" or doing "the little things" in you career because they knew you were a waitlist candidate. Once you're in the program, you get judged on the same things as all the other students (namely, results, work ethic and personality). Funding is obviously a huge part of the decision, and obviously you haven't even heard of admission from B, let alone funding. I'd advise you to wait until April 14 or so before accepting the offer, with the caveat that some schools (at least mine) have April 15 deadlines for housing applications

To hell with all you GC applicants, those rooms are mine!

FWIW I was choosing between Caltech and Yale for undergrad. I chose the latter, and when I visited for PHD visits I was completely convinced I made the right choice.

Med School people probably have their own College Confidential/GradCafe-esque forum(s). You should probably ask in those places for more feedback!

have you visited both campuses? That's usually a great way to make a decision. Engineering at Yale is substantially worse than at Caltech, even though the university has started to devote more money to amping up its program.

In February, PI told me that results would be out March 15. Not hearing back would imply you'd be on the waitlist.

Just accepted the offer! see you guys in New Jersey!

The PI told me after an interview that official notices will be sent out March 15. If you haven't heard back, it implies that you are on the waitlist. I thought this was strange, as I expected schools to notify waitlisted students instead of silence.

funding makes princeton a really easy decision, to me. The bay area (stanford) is really really expensive. Social life? I assume a master's would be about a year, which isn't really that long even if princeton's social life is garbage (which i doubt it is). plus, it's not that far from NYC

that's pretty much what i wanted, thanks! i'll look more into it.