eekes

Accepted to Norway! Huzzah. The email arrived 7:31pm EST, so I had already resigned myself to another day of waiting. Oh man this is crazy.

Not sure if this is relevant for all countries, but my school's Fulbright committee was informed that Norway will be notified no later than April 30th. I hope they are right, but I am still frantically checking my email every few minutes just in case we hear earlier.

Norway applicant checking in. I broke down and emailed Eileen O'Malley at the Fulbright office again and got the following response: "I’m afraid that we still do not currently have a definitive timeline for informing applicants for Norway. Applicants will be informed as soon as we receive Country Decisions, Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB) approvals and confirmation on budgets from the U.S. Department of State. We are unable to predict when we will receive all three of these requirements, and we truly appreciate everyone’s patience on this. As soon as I am given approval I will let applicants know. I would be hopeful that it will be before the end of April if not much sooner." So ya, the wait is killing me. Sounds like the Fulbright office is at the mercy of the Department of State, and who knows when they will get their act together. I was hoping to hear before the grad school selection deadline, but that doesn't look like its going to happen...

Ya it looks like another day goes by without a response. Super lame

It looks like all of the Norwegian applicants are coming out of the woodwork. I'm waiting for it too, and I'm hoping to hear this afternoon. Every past year has been notified the last friday of March or the first friday of April so... I just need to know so I can get on with my life haha. The waiting is killer.

I'm sure that I could cut it at Caltech, I'm just more worried about whether I would be miserable doing it. I've been working in a lab for a while at my undergraduate campus and have met enough grad students that hate their lives that I am trying to consider quality of life issues for my own grad choices. I want a PhD, but I also want to leave myself an out just in case. 5-6 years is a long time to hate yourself. I visited both campuses, and I got the sense from a few of the Caltech students that they wish they had dropped early. Everyone seemed happy at Yale. Just seeing if this lined up with other peoples' impressions Thanks for the help everyone.

Well, it sounds like Caltech could be the one. Would your recommendations change if I was considering leaving with a masters? Yale offers a terminal masters, whereas Caltech only awards masters to people that have dropped out of the PhD. There is some stigma that a masters from Caltech is a "failed PhD," but I would be surprised if this was well known outside of academic circles.

So I've been accepted to PhD programs at both Yale (Chemical and Environmental Engineering) and Caltech (Environmental Science and Engineering), and I'm currently debating which one I should ultimately attend. Both programs provide similar stipends and there are professors at both schools that I could see myself working with, so I’m mostly concerned with the issues of quality of life and professional development. I am interested in going into industry as opposed to academia after graduating, so I’ve tried to look at each program with that goal in mind. Caltech is generally ranked higher and I liked how enthusiastic all of the grad students were, but I got the impression during my visit that it could be a bit of a pressure cooker. Yale on the other hand seemed to have more relaxed students, and even though it is ranked a bit lower, I can’t imagine a graduate degree from Yale being looked down upon. If I’m interested in industry, I could see Yale having a small advantage because of its larger student body and alumni network (more chances for networking). Can anyone comment on their experiences at either school in terms of happiness and ease of finding a job post graduation?