GeoDUDE!

I do not have similar feelings as you guys; I think that my new school is lucky to have me.

I applied for the first time 4 months ago and got it within a few days; just provide proof of income and entire the wide world of fake money!

You are qualified; People tend to fall into the earth sciences. I'll have a masters in geology after taking only 2 geology courses, and be in a PhD program next fall with the same amount of courses. People come from different paths. Apply for the PhD.

I think accepting and attending a PhD program is accepting and attending a program where they don't want you there. I would wait for funding.

All the UC schools are very good in science and engineering (some more so than others). All things considered, all equal, you should take rankings into consideration. The most important thing to do is go where you think you can 1) graduate and 2) do the best work. If you liked UMN the best go there. Rankings matter somewhat for academia, less so for industry, so take that in consideration. I really doubt that going to UMN would stop you from getting a TT over UCSB on ranking alone. There might be some advantages to both departments; hopefully you visited them to figure them out. Good luck!

I know someone who got into penn state in the middle of feb for MS.

I don't think you will qualify if you are in your third year of graduate school.

If i dont find out the result in exactly 3 hours and 29 minutes all the air in my lab will be sucked out leaving to die in a vacuum. GRAVE IMPORTANCE.

There is a large advantage: you have shown that you can carry out a significant amount of work over a long period of time. The MS with thesis is always stronger than the MS without. Go for the Thesis. Industry loves them.

1. Grading papers 2. Wrote thesis 3. make it rain

Composure and dignity are obviously ideas of the past.

The "ivy" colloquialism I am referring to is explained in this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League#Other_Ivies

'Ivy', in the colloquialism, refers to a hand full of truly elite colleges. There are 5 or so truly elite colleges in United States: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton. If you want to include the sciences, MIT and Caltech make the list, and perhaps if you want to include a non private institution you can include Berkeley. After that list, the reputation of the schools gets fairly homogenous, whose rankings move up and down by the decades. There are plenty of good schools and research done at other places. Oxford, Cambridge, University of Tokyo, KAUST, and ETH Zurich are among the best international schools as well. But the general sentiment of going to an "ivy" really refers to those first 5 schools.

Acceptance letter from the department. Typically there are two: one from the department and one from the graduate school.

all my funding has been in the offical letter from the department, IE after my POIs have told me i got in.

You can get a thunderbolt/usb3.0 to Ethernet adapter; go with the air. built in Ethernet ports are a thing of the past.

The one that you will do publishable work at.

I really wouldn't want to have a retina pro 13 inch; its greatly underpowered for the display its pushing. On the other hand the 13 inch macbook air's battery life reigns supream over the entire market; There isn't a better ultrabook. Perhaps the worst thing about it is the display. I'm really not sure what you are going to be doing, but even most photoshop tasks can be handled by the macbook air. People really overestimate how much power they need; computers with i3s and integrated graphics cards are pretty snappy, especially on a lightweight OS like OSX. The screen on the 13 inch retina, however, will make intense graphical work even more intense because you have iris graphics, not even iris pro. In reality, there are two gems in apple's laptop line: the macbook air and the top end macbook pro 15 inch. Both have their uses, but most people would be happier with the air over any laptop. Unless you will working with files over 50mb+, stick with the air. Another thing, people seem to think the difference between 3.5lbs and 3 pounds is small when it really isnt, that makes the air about 15% lighter give or take a %. I realize the rMBP 13 inch is very thin, so it really depends; Will you have this on your back while you are biking? The way you store your laptop while traveling will infinitely make that half extra pound either very noticeable or very unnoticeable. Either way, that isn't including the power adapter, and with the air there is almost not situation where you would ever need to bring it with you.

TheGirlWhoLived is referring to the meet and greek section of grad cafe.

ask them.

There is so much confidence in this thread its no wonder we are are all successful.

It's pretty nice that they give you that information up front instead of trying to cull you to come. Imagine how many people would go there thinking they had a shot of continuing on as a PhD student.

will it cost you any money? what are your other options in terms of the time you might be wasting in another mA program. How could you better yourself other ways? Will this MA be meaningful ?

Well Joanne. Your chances of being homeless is directly correlated to how much money you have. I hope you can figure that out. What do you hope to achieve with a degree in creative writing? I've thought the idea of paying for graduate school to not be a good idea unless it directly leads to a job ( Engineering, Law, Medical School) unless you can fully pay for it without going into debt. Even then, I feel the amount of money it would cost for a 2 year degree (in some cases, 100k) would be better getting 5% interest in very safe investments unless the person really has a strong grasp of how their degree would substantially lead to them doing what they want. Happiness is another factor. As for the family issues, I can't really help you there. No one is going to be able to tell you what you really want to do except yourself. I understand family pressure, but not doing something just because your parents say so isn't a good idea. Wisdom comes with age, but not all people with age have wisdom.