grae313

The prestige of your undergrad institution is going to be noticed. Some schools weight it more heavily than others. However, if you are trying to show that you belong at a top 10 institution, I think you would want to show that you easily outclass your peers at your current institution. I come from a nowhere state school that is absolutely unheard of, but I got a near 4.0 gpa, good test scores, and publications and now I have fellowship offers from top 5 universities. If you are really aiming for the top, I think you need to have an excellent application all around. A gpa of 3.7 look OK at a top program, but less and less OK at less prestigious programs.

well it depends on the stipend. depending on your field, you could get over 30k. living in SF would not be convenient, but it is close enough that you could drive there for dinner or a night out and certainly go hang out every weekend if you wanted to. downtown SF is just under an hours drive away... 40 minutes or less without bad traffic. If all you are after is "big city" than SF is all you got, but Palo Alto and San Jose are great, too. Santa Cruz is an hours drive away. SF might be the most expensive place in America to live, the south bay is only a bit better.

I got an email from a prof at Yale. It was very vague. They basically asked me if I had any questions about the program and told me Yale was a great place to get my PhD and they knew I would like it. No formal offer yet... I think they may have been fishing. I know several others who have been accepted to WUSTL but I didn't apply there.