Bhu_It

Nothing inappropriate about it, but it would be definitely awkward to me. Considering that I keep my relationship with my advisors (male, female, or any gender) to be as professional as possible, a hug would definitely raise all sorts of questions.

The UConn stipend is definitely good enough to sustain living in the expensive New England neighborhood. Buffalo's 21k annual stipend seems too low to sustain decent living, unless Buffalo happens to be one of the cheapest cities in US. I need to check on that.

That's good to know. I already live in Cambridge. I might not move out as well!

Wow, thanks for all the responses. UConn gave me the offer letter yesterday and asked me make a decision by 21st April, so there's no way I can visit the campus before accepting the offer. Being in my mid-twenties, I do want to live in a place with some fun/cultural activities to over on the weekends when I am not in the lab. Storrs is filled with undergrads, has nothing apart from ice-creams and cows. Nearby towns of Vernon, Willimantic, Manchester are really no better than Storrs. Hartford is a great place actually, I've been there, but I don't see any current UConn grads there. If I end up in UConn, Hartford would most likely be my home. A few international grad students I talked to live in the Storrs area and they seemed pretty indifferent to the locality. The one grad student I know in Willimantic hates the place. The one in Manchester loves it (That's one good datapoint). As for Buffalo, I have been there before, so I have no second thoughts about the place. It's a cheap and happening city to be in. I so wish I could work on my thesis from home. However, considering that I work with organic chemistry and cells, that's never gonna happen.

Hi! I am wondering how much weight do y'all put into the PhD stipend and location while making a decision. I am confused between offers from UConn (polymer science) and UBuffalo (biomedical engineering). UConn's offering 9k more than UB for first year, 10k more for subsequent years. Personally I won't care about stipends so much, but 10k is quite a lot of extra money for grad students. But then again I will be thrown away in the remotest of of villages in UConn while with Buffalo, I will be living in a major city. I have lived in major cities all my life and moving to a place like UConn scares me a bit. As far as department and my research fit are concerned, I believe I have a better fit with Buffalo biomed. But then it is a seriously low ranked program while UConn's polymer program is one of the well known polymer programs. I feel like choosing Buffalo would really make me question my career decisions (due to the low repute), but then choosing UConn would basically kill my personal/social life and I might not feel as much at home as Buffalo. It's all so confusing right now, I wish I got an admit from my top choice right now so that all of this confusion becomes irrelevant. Anyway, I would really appreciate inputs on these topics from you guys.

Yup, Biomedical engineering. Will be heading from Boston. Planning to visit there in a week or so to check out the city and interact with grad students and profs.

Being an RPI graduate and a biomaterials researcher in Boston, I guess I can provide some qualified opinion on this. For Regenerative medicine, I think NEU has much stronger research going on. Sure NEU is a less reputed college and their BioE has lower rankings, but that's all because it is a relatively newer program. If you just ignore the reputation for now, you'll see that NEU BioE has been pushing out some top notch research (at least in biomaterials). Plus, NEU has the Boston advantage, the city's a hotbed for pharma/Biomed companies, so you will have better chance at networking in the industry. Hence, if I were you, NEU would be a no-brainer for me, unless you had some particular preferences for certain profs at RPI or some personal reasons.

That's great, congrats @meggied!

Oil bath

Night's watch!

Buffalo wing

Drug addiction

General Aladeen

Hey Knin! You can check out the results (http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php) section to see if any of your colleges have started giving out admits. Alternatively, you can contact the concerned departments regarding this. Cheers

The application deadline is yet to come for McGill. Most likely the application reviews will start after the deadline. So contacting him before the deadline isn't going to be helpful. So I'd say it's best to wait for at least a month or so past the deadline before you ask him/admission staff about this.