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Bhu_It

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Posts posted by Bhu_It

  1. 2 hours ago, TakeruK said:

    When I was making my decision, the stipend mostly** factored in to answer the question, "Is the stipend enough to live at the level of comfort I want?". If it's a yes, then I didn't worry about stipend, because small differences now aren't worth career opportunities later, to me. But if the lower stipend place was not enough to live the life I wanted, then it did become a factor. After checking if there are any other funding opportunities, I declined offers that were "no" to this question.

    In your case, I guess it would really matter whether or not the Buffalo stipend is enough for you to live on. You have a slightly more extreme case of $10k per year, which is almost $50k in total difference!! Whether this number is enough to change your plans depends on your goals. For me, the goal was mainly a postdoc and in my field, the difference between a great postdoc and a minimal postdoc is about $15k per year in salary. Factor in a 3 year postdoc and the potential difference is about $45k, which I use as the comparison of how much more a better school could be "valued". However, this is not quite right since nothing is certain and also I think there is a lot more future value because a great postdoc is great for its salary as well as its research opportunities. But this gives you another way to look at the numbers.

    **The other way stipend mattered was in the "quality of life" side of the decision. For example,  although UConn may be in a location you're not used to, you can potentially use that extra money for other quality of life improvements. Maybe you can rent a nicer place than you would be able to in Buffalo, or travel more, or save more money for the future etc. So I would count stipend value in trade-offs vs things like how much I like a location, but I wouldn't really compare it to the other factors like research, career opportunities etc.

    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.

  2. 1 minute ago, fuzzylogician said:

    Yeah I guess I don't know about graduate students so much, I know UConn postdocs and faculty who live in places like Hartford and even Boston (more like Cambridge, etc) and NYC. Not that I would recommend commuting from NY, necessarily. But Hartford might be a good compromise. And yes, I wouldn't want to live in Storrs or the nearby towns either (I've never been to Manchester, though, so I don't know about that one). 

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

  3. 4 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

    Well you don't necessarily have to live in Storrs or Willington or other similarly small and depressing places. A lot of people live in Hartford, which is like 30 minutes away (so you'll need a car) but is at least a decent-sized city. Will you get the chance to visit before you have to make your decision? I personally would put the money aside because even though it's a difference, the bigger question is what career path the two programs will put you on, and it sounds like UConn is the better one on this (more important, in my opinion) count. But then being miserable for 5 years doesn't sound that appealing, so you should figure out if there is a place in the area where you could live and be happy. Have you tried talking to current students about where they live and how they like it? 

    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.

    4 hours ago, thelionking said:

    After you've completed your coursework, you might have the option of working on your thesis from home and could potentially move to Boston in the last year or so of your studies. (I know people who've done this while completing PhDs in psychology. They stayed in town for the first 3 years until all of their course work was completed and lived a few hours away during the last 2 years, while making occasional trips back and forth as needed).

    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.:D

  4. 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.

  5. On 3/25/2017 at 11:53 AM, Evangeline95 said:

    Anyone going to UB this fall??? 

    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.

  6. 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.

     

  7. 9 hours ago, RanaYekani said:

    McGill, Boston University, Northwestern, USC
    Low undergrad GPA and GRE but counting on my research profile to make my application look good! A professor at McGill has agreed to take me on(after a long time of exchanging emails) and but he asked me a few days ago to send him a memo addressed to him in which I explain the reason behind my low undergrad GPA. He sounded very supportive. Should I contact him to ask how the process is going? or should I just sit back and wait?

     

    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.

  8. 4 hours ago, predoc said:

    Woah ! Is that conversion true ? Seems highly unlikely that 8.33/10 will be so high on a 4 point scale. 

    It actually is true according to one of the common grade conversion agencies that the universities use. The grading system is very different over there. In fact the highest GPA anyone got in my college was around 8.5-8.7 lol.

  9. Undergrad Institution: Indian Institute of Technology
    Grad Institution: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY

    Major(s): Materials Engineering
    Undergrad GPA: 8.33/10 (~ 3.9/4)
    Grad GPA: 3.4
    Position in Class: top 10% for undergrad, average for MS
    Type of Student: International, M

    GRE Scores (revised version):
    Q: 166
    V: 157
    W: 3.5

    Research Experience: Two years of research on biological polymers during Master's, Currently a research technician in biomaterials somewhere in the northeast, all undergrad research is mostly unrelated to my current interests, two research posters in undergrad in mechanical behavior/composite materials.

    Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Best poster award at a materials symposium

    Pertinent Activities or Jobs: would have 8 months of experience as Research technician at the time of joining

    Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Naah

    Special Bonus Points: Lol

    Applying to Where:

    Materials - Vanderbilt, Drexel, Delaware, Rochester, Arizona State
    Macromolecular/Polymer science - Case Western, Virginia Tech, Connecticut, North Carolina State
    Bioengineering - Utah, Syracuse

  10. @TakeruK The university she's at right now doesn't rank in top 60-70 in any science/engineering field I'm sure of that. She started out her career at an Ivy league. Then she moved to a non-Ivy institute which still happens to be good institution where I can definitely see myself getting in. And now she's taken up a chaired professorship at this new institute. I am not sure if her being a chaired prof would mean anything great in terms of funding.

    Also I am worried about the overall intellectual environment at this new institute due to its ranking and small size (the department has around 20 graduate students which is very small for chemical/biomedical programs).

    Considering the cons, I think it makes absolute sense to not go this college. But then having interacted with her and seen how smart she is, I'm know I can work with her. This leads to me feeling guilty if I don't apply to this college.

    Speaking of her previous institution, the department to which I'm applying (Polymer Science) has lost three associate/full profs to other universities in a span of two years. That might raise some eyebrows about the administration. Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Either way, I guess that's not something I should be worried about.

  11. There's a professor who happens to be a big-shot researcher in my field of interest (biomaterials/drug delivery, if anyone's heard of these). The last time I knew, her research group was a part of the most prolific biomaterials research cluster/network on earth. I had the opportunity to interact with her at a seminar last year and I was pretty impressed by her works. Based on my interaction with one of her ex-grad students, she seemed to be good choice for an advisor. Considering all of these, I would definitely want to work with her for my PhD. However, last year she was at a good (top 30) research institution and now she's at a low ranked college that barely makes it to the top 100 universities in Chemical/Biomedical engineering. This leaves me in an utter dilemma - should I consider applying to this college? I've listed the pros and cons:

    Pros: Great prof! Possibility of landing best post-docs, if I ever go into academia (the chances of which aren't high, considering how difficult it is these days to becoming a prof). But nonetheless, I'm sure I would love to have her as an advisor.

    Cons:

    • It's a low ranked university. So I am extremely unsure of ever making it to academia from here.
    • Also, I might be wrong, but I suspect that the low repute might cause troubles in finding any jobs after PhD.
    • I will have to take up chemical engineering courses which aren't related to my background in materials science.
    • I will have to ask for more recommendations, this college requires hand-written/scanned letters and I'm really shy to ask my advisors to put in so much effort for me.
    • This is a small one, but I will have to spend 4-5 years in the shadiest city in the northeast (according to folklore).

    There are too many cons to considering this school, however I'm not sure if it's a right thing to let these factors cloud over my desire to be a part of the best in biomaterials research. Hence, I would like to have some inputs from you guys as to what would you do in this situation.

  12. Based on what I see at schools doing research rotations (my current school and also one school I'm applying to), first year PhD students compulsorily serve as TAs while taking courses and performing the research rotations. If someone chooses a PI before coming, they can do RA right from the beginning and won't have to go through the rotations. I believe this should be the case at most schools.

  13. You could try uploading an separate document containing degree description if the online application allows uploading of additional documents. Or else you could just email the additional document to the program coordinator/grad school officer. They can attach it to your application file later on.

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