yushish

Very strong chance

Congrats to the folks who just got into Stanford! I'm a first year PhD student planning to join the theory group at SUNCAT. Feel free to PM me with any questions.

Congrats on Caltech! The visiting weekend date is interesting -- a month earlier than it was last year.

I got the same email -- I expect that everyone got it.

The differences between chemistry and chemical engineering at the graduate (research) level are pretty small (sometimes nonexistent). So the only difficult part of making this switch is that you'll have to get through the first year courses -- you might have to take a year of undergrad courses before you can attempt the graduate courses. Some universities (not all) are willing to allow this because a good researcher is still a good researcher, regardless of undergraduate degree.

Haha, I live in Berkeley so I'm pretty used to these sorts of housing prices. I plan to live on campus, at least for a year or two.

Leaning here for PhD in chemical engineering. Tough choice between here and MIT for me as well.

I totally agree that the Northwestern visit was a lot better than I expected (I was there the first weekend) -- I was truly impressed at how happy the professors and graduate students were. Is anyone visiting Stanford? I would love to talk to someone that is.

I'm in a similar boat...I'm deciding between MIT, Caltech, and Stanford for chemical engineering. I'm strongly leaning to Stanford at the moment, but I'm hoping that the visit weekends will make the final decision for me. Any insight that people can give about any of these programs would be awesome.

I'm not sure if Stanford has sent out all of their acceptances yet, but the grad program administrator told me that all travel plans must be finalized by February 3rd (they must pre-pay for hotels and stuff) -- so my guess is that they will not accept anybody after that date.

Professors don't take days off.

I just heard from MIT this afternoon -- it looks like they are just finishing up their decisions. Good luck to you all!

A friend of mine was just admitted to MIT today, and historically people have been admitted through the end of January, so I don't think they're quite done sending acceptances yet.

UCSB's weekends are February 28 and March 14, while MIT's weekends are February 28 and March 7. Good luck!

Having talked to grad students in my lab, it seems like 4 visits is a pretty good number. Those who visited more than 4 felt quite burnt out by the end. For me, I will definitely visit Stanford and Princeton, and I feel obligated to visit Penn because I did an REU there and my PI wrote me a very strong letter. Unfortunately, both of Wisconsin's weekends conflict for me. If I get into MIT or Caltech I will probably visit those as well, but I'm happy with my choices right now.

Two of my friends were accepted at Wisconsin, and one at MIT. I have not heard from either of those. Will you be visiting Northwestern? I think I'll be there for the Feb. 6-9 visit weekend.

I would try to increase your lab hours if you can - 5 hours/week during the school year and 20 hours/week during the summer are not enough to make a significant impact, in my opinion. It would be nice if you could get up to 15-20 hours/week during the school year and 40 hours/week over the summer. It is not necessary to be paid for all of these hours, just spending a lot of time in lab is a really good experience. Try to make sure that your role in the lab grows over time. If you feel at any point that you're not progressing as a researcher, try to switch labs. I would also recommend spending at least one summer doing research at another university, such as through an REU program. It's a really nice experience (you'll make a lot of friends) and it'll be helpful to have a letter of recommendation from someone outside of your current school. If you can somehow do summer research at one of the five universities you mentioned then you would be at an advantage when you apply for graduate school there. Make sure you keep your grades up - it's very important.