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yushish

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Posts posted by yushish

  1. 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. 

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Does anyone know when the MIT and UCSB weekends are? 7 schools have invited me already, but I want to save the dates for MIT and UCSB, my top 2 choices.

     

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

  5. How is everyone prioritizing which departments to visit? I applied to seven schools, have been admitted to four, and I'm still waiting on two, and I expect I will get in to one of the last two. So, That means five potential visits, which seems like a lot. What do you guys think is a reasonable number of visits to make, and how are you prioritizing which schools you want to check out?

     

    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.

  6. Where else have people heard from? So far I'm in at UT Austin and Northwestern, and waitlisted at Princeton. Still waiting on MIT, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Carnegie Mellon. Has anyone heard from those 4?

     

    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.

  7. I am wondering what should I focus for the next three years besides maintaining GPA and research work so I could get an admission to at least one of these schools.  Would appreciate any advices..

     

    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.

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