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astrosnail

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Everything posted by astrosnail

  1. I was in the exact situation as you. i graduated with a physics and astrophysics double major with ~3.8 GPA and I applied to only aero/astro grad schools. I was accepted to Stanford, GeorgiaTech, and UCLA. The question you need to be asking yourself is what specifically do you want to do with your advanced degree in aerospace engineering. Do you want to do an "engineering" type job where you design, build, and optimize? Or you want to an "applied physics" type job where you use your physics background to solve engineering problems? I chose the second option and got interested in electric propulsion. EP involves both plasma physics and aerospace engineering knowledge; interdisciplinary skill is required to fully understand plasma thrusters. I'm pretty happy with my research choice so far (just became a Ph.D. candidate). **If you want to do hard-core engineering, you can simply get a masters at a top graduate school and apply for a job. It is true you will be "behind" other graduate students with more experience in the field in terms of engineering background. However, this can be picked up easily. You just need to put in the time and effort to catch up, which you can do in the lab. After finding a research field you're interested in, you need to find a good adviser. Look up every professor that works in that field and contact them. Your adviser will be even more important than the field you choose. Have faith knowing it's not as big a change as you would think =)
  2. Only a select few are selected for departmental fellowships; some people at Visit Day had their fellowship interviews there. Otherwise, most people have trouble finding funding for the first year regardless of whether you take the Masters or continue to PhD. After the first year, funding becomes easier as many of the labs can offer RA or you can get a TA position somewhere.
  3. Accepted to Stanford M.S. and UCLA PhD. No word on funding. Rejected from Princeton PhD. No word from Michigan Applied Physics, and Aero/Astro @ Caltech, MIT, GeorgiaTech. So stressful waiting for the remaining schools haha.
  4. I talked to Prof. Farhat and his grad students but none of the other CFD guys. Farhat as a person is very friendly and enjoys conversation. His lab is considered the "most professional" out of the Aero labs when compared to the experimental labs since they're all CFD and they just work on computers. Everyone seemed quite happy in Farhat's lab though; they have 7 grad students and 8 post-docs (i think) who all seemed willing to help each other out
  5. Stanford Visit Day was pretty awesome. Professors all have a sense of humor and they have well-established labs for pretty much everything. Campus is probably one of the most beautiful in the world, and the grad students say they are super happy there. Many of the grad students said they chose Stanford over some of the other top schools in Aero because the other schools have a more "strict" and "competitive" environment. I got the sense that Stanford was pretty chill and collaborative which was nice. Only problem with Stanford is the funding issue for the 1st year.
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