iCyborg

I emailed almost all UIUC profs in the area, and got several interviews. Then I ended up with an RA. I heard from them that, the funding this year is very limited because the state's owing the university 0.5bil. The situation isn't getting better soon. I am very lucky I guess.

A comment I forgot to add is a great paper can get you in great program. So try to make your coming paper great. I believe people at Gatech always produce breathtaking publications, not just publications.

I have a roughly similar situation. I dropped off my undergrad once, and started again. My undergrad GPA is around 3.0, second upper class , which is bad for a PhD applicant . I got average GRE, and a good masters degree, by the way. Although it is not stated, but I believe my GPA hurt my chances quite bad. IMO, the best like MIT, Stan, Berk, etc may be very difficult. But you have good chance at the second best like UIUC, Austin, UMich, etc. By the way GPA is only one aspect of your application consisting of many, such as research, LOR, essays, and so. All the best my friend.

I started undergrad at 18, then dropped out after two years, and started all over again. I was 24 when I got my bachelor. It took me three years to get my part-time master, while working. I will start my PhD in this Fall at the border line of 27-28, which is not too late I think. Matured enough .

Thanks for your information. I've got off the phone with my potential advisor. He I will be receiving the stipend of 18 500/year, which is the "minimum department stipend". I think it is a quite fine amount, I don't know why it is "minimum", because I saw some other guys getting less than that. I did not know if it is 9 or 2 month, so I asked him whether I can take an internship or another job during the summer. He said yes I can have a summer appointment. So I guess it's 9 months.

Thank you so much folks. Your comments are very useful. I was honest with all the professors, by emailing them the truth. Some of them were not happy and cancel the talk, some are ok and schedule the interviews. The good thing is they are very frank, they said what they thought. And I am very happy with that. Somehow, they all know I contacted whom and mention that in the email they sent. So the lesson learnt is never do what I have done (contacting multiple profs at the same time), and always be honest. I have another question, the prof accept to support me implied that I will receive department minimum stipend. Unfortunately, he did not mention the exact amount. Does anyone have any idea what probably is my stipend at Illinois?

I said it's a mistake because I was advised to contact professors one by one. But since it the last try, I emailed multiple prof. I am scared that this will somehow make them hate me.

Hi all, I am facing a very very weird situation. I emailed many professors for RA since the early of March when I receive the Illinois admission. I got no reply. So I thought everything is over for me with Illinois, and I should do a last try. So I email like 10 professor during yesterday evening (stupid huh!!!). Unfortunately (or fortunately), 5 of them asked me to arrange an interview. I don't know why this thing is happening to me. ( Now I choose one professor to talk, and what should I tell the others? I know I made a terrible mistake emailing multiple professors. Please advise me a way out for my case. Thank you so much.

After the UIUC nightmare, I got the admit from UT Austin. This time, the situation is just a little bit better. They offer me a stipend of 17k/year (it's only about 1200/month after tax). Please, anybody tells me if I will suffer with that amount of stipend in Austin. I am scared of starving over there.

Your situation is still much better than mine. I got admission to UIUC Mech, but asked to seek for advisor myself. I started emailing a number of Profs a week ago, but got no reply. It's funny as fuck. They don't have funding to get new students. It's alright, not big a deal. Just reply me saying that. Why keeping silence. If they dont give me a chance to get contacted, admit me for what the hell?

JHU: Why the hell is the processing tooooooooooooooooooooo long?

I've just got the reply from Northwestern and UT Austin regarding to the date of decisions: Northwestern : UT Austin: