eeee1923

Chess piece

honey oats

paper route

Legal drugs

new adventure

Is the interview coming up soon? Usually programs are still finalizing who you'll be interviewing with about a week out. If you end up being interviewed by none of the professors you requested, don't worry it happens (availability issues and all that) - just be ready to discuss your research, academic/career goals and ask the interview about the research they conduct. Pay attention and be polite and don't forget to ask questions and you should be fine.

ball out

I know exactly how you feel - I'm about to go on a 6 day stretch myself

brain food

I lived up around the Cleveland area for a few years and I don't really remember every getting snow days. But now that I live a little bit south I crave snow days even though I know that I'll regret having to make up the work later.

TV....I mean just a lot of TV since I seem to have a broad spectrum of interests. So yeah TV.

clown shoes

Unfortunately as soon as they paid for your flight they locked you into a contract that would be very ill advised for you to break. Basically if you choose to not go, you are legally bound to reimburse the program the price of the flight and whatever else they stated in the document you signed when you agreed to come to the interview weekend.

mop handle

mine dust

warm toast

I bought my own modem/router combo from Amazon when they were having one of those ridiculous 24 hr sales (was $80, but got it for $25). I got no complaints at all. Just check the modem you are trying to get is compatible with your cable provider.

Almost all rankings are biased in some form but the usual go to are the US News & World Report or http://www.happyschools.com/us-universities-rankings/(I like the latter since they provide both the survey based and regression based rankings). Also remember that all the top rank schools tend to be quite similar in terms of research facilities, endowments, etc. - so it comes down to research fit. Don't strictly focus on name recognition.

I mean I get that some people want to specialize or make career switches (which is understandable) but eventually you have to pick something and start applying the skills you gained. I went (and going) with the traditional BS -> MS -> PhD. I briefly considered MD/PhD, then realized that I'm already reaching the point where I'm more happy doing research full time with the occasional seminar and don't think I would survive more classes, especially where I'm just trying to shove a bunch of info into my brain and calling it "learning".

war games

Adding my two cents: I view these interview/recruitment weekends as an integral investment in the possible path you want to take for your career. As such, as annoying as visits are, I will not be complaining too much and I have a 6 day stretch coming up (3 days each, 2 different cities) so hopefully I don't get too burned out either.

If you have a chance, you may try to retake the exam once again. Low verbal and writing scores are how many programs tend to filter international students especially in engineering.

Like you said the GRE measures one's ability to take the exam. IMO it should be done away with but standardized exams are an easy method to try "normalize" the playing field (both at the graduate and undergraduate levels). I did well on my GRE but man was it a waste of time to try to remember things from middle and high school instead of working on my research. Now if one is talking about the subject GREs then that's a whole different beast. But as for the general GRE I agree with you neuronparty - though with the increasingly growing graduate applicant pool each year, I don't see this problem going away anytime soon.

Relax. Skype interviews are pretty similar to in person ones. Dress nicely, know your research and have an adult conversation. Be friendly but don't joke around and you'll do fine. Hopefully this helps and good luck.

Work on my my MS manuscript Get a part time job doing something non-academic Sleep and start tackling the backlog of TV shows I've been meaning to watch