mrobez

I have specifically avoided doing this just because I want to give every school that brings me out for an interview a chance. Plus I am extremely non confrontational by nature. It makes for a busy couple of months.

Just be honest with him about it. But I think you're worried over nothing. I have never heard of a case where an admissions visit was not reimbursed. The school is probably just behind or not communicating well with your POI. He can remedy this.

I got offered admission at GA Tech about two weeks ago via email. Whether or not they are sending any more, I couldn't say. Congrats on Columbia, Duke, and JHU. Seems like you've got great options already.

I'm actually a little glad I got rejected, I think I applied mainly for the name and to stick it to them for rejecting me from undergrad 5 years ago... In retrospect I didn't feel too attached to any of the research there and they could probably tell in my app. I should not have thrown all that money down the drain, oh well.

I got rejected today via email from MIT BE.

This is completely anecdotal, but I toured quite a few UW labs when the BMES conference was there in 2013. It is obvious the department is incredibly well funded. The facilities are gorgeous and pretty much whatever sort of high tech gadgetry you want is there. They have a new research campus paid for by Steve Ballmer of Microsoft which is very high tech. Most of the facilities on the main campus look very new as well. I imagine it's the type of place you'd have a lot of latitude as far as funding goes. The only reason I didn't apply is geography. Columbia I have not seen, but I would expect no less from them. This has nothing to do with your "fit" to the program, just saying that both programs are nice

If you get the NSF fellowship, I wonder if you could just call up a certain school and ask if they would admit you even if you didn't apply? After all, they get an excellent student who they don't have to pay for. I just wonder what your success rate with that would be.

There's really no shame in applying more than one place, I'm sure that the admissions people know that you've applied multiple places and they probably know that multiple places are courting you for admission. If you scheduled a visit and then flaked out, that would be unprofessional and also not in your best interest. I think as long as you explain the situation and make sure they know that it doesn't mean you aren't interested or grateful for the offer, then it's no biggie. As far as choosing which one to go to, if you've already scheduled one I would say stick with that, if you haven't scheduled either yet, maybe the interview is a bit more important.

I've had one conflict so far, I just told them I had already committed to visiting another program but I wouldn't want to pass up the opportunity to visit both, and asked to work out another time that I could come for a visit. It's a common problem, they will be used to dealing with it and they will not be offended at all.

Really? That's not what I read into it. I think it could be interpreted either way. I wouldn't assume the worst.

Anybody hear from Michigan? Saw one pop up on the results page today.

I got an email from a prof at Purdue at 2 AM once. I thought it was amusing.

So much for hearing back from MIT or Columbia anytime soon, the whole northeast just turned into Siberia.

Thanks, you too!

The $16k was before TA, with TA I could bring it up but still not to the level of American programs, most of which do not require TA or only require it for the first year or so. It would have been tough but doable if I had really been set on going to Toronto but in the end I decided it wouldn't be worth it. I decided to stay another year in the states and get a master's at my undergrad institution since I had financial support and apply for US programs for fall '15. Basically I just put everything on hold for a year and got a master's in the meantime. So far my application has had a lot more success than I expected so I feel like I made the right call even though I love toronto.

I only got a 168 on quant, retake?

Thanks! I didn't expect this many acceptances and interviews, I'm honestly shocked. I'm looking forward to that Vanderbilt visit, it sounds like it's going to be fun. They're the only ones that have sent an actual itinerary so far.

Tissue engineering was my top choice, I think biomaterials and biomechanics after that.

To be more specific, I was offered $16k Canadian as take home pay. TA pays reasonably well but no one wants to TA every single semester just to be slightly less poor. For comparison, most US programs in the same field and of the same caliber offer $24-30k USD take home pay. I was told by a prof at UofT that NSERC (The Canadian counterpart to the National Science Foundation) and other funding agencies in Canada explicitly prevent more than a certain percentage of grant funding to go towards paying students which gives professors little leeway in how much they pay. My other theory is that there are far fewer good engineering schools in Canada than in the US so the handful that are out there don't have to compete as much for top students. It's a shame because I really wanted to go, I love the school and I love Canada, but it just didn't make good financial sense.

I'm sure this varies widely from program to program, but last year I was admitted to the biomedical engineering department for a PhD at U Toronto as an American and the funding package was much lower than what you can expect at an American school, and also completely non-negotiable. This seems to be the trend in Canada based on what I have heard anecdotally. It's a great school but in the end I chose not to go there because Toronto is far too expensive for the funding they were offering.

I haven't heard anything from MIT via email and I haven't got any notifications on my application page. Who knows...

I don't have a fancy footnote thing like you guys do, but I've applied to 8, gotten 3 outright offers (Georgia Tech, Purdue, and Illinois Institute of Technology), 2 interview invitations (Vanderbilt, Northwestern), and 3 no-shows (Michigan, MIT, and Columbia). I definitely feel lucky to have heard back so early and had so much success so far, but I don't think anyone should get discouraged. I feel like this site creates stupidly unrealistic expectations at times and it's full of people just looking to brag. My stats were not totally out of this world and I haven't published anything. Everyone is gonna be OK.