jendoly

I'll be eating pizza downstairs for like the next hour, so I can hold to that, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to share that vow (;

258 users, dannnnng. I got my rejection at 1:13 AM last year =P

So the idea is that Fastlane won't stay off its whole predicted time (until 5am)? (Power back on, and the House is buying pizza for all us poor folks who were mid-cooking when the power went out! Middling Desirable Scenario!)

Forty Thieves is my standby >> that or Baker's Dozen, but no one ever seems to make the latter for mobile OSs... Looks like someone is coming to check the high voltage line in the building in like half an hour, at which time we will get "another update". Siiiiiigh.

If it's not a campus issue, yes, luckily (: the regular bus isn't running anymore and it's raining (typical Boston), however, so that is the Least Desirable Option atm. (Most Desirable = playing solitaire until the lights magically come back on at the exact instant I win my first hand still early in the evening and get an email ping from NSF saying that they want to give me money, thus negating the previous few hours...)

Yeah - I'm not too worried about not being able to check my email (though I only have ~ 4 hrs batt life remaining on that), but additional stress about all the things I still need to do tonight!

Man, nothing to add to the anxiety like a power outage in your building of indeterminable length D| laptop only has <1hr battery life remaining!

Seeing as you replied just after two North Carolinians, methinks your subconscious wants the external encouragement towards NCSU, and here it is (: Nothing against UIUC, but NC is an amazing place to spend the next however many years. Spent 21 years there, and I still want to go back (: EDIT: and then I put two and two together about "Illini" - so maybe you'll get some significant argument the other way after all!

Statewise, depends if you're asking about origins or location of school. In that order - NC, then MA (holla at my NC comrades!) Also, trying not to get my hopes up, haha - I have no publications, so in my head I know there's not really a good chance, but in my heart, I'm hoping!

I wooooouldddd....be really happy, celebrate with a giant XL Dunkin Donuts coffee, and then have to go back to writing proposals for more grants for my research (since my project in general is unfunded at the moment). xD

Last year I just didn't say anything, and no one asked =P

eskimo kisses

I have the 64gb one, and that amount of space = not really necessary just for my library of documents and books. 16 would be a bit small, I would think, though, as some of my books are ~1gb each (not many though). I'd rec 32 at the least.

iPad 1. Seemingly infinite battery life (well, like ten hours straight of use, or months and months in standby) which is amazing to me given that my laptops never last more than an hour ): Didn't want an iPad until I got one for graduation, didn't use it all summer, came to grad school and discovered iAnnotate PDF and GoodReader and then became an iPad missionary (two of my friends walked to the mall and bought iPads within 24 hours of trying mine out). I keep my entire technical library easily sorted in GoodReader, including papers, theses, everything. I just reviewed and annotated with comments a 50 page technical proposal on a two hour flight with it. I took notes on the pdf slidedecks my professors last sem provided, syncing with Dropbox minutes before class to get them each day. I cannot speak more highly of it as an eReader (please note, DID NOT WANT IT either.)

1, and it was the professor whose offer I ended up accepting. (background: applied to 6 schools, accepted to 5.)

Last year, Stanford MechE sent out an email CCed to all of the accepted students, only to reply a few minutes later with a "Whoops..." xD I totally went through and pegged out everyone from my undergrad program who was on there to know who to talk to about what. Thanks, Stanford!

.....yeaaaaaaah I'll probably start checking second week of April, once NDSEG and NSF are both taunting me xD At least I know results for the third fellowship I applied for aren't coming before end of May.

Oddly enough, for the number of times a day I obsessively check other sites, I don't check Fastlane. I guess I just assume I'll either find out by email (like last year) or via this thread xD

Aerospace Engineering, first year grad student. Applied last year with no HM, I think they said they didn't think my proposal was feasible with facilities available, haha. We'll see how it pans out this year.

I was including utilities and heat and internet, etc, in my own estimate for off campus living. The graduate student housing prices DO include all those things, as well as a lot of other benefits (in-house gym, restaurant/bar (in the case of Ashdown), terabyte internet down), and furnishings in all but Edgerton. I consider that a pretty big boon, on top of convenience of location, but I've heard from my friends that want to move out that they don't want to pay a premium for those conveniences - it all comes down to your personal preference. Also, it's nice knowing that there definitely aren't bedbugs in the grad dorms (yet, of course...), while when you're apartment hunting otherwise, sometimes you just don't know. And sometimes people will screw you out of an apartment. My friend said yes to a place after I checked it out for him, got on the road to drive up here that day, and the guy signed it over to someone who walked in with cash in hand that day, even though I would have been willing to pay him right there if he'd asked. Really, bad taste in my mouth about apartment hunting up here, especially when a lot of the tenants leaving are students for whatever reason and their first interest is in themselves and not your successful moving in. I'd say $2000 a month is the minimum that you could roll on without feeling serious pressure, if you're counting on tax being taken out of that. That also assumes that you cook a fair amount and don't go out a whole lot, and that you don't want to be spending down to zero every month (keeping some for a rainy day). You could probably do less, but not without limiting yourself in some manner (living with 2+ apartment mates, living 45+ minutes away from your school by T, etc)

I live in a studio/efficiency in Ashdown (on campus), and I love it - nothing like a clean, new apartment close to lab. Not everyone is me, though, and some people don't mind living farther away in order to get a better deal. However, I would recommend you stay in graduate housing at least your first year, because so much of your social life and start at MIT will revolve around people who live in your building. I know a lot of people who are just staying here their first year and moving out once they meet good potential roommates. I had to apartment hunt recently for a friend who wasn't able to come up and look for himself, and it was...not a pleasant experience to do on short notice. It would be hard to do right at the start of school, and you probably would not find somewhere nearly as nice and convenient as Ashdown or SidPac for less than $900 for one room in a two person apartment. Then again, I was looking for apartments in January, not in August, but I can't imagine it's much better then. I hear the ideal time to find one is around April. I'll be staying in Ashdown for the foreseeable future. (:

Duke Chronicle's housing guide last summer might be helpful to familiarizing people with housing in Durham and around Duke. http://issuu.com/duk...00701_housing/1 (many other issues of the Chronicle there as well) additionally, the Robertson bus (any UNC/Duke affiliate can ride free) goes to and from UNC's Morehead Planetarium to the front of Duke Chapel every half hr. throughout the day August-April ( http://www.robertsonscholars.org/index.php?type=static&source=68 ) and the Bull city express (http://parking.duke.edu/buses_vans/bus_sched/c5.php) nicely runs from Duke Med center to areas down town and back. These are in addition to regular campus buses.

I think a lot of people are waiting for notification from the big awards like the GRFP in science (which will disappoint probably %90 of its applicants) and perhaps heavily sway where they go. These are set to announce any day now, and I predict many decisions will be made immediately thereafter.