hellz2dayeah

I guess I shouldn't be so general saying engineering but the aerospace department at Stanford I know doesn't have close to the funding that other departments like CU, Georgia Tech, and Purdue have. In my application cycle, it became a running joke how they told students they'd have to finance the first few years themselves (at a private school in the bay area, thats a lot of money), but if they got a fellowship to call them and they'd be able to work something out. Anyways, there's probably not very many subjects Stanford doesn't excel at, but I can say for sure the aero department is definitely one place CU does have some advantages (particularly because there are fields in aerospace where Stanford doesn't even have research in)

Not sure why the above student chose, but there definitely are departments at CU that are better than the same departments at Stanford so that could be one reason. Another at least in my field (engineering) is that Stanford is notorious for not funding incoming PhD students so that could be another reason. Good luck man! I was in your position last year, always a good idea to get a jump start on finding an apartment cause it can be pretty competitive around here

@luisalasnjr Of course, that's totally understandable and I am glad you'll be able to work on a thesis at I'm sure another great university. Not at all, its astrodynamics/orbital mechanics which is partially why I only applied to four schools, I could really only find four who had work in my area at the time of applying (though I found one or two more afterwards that I was kicking myself for not applying to). Based off your earlier post, I guess your specialization for all of the schools is Aerodynamics? I think its good that a lot more schools offer research in that area, since it was very nerve wracking having to rely only on four schools.

@cocomomo That does seem kind of strange. The only thing I can think of is maybe the admissions office is a bit hectic if they've had to move. I haven't heard anything bad about the department from its own students so I think they treat they're students well enough. My suggestion would be to give their grad coordinator a call or email and see if that gives you a response. The aero advisors are always on top of their stuff, but maybe since Mech is a bigger program, they may be having a harder time dealing with the large number of students. @luisalasnjr UT definitely is a large university, so you're correct in that each admin can't take care of each student, but I do think the Aero department does better than most departments in taking care of their students. The department has two fantastic advisors (one has even received a bunch of awards for her work) who work super hard to take care of each student and even know them all by name. So while UT is a large school, the Aero department is very close knit, and I think does a fantastic job making the department seem very personal for each student if that makes sense. Yeah UT is a large school and can seem like a big pond with many fish, but if it wasn't for CU, I could definitely see myself going here and being very happy in the department.

Thank you @cocomomo! I love Austin (I went to UT for my undergrad), so in terms of the city and school, it's an awesome place to be. Why I'm not opting for UT: I just wanted to expand my horizons, have new experiences, and see a new place, I've lived in Texas all my life so I decided nows a good time as any to go to just as good of a school in CU. If you've never been to Austin, its a very eccentric, fun, and awesome place to be if you like a big city but also has everything you might find in the country with nature trails basically in downtown, rivers all over, and friendly people everywhere. For the department: the aero and mech departments actually don't overlap much here so I'm probably not the best help in terms of the details, but the few mechanical engineers I do know had no problems finding internships/jobs at NASA, GM, Union Pacific, and research labs. Also I know they recently renovated parts of their building, and definitely seem like they're always working on cool stuff in there (like multiple types of cars, drones, wind tunnels, etc.). Thats just a quick summary, but I'd be happy to elaborate on anything if you have any other specific questions about it

Thank you! Yes all of them except Illinois, which I was definitely happily surprised by. We can message about the offers if you have further questions on them

I've been shadowing this thread for awhile but I finally decided to make an account to respond to this: Undergrad GPA: 3.95 GRE: V-167, Q-170, W-4.5 Applied to Purdue, Illinois, UT-Austin, and CU-Boulder. Got into PhD programs in all of them except Illinois where it was a masters (which didn't really have the faculty I was interested in anyways). I think I'm heading to CU, but if y'all have any other questions I can help out with, feel free to send me a message. Good luck to everyone else still deciding!