tip3r

Well, today was a pretty bad day. Got my first rejection from UCI. And my POI from UW (my second choice but where I really expected to go) told me that I was not offered funding in the first round and that the 2nd round will be after April 15! No waitlist! They will see how many open slots they have after April 15 and choose students. So I'm pretty depressed at this point. I was so sure I would get into UW that all my other applications were half-hearted and I doubt I'll get into any of them. RPI is... not high on my list at all...

Stanford has given out a lot of MS admissions (check the results section). Berkeley has handed out some as well.

I don't know much about construction management but TAMU is VERY reputable in Civil Engineering so I guess that may pass on to construction management as well... That would be my choice if only academics and the job market were my concerns.

I applied to both UW and Maryland when I was applying for MS three years ago. I know for fact the the ME department at Maryland starts reviewing applications way later than other universities. UW offered me admission last time I applied, I declined for family reasons although it was one of my top choices. Now I fear that they will be reluctant to offer me admission again since I declined their offer once Good luck on your applications all!

With the number of MIT PhD admissions posted on this website I would speculate that they have offered the bulk of their admissions. Stanford (which I have also applied to) has offered many MS admissions but I have not heard of any PhD. However, I have heard from multiple sources that Stanford (ME department) prefers to take MS students and keep them through PhD rather than take a risk and admit a PhD student they do not know from somewhere else. Honestly, the only reason I applied was that it was my dream school... I do not know about the others you mentioned. What about other schools? I have applied to: U Washington, Stanford, RPI, UCSB, UCI, UC Davis, U Maryland, U Texas Austin, and UCLA. I have only heard back from RPI (admit with TA funding), although I confess it is not high on my list. I have not heard a word from any other school. I had my hopes up for UW and I was almost certain I would get an early admission. This made me become lazy in the application process. I'm not happy with my SOP or GRE score and I fear they are hurting my chances of getting funding (I can't afford otherwise). Tea Girl, I see you have also applied to UW. Have you heard anything back?

I'm in a similar situation. I am waiting on all my other schools but I fear rejections since I haven't heard anything yet. It is possible I will end up attending this university, which is also in NY and is on the other side of the country. I can't take time off to go there and I fear it would be even more rude to not attend the fully funded open house but attend the school. I feel like everyone will think I didn't care about anything else as long as they give me full funding. If I were you I would attend, I think it would be better either way. The reason they are funding your trip is to persuade you to come. If they can't persuade you, you are not to blame.

Yes, this is something that is known to help. It actually is quite normal, especially for international students. Since they can't really visit the campus or speak to faculty any other way they bombard the POIs inbox with emails. Sometimes it back fires, sometimes you get lucky. Personally, I haven't been able to get in contact with most of my POI so I don't exactly know how this works. But a school like Georgia Tech gets lots of applicants and many professors hate spending time going through the process. If they see an email from someone with an interesting resume they might offer him a position in their lab. I'd assume adcom would have to approve but it would still be a huge boost for the applicant. This is easier said than done. How do you do this? I am totally frustrated that I have not been able to get in contact with them.

I was in a somewhat similar situation a couple of years ago and I chose the not-so-prestigious school. The POI was not as well known as you are. The thing is, many things could happen which you can't predict. You may have a falling out with the POI, he may go to another university, get sick or even pass away. At that point you will be stuck in the worse school and probably not focusing on what you intended to in the first place. I made a mistake two years ago and I'm paying for it. I sincerely hope that you choose UIUC.

May I ask what your major is? My experience (as a Mechanical Engineering grad student) is that a young professor setting up a lab may provide an exciting experience, yet there is also a not-so-little risk of it becoming a horrible experience as well. Part of it will depend on you and your life style. For instance, if you are in a serious relationship, married, have children, or any other commitments aside from your lab/course work and TA responsibilities you may find it very difficult. A professor who is young and setting up a lab is likely on the tenure-track and under pressure to preform well. His students will have more responsibility than a normal PhD student and they may learn much more, and much faster. However, if the lab does not make good progress for some reason, there is no saying what the professor will do to save his job. I had a similar experience, though not quite the same. I attended the less reputable school, and joined the lab of a young professor who was an associate professor and had been around for about 8 years. However, he had been hired straight out of college back when the economy was doing good and he had never been the single PI for any research project, up until around the time I showed up. All his previous projects were collaborations with other professors and research groups and he had just landed a funding for a huge project which was to support four PhD students and two master's level students. To make a long story short, the PI could not manage the project well and would lose focus and concentrate on aspects of the project which had little value. Eventually under pressure he ended up blaming all the problems on me and bad mouthing me to other faculty members. My funding was cut and I was kicked out of the research lab. I only managed to get a Master of Engineering degree (a course-based degree which looks bad on your resume if you want to get a PhD program) and get out of there. Now, a year later, I am having trouble getting into schools which easily admitted me last time. So here is my advice: you do not know the professor in the less reputable school as a person and you cannot predict how things could turn out. I would advise you to chose school A because of the smaller risk. If nothing else, you will spend 4-5 years in graduate school and the rest of your life out of it, so it makes sense to value the better placement track record and the better reputation of the school. The future matters more. I can't emphasize this enough.

I understand what you are trying to do and I think it may be a good idea to put something memorable in your SOP that may be a bit cheesy only for the most competitive schools. However, I think your conclusion is a bit too risky. I am polishing up my SOP with the deadlines looming and I feel that my application may not be interesting enough for the most competitive schools. I have been considering doing something like this as well, although I will probably put it into the opening paragraph.

Hi all, When I was applying for Master's degree programs (in Mechanical Engineering) I applied to about 11 places and I was admitted to about half of them. I had admissions without funding from two top 15 universities and admissions with full funding from a couple of top 25-30 universities. However, I selected to go to a university which is ranked about 80th. At the time I thought that despite its ranking the program was at a level not much lower than the other two universities I received funding from (sadly this did not turn out to be true). My main reason was that my wife had also received full-funding from this school. It was the worst ranked school in the 11 I had applied to. Now, my wife will graduate soon after fall 2013 and I wish to enroll in a PhD program beginning in fall 2013. So I will not really be bound to a specific program because of my wife. I am hoping to get into a top 10-20 program. My question is should I explain why I did not go to a better program for my master's? Since I was coming from a foreign country I feel like it would seem like the institute I attended was the best I was able to get into and that since the schools I am trying to get into are considerably better ranked they may feel like I may not be well suited for them (unfortunately I was not able to do anything during my master's education which would be impressive enough to compensate for other weaknesses in my application). Yet, explaining the matter is a bit tricky. I don't want it to sound like I look down upon my previous institution. I also don't want to make it seem like family matters may keep me from eventually attending any of these schools. The truth is if I have a choice, I will attend the school I believe will be the best fit for me. No other matter is important enough to affect my decision. Any ideas about what I should say? Thanks,

This is something I have been wondering about for a while now. I am in a similar situation. However, someone like my master's adviser would not like this. He would consider it a waste of time if I was to do anything but research.

What about analytical writing? I am not very familiar with the revised GRE scores. However, converting it to the old system your score would be 500 on verbal and about 800 on quantitative. I think that score would be considered relatively good considering you are an international student. I had a similar GRE score in 2010 when I applied for MS/PhD in mechanical engineering and I had a decent chance of getting into those schools.

i don't think you necessarily have to write it in a chronological/reverse chronological order. For instance, I will probably begin the SOP with a paragraph which would quickly summarize where I am right now, what I can do, and what my career goals are. After that I will begin in a chronological order. I tend to think that people pay the most attention when reading the first paragraph and I think it is the best place to showcase yourself.

I think you should only include it in your resume. However, assuming you worked with a professor on the paper who is willing to write you a recommendation letter, I would ask him if he would mention the paper in his recommendation (although he probably would even if you didn't ask).

Don't panic! It's only your first week. This is normal, especially, if you changed your field. I would not worry about the mathematics background. You can learn it as you go. Spend some time studying mathematics throughout the term. If you are in the U.S., most students have weak mathematical backgrounds so you won't be too far behind.

I highly suggest that you find someone to edit this for you. It contains way too many grammatical errors to be acceptable. Submitting it this way will drastically reduce your chances of acceptance. My personal opinion is that the first paragraph is shallow. I think you should begin your SOP on a stronger note. The part about asking your adviser about the thermal analysis of cars is uninteresting. Including a conversation in your SOP is not a good idea. Moreover, the question itself points out several facts. I am a thermal science majored master's graduate and the way you have the question written makes me think that you do not know much about the field. I apologize if my response seems harsh. It is my honest opinion.

I am so jealous of all of you who already have your SOPs ready

First, most universities do not require recommenders to be professors. Some require one of them to be a professor. I would get recommendation letters from the instructors at the institution where you maintained a 4.0 GPA (even if it was non-degree program). Having a recommendation letter from engineers at NASA would definitely make your application look good. However, I understand that you may not want to mention to the guys at work that you plan on quitting and going to graduate school (this is the issue I currently have). My advice would be to not focus solely on your undergrad profs.

Thank you for all the responses. I'm writing this post for whoever might find this thread in search results. I went to the conference. I decided to email the professors a bit too late, and the the professors whom I sent emails to did not attend the conference. However, I approached several other professors at the conference. Everyone was nice and polite and most of them showed interest. I was a bit afraid of approaching professors (Members in another forum advised me not to approach them without arranging a time beforehand by email) and I was always reluctant to go speak to them. It was a mistake though, everybody seemed please to be speaking to a prospective PhD student who is interested in their research and has attended their presentation at a conference.

USC is a good university, however, you are the only one who can tell if it is good enough to spend your money on. USC is pricey and your other options may be cheaper. I know that it is very difficult to get a scholarship/funding for an MS program at USC. I know a lot of people who went to USC hoping that they would be able to get funding for their second year at least but none of them were able to do that despite having 4.0 GPAs and impressive resumes. They simply save their funding for PhD students.

I am an engineering student and I don't know about any "scientifically acknowledged" situation, however, I know that frequently when a faculty takes interest in your case it is usually from your resume (or having contacted him). When he wants to look at your application in detail to make a decision he will begin looking at your recommendation letters and statement of purpose more closely. At this stage I guess he would look at a sample writing as well if you provided one. I doubt that it would have a huge effect (unless your sample writing is an impressive journal paper or something) unless your writing is really bad in which case it may have a negative effect.

Hi I was enrolled as a M.S. student doing experimental fluid mechanics research. However, the project was not well funded and after a year and a half of rigorous research I figured out that we would not be able to gather the data we were looking for with the equipment available in the lab. We would require a pulsed laser with a high repetition rate (over 1000 Hz) to continue. My adviser had lost faith in the project and decided to spend the remaining money from the grant on other projects in the lab and basically asked me to leave his lab in April and seize working on the project. My adviser has a huge ego and could not stand the fact that his project was not a success (this was suppose to be a project based on his 'innovative' ideas). To save face he told the other professors in the fluid mechanics group that I had been slacking and that I never showed up for work and that I was just in grad school because I wanted a salary without working (for the record, I worked about 14 hours a day and at least one day every weekend. Also, my adviser would skip my paycheck every other month or so anyway). Unfortunately, we have a very small fluid mechanics group in our department (5 professors) who are very close (like spend thanksgiving together close). Needless to say, after that they all treated me differently, and even though I was usually one of the top students in all the classes I had with them, they treated me like I was a slacker (I even suspect one of the professors might have given me an A- that term because of it - other students with grades a bit lower than me got A). As a result I was not able to find another adviser to finish a M.S. degree and I was forced to change to MEng. I have a lot of research experience for a master's graduate but nonetheless, it is an MEng degree. How will this effect my chances of getting in to a PhD program? I will also have trouble getting 3 recommendation letters for each school because I don't trust anyone in the fluid mechanics group to right me an honest recommendation letter. Luckily, I got my B.S. degree from another institution and I have a couple of professors there who are willing to right LORs for me. My other letters will be from professors from other departments at my current institute. Bearing all of this in mind, how do you think my chances are for getting into a good institute for a PhD degree? Do you think this will affect it much? Furthermore, how do you think I should explain this in my SOP? Has anyone had similar experience? Thanks in advance!

I am a Mechanical Engineer so I probably have no business giving advice here, but I think that watching her television show shows that you are interested in her work and follow her work and I think that would be something the professor would like.

Hi I recently graduate with a master's degree and I will be applying for PhD admission for fall 2013. I will be presenting at a conference next week where I will possibly meet a lot of professors who do research in areas I am interested in. How can I approach the professors? What should I tell them? I know it is early for them to be choosing future grad students. I am hoping that if they get to know me and I am able to keep some sort of correspondence with them, maybe they will remember me if they want to get a new PhD student. Does any one have experience in this regard? I also may be going on a trip toward the end of summer and I will pass by four of the universities which have professors I am interested in. Should I bring this up? Maybe to ask to visit their labs some time? Thanks in advance!