Maverick1

Thanks for your kind words. But still, it is kinda worrying for me since I am no longer young and am without a decent career. And for me, grad school is both a dream and a hopeful boost that would give me a shot at my dream career in engineering. It really sucks to realize what i really wanted to do in life this late. That's good for you! You are doing your Masters or PhD at the accepted schools? Just curious, earlier in the thread you mentioned that you are an international studying in the US for your undergrad. So for your accepted schools, were you able to receive full/partial funding or you are going to be self-funded? I am especially interested in the case of Masters because from my research, not many schools offer funding for international Masters students. If i recall correctly, for aerospace (my area of interest) in CU Boulder and JHU, they don't.

Yea i did, to MIT AeroAstro and to Caltech. But the former has already sent out the wave of acceptance and I am expecting the rejection letter to come any time soon. The latter has absolutely no news at all, but being a small and likewise competitive school, its probably the same. No luck at the lottery lol. Which schools did you try for? And yeah, nice chatting with you guys and sharing worries with haha

Rejected... expected but it still hurts. Another year of rejections. Guess it's time to give up or forget about the top tier schools... ? Hope you guys have the luck to get in.

Haha true...but everyone who didn't receive an email is feeling antsy. Guess all we can do is just to pray for some miracle...

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How are things going for you guys? Any admits?

You have really good stats so you will stand a good chance. But as you might know, even top students with top journal pubs also got rejected before. Weird but true... I sure hope we will be in the next wave! I have been checking my email the first thing in the morning and then leaving disappointed ?. It really feels like my life force is draining away and only a third is left after all these waiting and radio silence.

Yeah, me three! Though like what @Kingoflimbs said, I might be tempted to continue onto a PhD. In fact, I stated SM as the final objective in the application form, but in my statement of objectives, I mentioned I will be actively considering continuing onto a PhD in MIT if i do find the right opportunity there.

That would be quite funny and ridiculous haha. After all each year, there should be quite a number of terminal SM students graduating i.e. there is a demand for them by the department.

Nah, trust me, my CV is more of someone who has dropped out of society for a long time and probably condemned. The only redeeming characteristic was that my academics were really good compared to my peers but i ain't a genius that is for sure. Yea, funding still is a concern but luckily, MIT is generous with funding by giving out research assistantships to even Masters students. Thus, if one can get admitted, one would hardly face funding issues. At least this is true for ME and AeroAstro, which I am looking at. Among the top tier US universities that I have looked at, only truly a handful are so kind to Masters students. I think one of the accepted guys mentioned the visit day is on 13th March or so? Hence I would think that if we don't get any response by the end of 1st week of March, it is pretty much a rejection.

I can't say anything for MIT but i think you might have a shot at Stanford. The reason I am saying this is that despite me having a shitty CV, I was miraculously accepted into Stanford AeroAstro Masters last year. But I couldn't go since I was not good enough to receive the few pieces of financial aid that they gave out and I couldn't justify the huge debt that I have to incur just to study there.

Hm... and i thought things would be delayed for one day since it is President's Day in the US. The gradcafe guy's GRE is below average, but not that GRE really matters in the admission process. The SM is also my final degree objective for both MIT ME and AeroAstro. But really, i don't hold high hopes as well; just a normal guy trying his luck at the lottery. @Kingoflimbs maybe you would have better luck with Stanford since they seem more welcoming to the start-up kind of people, as well as diversity. @blahblah_girl you are from the US right? If that is the case, you certainly have better chances than us international applicants.

Btw @Kingoflimbs, is this the only program that you applied to? If your not comfortable with sharing, it is okay.

From all I have read on this forum, there are some who said MIT prefers SM as the final degree objective more, and of course some who said the opposite (I was researching on AeroAstro since that is one of my areas of interest). Guess we can only know if some actual MIT grad student shares his/her experience here. But imho, if your final degree objective is PhD, then they have to really size you up and determine whether you have the significant research potential required of a MIT PhD student, more so than someone whose final objective is the SM. But ultimately, it is the PhD qualifying exam that decides whether you get to move into PhD from SM, if admitted. So i guess stating PhD as the final objective probably works in your favor if you are one of the potential "star" grad student. But still, everything is a black box to us applicants ?

Nah, the charts do not work that way. The left chart, where you can filter for Masters or PhDs, is only a breakdown of those who have enrolled into the course. The right chart, which gives the admission statistics, only provides the combined (Masters+PhDs) data. Thus, you cannot tell the admission rates for Masters and PhDs separately. Yup, that number includes PhD applicants. I guess so, but MIT ME does not allow direct PhDs i.e. you must have a Masters degree before you can apply for the PhD program. So that could mean more people fighting for the Masters so that they can continue onto their PhDs at MIT. Of course, there is a myriad of scenarios to consider. However from the point of view of research labs, I would say PhD students are more worthwhile to them since they study longer (and are cheap labor as well) and therefore can produce greater research output as compared to Masters students. So maybe, there are less slots available for Masters applicants. Just some meaningless speculations.

For ME 2018, it was 11.7%, as compared to e.g. - 14.9% for MIT AeroAstro 2018. And I thought AeroAstro would have been more competitive. Source: http://ir.mit.edu/graduate-education-statistics (click on the Tableau link inside the above webpage to see 2018 stats)

Hm being an international applicant, it is quite surprising to hear that the government shutdown could have affected private institutions like MIT, though I am not clear on how dependent is MIT on government funding for research. @Kingoflimbs: yea i know, the "rolling admissions" part. But i just feel things are a little off haha. @blahblah_girl: I will post my results here as well for clarity's sake.

Seriously, I am starting to wonder if we have all been rejected. It is common that they send out all the rejections at the very end while keeping people waiting after the wave of acceptance, by saying "we are still reviewing". Besides, compared to 2018, quite a number of acceptance would have been posted here at this point in time but we have only seen 1 person claiming acceptance to ME PhD.

Looks like next week is judgement day.

Same here. GRE wise I am just meeting the average scores of last year's cohort, while I only have limited research experience from projects and research internship. However my final year project was based on one of the lab's research some years ago. Hopefully they would look past my bad CV haha.