phunky

revago, thanks for the reassurance! I'm gonna send out my official responses tomorrow! It feels great to be done with this process.

I think I may have made a decision. Here are my results from this application process: CU Boulder - accepted - no funding Vanderbilt - accepted - TA ($25k/year) + Fellowship ($5k/year) Lehigh - accepted - Fellowship ($25k/year) GA Tech - accepted - I'm assuming no funding because I haven't heard anything Princeton - rejected Rutgers - ???!?! I'm sure I'll be accepted but I doubt they have any money I was torn between Boulder and Lehigh. Boulder e-mailed me yesterday and told me that I would not be receiving ANY funding, so that's definitely out of the running. It was my dream school and I feel like I was sort of led on, but I guess their financial situation is just not good right now (the economy, state school, etc.). I'm 95% sure I'm going to Lehigh. I feel like they actually want me to attend--multiple e-mails from several department heads, notifying me in early Feb, and a great research fit. Vanderbilt offered me a banging funding package but the research there isn't that strong (mostly computer modeling/simulation and little experimental work). Additionally, I went to undergrad there, so the question of being "inbred" comes into play. I'd rather have another University on my resume, to be honest. Lehigh has everything I want (minus maybe the location). The town kinda sucks, but it's way better than the sleepy, southern town where I currently reside. However, it is only an hour away from my parents' home and having lived over a 1000 miles away from my hometown for over 6 years, it would be nice to be close to family. Am I making the right decision?

Yay! Congrats on making a final decision--it must feel good!

Waiting for funding decisions is killing me! Anyone get any $$$ from GA Tech or Boulder yet? I realize other departments may have sent out letters, but I haven't received anything for structures yet. I also haven't heard ANYTHING from Rutgers, yet. They are the lowest ranked school on my list--weird that they are taking so long!

Yup, if I'm not fully supported, I can't go. All my profs know this.

Everyone I talked to in structures had not heard anything about funding. Congrats on getting an official letter!!

GA Tech was so awesome this weekend! No mention of $$--I'm assuming that they wanted to meet us in person before deciding on the funding situation. I hope I made a good impression!!!

I went to CU Boulder's and Lehigh's visitation days the last two weekends and loved both of them. This Friday is GA Tech. I'm definitely tired of traveling. I've heard back from all my schools except Rutgers. 4/5 so far with acceptances:). I have an awesome Fellowship at Lehigh ($25k stipend) and great funding at Vandy ($25k TA +$5k Fellowship). No word on $$$ anywhere else. CU Boulder said I'll know in the next few weeks and I'm hoping GA Tech says something this weekend.

Well that makes perfect sense! I just sent you a PM as I have a specific question about Lehigh. If you could take 2 minutes and respond, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks:)

Congrats on the Lehigh admit! Will you be attending the open house this weekend? I received an e-mail today from Boulder!!! I got in! Wooohoooo! No word on $$$.

I just received a call from the grad director at Lehigh and I got the fellowship I was nominated for! Anyone hear from Boulder yet? I'm ready to e-mail the grad coordinator and ask when decisions will be out b/c I need to book a flight for visitation day that's 2 weeks away!

Thank you! You are really calming my nerves. I received an e-mail from GA Tech a few hours ago inviting me to the admitted students days (March 11th and 12th). They are reimbursing travel expenses--hooray! Will I see anyone else there?

Thank you for posting this! Did he apply to the structures program? That's a little ambitious calling CUBoulder his safety school--it's ranked #22 in the nation for CE (although the engineering acceptance rate is 56%). Sorry to your friend:(. \

Has anyone heard from the Univ. of Colorado @ Boulder today?! The grad coordinator sent an e-mail out last week stating that decisions will be going out starting today. I haven't received any word yet.

I'm just going for open house type events but have professors I'd like to meet when I get there. So I guess maybe like an informal interviews? Like I mentioned earlier, I think visiting these schools will really help me decide where I want to go and more importantly, let me gauge the people I could potentially be working with (advisor and his/her students). In my mind, I figure it won't hurt to ask by sending a quick e-mail to the grad coordinators since the worst they can say is "no". I fly a lot and usually set up price alerts on my flights (sidestep.com) and book directly through the airline (usually; sometimes those 3rd party sites have better deals last minute). I started looking for flights on Thursday and just in the last few days the fares increased $200 for two entirely different round trips! One of the flights is to the airport I fly into when I visit my hometown/family and usually can get a roundtrip/nonstop for $300. I have never seen prices this high except around the holidays. I mean, it's still about 2-3 weeks out--fares are abnormally high.

Question. I'm planning my open house visits and flights are RIDICULOUS like $650 round trip (end of Feb/early March). Could I politely ask if the department could reimburse some travel costs or this an inappropriate thing to even ask?

Congrats! Do you go to Purdue for undergrad? Just curious why you didn't apply there.

Decisions for Boulder will start to be sent out next Monday (Feb 14th). Their visiting day is March 4th. I want to know now! This wait is slowly killing me. Has anyone heard ANYTHING from Princeton? I have had zero correspondence with anyone at the university. I sent out e-mails in December to potential research advisors and got absolutely nothing back--kind of disappointing.

Congrats Joesh! I have my fingers crossed for a good funding package for you!!

I'm interested in shm too but moreso the evaluation part. Vibration based system assessment and damaged detection are rockin. I love anything structural dynamics related. I'm looking to get more involved with seismic risk mitigation and reliablity engineering. Pretty much anything along those lines as my research topic would make happy. Ga tech's visiting day is march 11. Just received information about that today.

I've wanted to move to CO for a few years now. It just seems like a good fit for me. So maybe it's not an out of reach/super high ranked dream school, but more like something I've been thinking a lot about and I would be crushed if I didn't have the opportunity to go there. Besides, the department is huge and I feel like there's a lot going on. It just feels right.

Another American chick? Cool! We need to stick together--we are very few and far between in our fields. And I would venture to guess that we are small fraction of those applying to CE grad schools. I heard some news from Vanderbilt yesterday. I should be getting my official acceptance in the mail soon but I've been accepted (with a nice chunk of $$, too), apparently! I refuse to put it up in my signature until it's official! I am so overwhelmed at this point but want to know the rest of my admission decisions NOW. Come on Boulder and Princeton. Boulder=my dream school and I will be super devastated if I don't get in. Anyone else hear anything yesterday?

Joesh, this is great news! I hope that I am invited to visiting weekends in the near future. I think these little recruiting events are the key factors in helping me decide which school to attend. Actually meeting face to face with people and seeing the facilities first-hand are invaluable. Hopefully you'll get to visit some labs and meet with some prospective research/academic advisors. Let us know how it goes!!

Hey everyone, I just got a call from Lehigh University with an unofficial acceptance and a notification that I've been nominated for a fellowship--we should know within a few weeks whether I get it or not. Sweet. This week has been awesome so far with two acceptances. I have absolutely no motivation to get my current work done. I really need to finish my MS thesis before I move onto my PhD stuff haha. I should focus on graduating and spend less time obsessing over next fall and constantly refreshing this post and the results search. I hope today and next week everyone in this thread hears back positive decisions from their schools! Beyond elated, -phunky

undergrad GPA: 3.74 (civil engineering and math major) graduate GPA : 4.0 (I'll be getting my MS in civil in May) GRE: quantitative: 720/ verbal: 520/ writing: 5 (I'm a terrible test taker) I have a first authored publication on the way and possibly a second or third author paper. 2+ years of research in a structural dynamics related field. My personal statement was pretty strong and descriptive about what type of research I currently do and want to do in the future. 5 great LORs--many from profs that attended/teach at the universities I'm applying to. I don't really like sharing my personal information like this but I know it helps out others applying this year and possibly those applying in the next few years.