was1984

24 now, will be 25 before I start.

Well, one school I'm applying to is in a location where my girlfriend could easily (and happily) transfer. If I get in there, there is no issue. If I end up going anywhere else, we haven't really fleshed out what is going to happen. I suspect either she will come with me right away or we will be accumulating a lot of frequent flier miles. Separating is out of the question.

I'd say you are likely to get aid from any of those public schools if you are accepted. If you are subscribed to the U.S. News grad school rankings they list the number of full time students and number of appointments for M.S. and Ph.D. combined. As an example, UW-Madison is 1,137/1,180. Thats rougly 96%, and I'm guessing some of those students without aid have external funding.

Wow, thanks for that constructive nugget.

Waiting to hear anything is giving me some serious self esteem issues! To this point, there are no postings for any of the programs I'm applying to, but that still doesn't assuage my feeling of inadequacy. I obsess over the weak points in my application, wondering if I'll get accepted anywhere, not just this year, but EVER! Reading this board with all of these phenomenal applicants doesn't help either. Anyone else going nuts? I'm usually pretty stable, but this is a new experience for me. My undergrad was a sure thing due to the Texas top 10% rule.

I'm not a student any longer, but as a fellow device engineer I can tell you that the job market is not good at all, especially for people without much experience. Just about every job I've seen posted is senior engineer (think 5 years minimum with B.S. or higher). I still have my job for now, and I'm just hoping I keep it until grad school starts. Our last round of layoffs had some very good engineers in it, so now I'm worried. If I do lose my job and don't get accepted anywhere, I'm in much the same position as you, only with a couple of years of work experience. I tend to think I'd move back home and try to get some more experience, even volunteering if I have to (as stated by the poster above).

It's very common at public schools. I don't know anyone who paid for their MS degree.

I accidentally left a different school's name in one of my SOP's. I didn't change that paragraph between those two schools and forgot to change the name of the school. Pretty sure I'm not getting into that one.

I think you can handle it, if not ever really get used to it. I have the same temperature preferences as you, and I've lived in Texas my entire life. Yes, you will be soaked with sweat if you have to walk across campus between April and October. So will everyone else. On the other hand, you will really enjoy winter, with highs typically in the upper 50's and lower 60's. I'm finally moving somewhere more mild, no matter which school I end up going to. But it really isn't as bad as you think.

At first my parents thought it was a bad idea to leave my stable, well paying job to go back to school. They never outright said I shouldn't, but they definitely hinted. I have never really considered my job all that stable, but I'm 24 and they covered my undergrad, so I still consider what they say pretty heavily. The irony of the situation is that with the economic downturn, I'm on furlough every other week with my job, and my company could go out of business at any moment. So I get to seem prophetic now.

Whats the point of applying to a school if you wouldn't go there even if it was your only acceptance (with funding)? That seems kind of silly.

Its worse for me than probably a lot of other people because I'm currently being furloughed by my employer, and I'm only allowed to work every other week. That gives me an extra 50 or so hours a week to sit and think about it. I am coping by...oh who am I kidding, I'm not coping.

Well, my sister went to TAMU for her undergraduate. I never really even considered going there, even though they have a great program in my degree/specialization, because I just couldn't stomach the idea of living in College Station. Then again, I did go to Univ. of Texas for my undergrad. On the plus side, it is incredibly cheap. Perhaps you could make up for the fact that there is literally nothing to do there with being able to get a 3 bedroom house for $700 a month.

Because of my situation, all of my LOR's are from employers and coworkers. Now that I've read these forums I'm very worried about this as a weakness on my application. I did this because I'm a couple of years out of school and I never really took the time to get to know any professors very well in my undergrad, and I usually had huge classes. I figured 3 recommendations from people who know me very well are better than generic recommendations saying this student received an A in my class. I'm applying to several mid-range 30-70ish M.S. programs in electrical engineering. All of my LOR's are from my current job, which is an electrical engineering job, though not directly related to what I want to study in grad school. All of my LOR's are absolutely stellar, as I picked people who really love my work. If it matters, these are the credentials of those I had recommendations from: Fellow (technical equivalent to Director) /Senior Manager of my department Senior Member of Technical Staff (tech. equiv. to Sr. Mgr.) with a Ph.D. in E.E. from a top 10 US school and some experience as a professor in China. Member of Technical Staff and Section manager (former direct supervisor) - This guy loves me Am I screwed here, for M.S. app? Also, do the recommendation forms typically provide space for recommenders to discuss their qualifications? Any insight will be greatly appreciated.