was1984

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 use loose-leaf engineering paper in a 3 ring binder. Like others have said, I like the flexibility of loose leaf. If I miss a class for some reason, my anal personality doesn't have to worry about how many pages to skip in a bound notebook for that lecture. I can actually copy someone else's notes with a copy machine and put them in sequence. I can include other materials (such as homework) in sequence with my lecture notes, too.

The reason I use engineering paper is because it's yellow and it's backed with graph paper. The yellow is much easier on the eyes, and the reverse side graph paper is just visible enough to make drawing figures and keeping consistent lines in text easy.

This is what happens when large portions of the population to go to college.

College is the new high school.

This is what happens when large portions of the population to go to college.

College is the new high school.

I finally received my first acceptance. This does take off the edge a bit, but right now I'm so giddy I'm being equally unproductive.

This is what happens when large portions of the population to go to college.

College is the new high school.

I'm 26, and will be 27 by the time I start. I don't think my age makes any difference whatsoever. Maybe it would if I were 40.

I spent 3 years in industry and am about to finish up a 2 year M.S. degree. That explains the 5 year differential. Hey, at least I wasn't a ski bum or something.

I moved here a couple of years ago for a master's program. It's relatively inexpensive to live right near campus, so most students live in the area. I did this last year and could easily walk to campus. Be aware though that the campus is up in the foothills, and just about all of the housing is downhill. You'll get in really great shape. There are also plenty of city buses that are included with your tuition, if you're more lazy.

This year I live further away in a really nice house very inexpensively. This is also a great option because parking permits on campus are really cheap. It's only about $150 for the top-tier student parking permit for the entire year. Suburbia is definitely more, shall I say, religiously inclined, but as long as you live somewhere in Salt Lake City proper you won't be overwhelmed. There are some more sketchy neighborhoods on the western side of town, but overall SLC is very safe.

The beer in SLC is good, but limited. Most people actually drink local brews around here, but there isn't a whole lot of variety. Squatters/Wasatch is the most popular brand, though there are a few others. Utah does indeed have some strange liquor laws, which we all have opinions on, but in general they aren't that irritating. You will find that many brands do not import to Utah because of the laws (part of why people drink local), and that alcohol is a bit on the expensive side (because of the taxes). As a beer lover myself, it hasn't been too bad.

The biggest upside for SLC is the phenomenal skiing, climbing, and mountain biking, which are all some of the best in the entire world. Make sure you give yourself time to do these things if you are inclined to be outdoorsy, as it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you are not outdoorsy, I would caution you against coming here. Most other students and the non-Mormon population as a whole is an outdoor culture, and you might have trouble making friends.

I'm 26, and will be 27 by the time I start. I don't think my age makes any difference whatsoever. Maybe it would if I were 40.

I spent 3 years in industry and am about to finish up a 2 year M.S. degree. That explains the 5 year differential. Hey, at least I wasn't a ski bum or something.

This question is really frustrating to me. I understand that it's really just a diversity statement, and I'm not diverse in the way that it's currently politically correct to be diverse, so I wish I could just ignore it.

That said, I'm planning to discuss how my family brought me up understanding how important education is. I'll talk about how my mom teaches at a Title I (economically disadvantaged) school and how my dad valued his own education so much that he worked full time to pay for it while he attended. I'm also going to mention some of the financial hardships I had in school that caused me to have to work for a large portion of my degree. Beyond this, I don't really know what to say about it. My research topics aren't exactly relevant to improving education for minorities, so I can't go anywhere near that.

Backpack now and forever. I've been using the same JanSport backpack since I was a sophomore in high school.

PODS are overpriced. There is a moving company called ABF which has a similar product (U-pack) for much cheaper.

As a point of reference, I have reserved one of these for my upcoming move from Salt Lake City to Seattle (around 900 miles) for 800 bucks. Uhaul and other truck companies quote me prices around $1000 to rent a truck for this trip, and that doesn't include fuel.

It's still going to be expensive to move cross country, but I'd have a look at U-pack. It's about half what PODS wanted for the same move.

http://www.upack.com

Heh, I left this forum for a while and the clown goes crazy. His "verifiable evidence" includes a "late" NAE member immediately after quoting me saying "active" NAE member and 2 ISI highly cited in what? It ain't engineering. Sigh. "Ashamed of me as a fellow electrical engineer"? Rofl. The pomposity and fake enlightenment is palpable. Stop trying. Your English is too poor to pull it off.

The point of a private message is to not drag out arguments that the public doesn't care about. This guy has an inferiority complex and that's that, as we can see from his flipping out over a trivial statement. You'll see from my other points that I *don't* worship MIT/Stanford/Berkeley and repeatedly give advice suggesting taking up other options. Three weeks ago I was almost certainly going to pick a not-so-famous school over Stanford before changing my mind for personal reasons.


But anyway, as I said. OSU is not even in the game to top students as UCSB is. We don't get to pick our own reality and there's no reason to give shitty advice to other students just to make yourself feel better.


Get over *yourself*, was1984. Think a little and don't just on bandwagons.

Do stuff that you enjoy doing instead of just going to a gym.

I stay extremely physically fit and I haven't lifted weights in years. There is so much fun stuff that you can do to stay fit, why make it boring?

gtmshine here is proof that plenty of dumbasses get into even places like Stanford. Get over yourself dude.

PODS are overpriced. There is a moving company called ABF which has a similar product (U-pack) for much cheaper.

As a point of reference, I have reserved one of these for my upcoming move from Salt Lake City to Seattle (around 900 miles) for 800 bucks. Uhaul and other truck companies quote me prices around $1000 to rent a truck for this trip, and that doesn't include fuel.

It's still going to be expensive to move cross country, but I'd have a look at U-pack. It's about half what PODS wanted for the same move.

http://www.upack.com

Do stuff that you enjoy doing instead of just going to a gym.

I stay extremely physically fit and I haven't lifted weights in years. There is so much fun stuff that you can do to stay fit, why make it boring?

gtmshine here is proof that plenty of dumbasses get into even places like Stanford. Get over yourself dude.

Your pathetic effort in ending this conversation by resorting to private messages, reveals that you simply couldn't disprove my statement and has owned up to the fatal mistake you made in your original post. That's enough for me. The sad part is when I introduced verifiable evidence about superiority of the school you deem undesirable, in one important branch of engineering and science, your strongest argument was like "X is so good that even people outside Y know that". Believe me, with such low aptitude for making an argument your graduate school years will not go anywhere and I am ashamed of having you as a fellow electrical engineer.

Not trying to drag this out any longer, but you guys both read into the rankings well to much.

I had a meeting with the dean of engineering from the University of Michigan - a top 10 Engineering school and one of the best in the world.

When i asked him what a Michigan degree would offer me compared to another school, and his response was "Michigan is not going to teach you anything new or different compared to other top-30 ranked schools. When you go to a Michigan/MIT/Stanford/Illinois/Princeton/etc all that your paying for is the name of the school because any top-30 ranked school is going to teach you nearly exactly the same. There are amazing professors at all of these top schools."

He also told me not to get too caught up into the rankings.

So for the discussion you guys were having, Sure MIT has that BIG BRAND NAME, however, i'm not sure, but Santa Barbara might actually have a better more focused department in something else. But what does "better" mean? MIT has that BETTER name? Are they really going to teach or challenge you more though than Santa Barbara which is still a top top school? I doubt it

gtmshine here is proof that plenty of dumbasses get into even places like Stanford. Get over yourself dude.

gtmshine here is proof that plenty of dumbasses get into even places like Stanford. Get over yourself dude.

gtmshine here is proof that plenty of dumbasses get into even places like Stanford. Get over yourself dude.

Both are called publications in EE. You'll want a 3.7+ from a high-ranked school (say top 20), or close to 4.0 from anywhere else. GRE should be 780+/550+, and have at least a year of research experience. This is enough to keep your app from being tossed out. The main factor then is letters of recommendation that back up your claims about your research experience.

You most certainly can get in without publications. I had none and was admitted to Stanford (with funding) and waitlisted at MIT (GPA 3.93, GRE 780/710, 1.5 years of research). Among my graduating class at University of Illinois, I know one who got into Berkeley and Stanford and another who got into just Stanford. They had profiles similar to mine and also had no publications. But note that our school is always ranked in the top 5 in EE, both grad and undergrad, so it's obviously easier for us to get into other top-ranked programs.

Also, the fact that you include Harvard in your "list" (yet not Berkeley) suggests to me that you have no idea what you want out of graduate school and just want to "move up" to a prestigious school so that you can brag about it to lay people. You need to seriously re-evaluate your goals. Researchers only care about what you've actually accomplished and, moreover, they have their own field-specific list of what schools are considered good. E.g. UCSB is always at the top (above MIT) in optoelectronics, at least for the time being. Going to Harvard for EE is about the same as going to Ohio State (yes, really). This is not an insult, as they're both fine programs in the grand scheme of things (top 30 out of 150 or so EE schools in the U.S.), but not even close to elite and you're not going to be impressing anyone that way.

Looks like someone got butt-hurt. There's a massive difference between being good in one "topic" vs. dominating in a very large area such as optoelectronics. Even people outside of optoelectronics know how good UCSB is. Ohio State? Yeah, OK. Name the "topic" and we'll see how broad it is. As the work of any group differs from those of others, any school can claim to be "top" at some "topic".


P.S. A school that's good doesn't need validation from MIT. Sad.