OR_Kid

I think your assessment of their strengths is pretty accurate - or at least, it matches what I'm thinking. I'm also fairly concerned about Cornell as a place to live, seems very isolated, also a very very very long way from home. I think the chances of me picking it are pretty low given the two alternatives. In my admissions letter to Stanford, they mention something about applying for grad housing early, because the off-campus stuff is scarce and expensive - so you may be on to something. A lot of people are saying MIT... they can't all be wrong! I can't believe I even have this choice to make! Didn't think I was competitive enough for these places, but I guess I must of said all the right things in my application. Didn't think of that - just added them now. Yeah supervisors are a big deal. There are some people at Stanford who have called me already who seem fairly keen to have me. MIT seem to have someone in mind as well, but I guess thats what the "open house" is for. Thanks!

Yeah, it seems to me that its a theoretical VS applied, also what kind of places I'd want to live. Interesting - any reason why? Don't want to give too many details because I don't want to identify myself. First of all, I am definitely NOT from a famous institution In my last 2 years I received A+s in every paper except 1 (that was an A) My major was not math, it was engineering with an operations research specialisation. It was a 4 year honours degree. GRE scores were 800 for the math bit, 700ish for the verbal bit, 5.0 for the essay bit. I have one paper that hasn't been published yet, its not in the area of operations research though. I was second author on a conference paper for a new opensource optimisation tool. I worked for two summers at companies (one civil, one electricity industry), and have done two summer research studentships. Apparently a big thing was my references, which were outstanding. I think my application letter was pretty strong too.

Hi everyone, I've been accepted with funding to Operations Research PhDs at: MIT's ORC Cornells' ORIE Stanford's MS&E I am not from America, so its hard for me to figure out which one is best. What do you guys think? I'm going to go visit them, I think.