Jakrabite

First of all, I remember your post on urch, so its good to see that you are still applying. The only advice i have for you is to apply far more widely. I have advised other Indian students about the the same thing, and nobody ever listens, but here goes nothing. The competition for top schools is tremendous, and putting all your eggs in these risky baskets is just a waste of time and money. Look at tier 2 programs too, they often have great faculty and a less cut throat environment. Also, flesh out your research interests. Gamification is a bit of a buzzword, it would work in your favor to have a substantive research agenda going by the time you apply. See if you can get your undergraduate professors to recommend you. Letters from junior faculty, that too lecturers, may not be of much value. good luck!

Got mine within a couple of days.

Even I feel weird going with gift certificates. I'm not in the states over the summer. Dunno how to make it more personalized.

Not! I guess if you have more than one admit, you have a feeling of control over your destiny. It's not cribbing.

I spoke to PSU's Intl Center last week and they said my I-20 should reach within 10 days, they send it through DHL's university express. That means I should get it at the start of next week, failing which I'll harass them.

I did this during my Master's program. I got the lease myself and put out an ad on the listserv for grad students. I eventually had a stranger for a roommate who was in a different program. Luckily he turned out to be a person with similar sensibilities and things were hunky dory. As for picking out a roommate amongst several candidates, I told them my preferences and asked for theirs. After a process of weeding out the obvious weirdos, I just chose randomly amongst the remaining few.

Exactly. No point discussing this. There are colleges in top 50 for engineering which give aid for half decent stats, but really no option guarantees anything. It might turn out that the higher ranked school offers aid and the lower ranked doesn't.

I felt otherwise. Even though I'm from a science background, I got an extremely boring marine biology passage which I just could not make myself care about. The history passage was pretty interesting though.

Don't decide where you're going based on RA prospects. From what I saw this can be pretty subjective and nobody can really help you predict where you'll score. I guess Penn State's branding is better, but not by much. Gator engineering is well respected as well. As for insurance for UF you can do it after you get there. No point doing it too early. UF's achievement award is a pretty sweet deal for Master's. But for the PhD program I don't know if I would risk going there without funding. Last I heard funding situation is pretty damn awful in general, but I could be wrong.

I had cold feet initially as well. Deactivated for six months so that I had the option of going back. But after a while, after many not so close friends asked me to reactivate my fb account, and realizing that phone/email is enough to keep in touch with my close friends, I went the full monty and deleted it altogether. Plus it helps when I think about the fact that me and my friends exchanging inanities was no longer helping that zuckerburg dude become a gazillionaire . Throwing sheep indeed!

Gainesville FL: UF has a fairly good public transportation system. The RTS bus service is free for gators and is clean as well as reliable. The routes run pretty much through all the places you may need to go to in Gainesville. Most students travel to campus on the bus system. Quite a few students with cars also go to the uni by bus because parking is a big hassle on campus. The only cockup is that there is a reduced service on weekends and through the summer. During this period a car might well be indispensable. On the whole having a car is obviously more convenient by far. At the same time, it is possible to survive without one.

I got rejected through GATS. Best of luck guys.

Hey. I wasn't in MAE myself, but my friends were. A few people did manage to snag a RA in my time there, but its extremely rare. I think a couple had managed it out of all the intl students in MAE, which had a bucketload of intls. Even the guys who managed to get it had to do an interdisciplinary RA for eg, Mech+Agricultural, which pretty much changed the scope of the degree. Plus now the aid scene is pretty bad at UF in general, so I would advise you not to count on it. If you have got the achievement award its pretty cheap compared to other comparable schools...so not such a bad deal. Best of luck with your decision.

I guess it is his friend. But its like a textbook case. No offense meant OP but I really did chuckle out loud when I read the post, or if you did get offended, wasn't me laughing out loud, was my friend .

Very well put. Totally bogus query by OP. If somebody has issues with staying in Maryland itself, I would find that perfectly understandable. But the way the question is phrased is bound to raise eyebrows. Think its a troll or a disgruntled applicant.