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.

Thanks for the update xerxewatt. Will definitely contact them by next week. I'll let you know if I hear anything, hope you can do the same .

I agree with Stories. Although I've heard of this kind of thing happening, it's like an academic faux pas. If you are upfront with your department about it then maybe it might be alright. But my advice would be not to intentionally jump ship.

I still havent heard from the Graduate Division regarding my acceptance. I faxed my acceptance to the department 3 weeks back. I was told the Grad Division will contact me soon. I am international student so perhaps there is some snail mail issue. How long did you guys have to wait before hearing from the Grad Division?

Yay...go gators....im sure you'll love title town.

congratulations. its good not having to go through another cycle of applications. hopefully more people on the forum who are awaiting such a miracle will meet the same fate.

I left facebook quite a while back..haha..not for the reason specified above. I just feel that the status quo in such things is always moving. So what was not compromising in undergrad suddenly is when I become a TA and so on and so forth. The almost endless accumulation of information can seem daunting. Plus restricting to friends only doesn't seem to be a good solution. First of all, the idea of 'friends' on facebook is fairly ambiguous. Plus I'd rather not have an account than have an account and having to keep on fiddling with what information is available to whom.

They said that GATS is as up to date as possible. The admin lady I spoke to said that they checked the GATS system for status updates when students called to check up. Which sounds pretty damn bogus. I wish I had known they'd be like this. Would have applied elsewhere and got my reject in a timely manner.

I had a horrible experience with ASU when I applied for my Master's. I got the acceptance email and then they wanted to send me my I-20 by snail mail. It was already very late in the admissions cycle and I had asked them whether they could fedex me the I-20 since my country's postal system is not exactly reliable. Not only did they insist on the snail mail, they seemed to think I was a lune for requesting such a thing . Eventually, since I could not wait for the I-20 and jeopardize my other admit, I had to pass on ASU. The irony is that I was added to some listserv for graduate students at ASU, and still sporadically receive spam from them.

I'm fretting over the same issue as the OP. Got an admit. Accepted the offer. Now am supposed to wait for the Graduate Divisions acceptance. It's just been a couple of weeks since the admit, so I guess I'm just being paranoid. But it still would make me feel a lot more at ease if I heard soon from the Grad Division. Thankfully, this discussion calmed me down a bit. Guess nothing left to do but cross my protruding digits and hope for the best.

not bad manners...more of a case of stolen thunder.