ktel

This reminds me of when the president of my university got lambasted for bemoaning the lack of white males enrolling in university/in certain programs: http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/11/19/in-defence-of-white-male-students/#more-91663 And the hilarious backlash: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2009/11/02/edmonton-samarasekera-white-male.html The poor students who put up the posters almost faced disciplinary action, but were saved by media attention.

Which project interests you more? What would you like to pursue for your PhD? Choose the project that is more related to any future research. Personally I would go with number 2, but that's because I'm working on a similar project right now and it's been amazing. I got to watch two open heart surgeries last week, which was SO COOL. I'm probably not going to get any publication out of it, although my advisor has said he will acknowledge my efforts if any of the data I acquired is published.

A Master's at IIT would be a great idea. My current supervisor speaks very highly of IIT and says that all of the Indian students at MIT were from there.

You could also argue that it might be better to contact them now, before school gets really busy. I find a lot of the profs at my school are on vacation or travelling for work now though, so it obviously could not be a good time. Ultimately it's kind of a crapshoot what would be the best time for the specific professor you're contacting.

The only EC I ever list on a resume/CV now is that I'm a varsity athlete, because I often get a lot of good feedback about that and people like to see it usually

I'm not in Computer Science, I have no idea. I'm a Mechanical Engineer. All of the schools I already listed are some of the best engineering/tech schools in Canada.

I met in person with most of the POI's I contacted and talked to one on the phone. Just let them blab about their research, basically. They can and will talk about it forever if you let them. I asked a few questions about funding and the admissions process, but usually it was just them doing most of the talking. Some of them asked what I was interested in, but at that point I could really only give them a general idea and they would suggest topics based on that.

University of Toronto, McGill, UBC, University of Alberta, Waterloo... the list could go on and on. Do some research yourself based on what you want to study. Find professors who do research that interests you

I will warn you, 50% of the PGS-M application is based on academic excellence. That's a pretty significant amount, but a 3.67 is obviously great, and that combined with your 3.97 gives you an even higher combined GPA

I'm about to start grad school and everybody here likes to talk about how you will be so busy and finding time for other things can be challenging and whatnot. I don't know how much I believe it. I felt like that was exactly what happened when I was in high school about to go into university. Everybody talked up university like it was this huge, difficult thing, and I found the adjustment to be really quite easy. I had time to play varsity rugby, see my SO, hang out with friends and do my school work. Now I will have fewer courses and my rugby schedule will be less intense. I honestly don't anticipate it being too difficult to manage.

This is really hardly enough information for us to help you. In addition to that, admissions can kind of be a crap shoot sometimes anyways. Your lack of research experience certainly doesn't help your application, and being an international student can make it a bit harder for you. What do you want to do your research in?

I don't usually tip when I'm the designated driver and am just getting water. If anything I feel like I'm doing the bar a service by bringing people to their bar and then safely taking them home. The bartender might not agree, but they're still getting their drink sales and tips from all of my friends.

I think research experience looks a lot better than volunteer experience. Even if it's unrelated it shows your aptitude and research ability, which is super important for your application.

I found an interesting site: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/author/Ben This guy was involved in MIT admissions from 2004-2008 and blogged about the process. Very informative. And if you were applying at the time, even better, because you get a real-time update of how long the process is taking. Has anyone come across anything else like this?

I would assume the "1st admissions committee" is not so much an adcomm, but a group of people that make sure your GPA and GRE are above the minimum cut-offs that the university sets. Often these cut-offs are listed on the university website. Regardless, you can't exactly go back and change your undergrad GPA now, so your best hope is to assume your application will get past this 1st committee (in my opinion it would, unless you score low on the GRE)

Your GPA isn't great, but isn't terrible. It's over the 3.0 cut-off that a lot of grad schools use. I would say fit is extremely important in the admissions process, but I'm not on an adcomm. I think your research experience speaks much more about your abilities than your undergraduate GPA. That coupled with all the others parts of your application that you say will be strong leaves you with a good chance of getting in. Whether the professors have any say in your admission depends on the university. When I applied for my Master's last year, finding an advisor who was willing to supervise you basically guaranteed your acceptance, provided you pass the minimum GPA requirement (3.0). Perhaps someone who has applied to engineering at UC Berkeley could provide some insight.

I went into engineering in my undergrad purely on a gut feeling that I thought it would be right for me. I then did an internship at an amazing consulting company in the summer before I started university. As I took more courses it was pretty obvious that engineering is for me. It sounds like you have that gut feeling. You could try some sort of job-shadowing if you want. The only problem I see is that engineering is SUCH a broad field. You could hate some of the jobs within it, but absolutely love others. I've had some terrible summer jobs, but those were because of the company I was working for, not because engineering jobs are in general terrible. I'm doing grad school in Aerospace Engineering because I want to specialize more than my Mechanical undergrad has allowed me. Once again, I had a gut-feeling that I wanted to do aerospace since high school, and doing a very cool aerospace-related design project last year confirmed this. I'm attending the University of Toronto, partly because of it's amazing reputation in Canada and partly because that's where my boyfriend works now (he is a civil engineer)

For once, an article not lambasting the humanities

This reminds me that there are a few societies I should join. I don't have access to most of the journals I would want, I'm assuming my department will be able to give me access in September. I find reading papers to be such a chore though, definitely not my favorite thing. So many of them are written so poorly.

Or if all they do is play drinking games. I went on a study/work abroad trip last summer, and there were about 10 people from my university there and we were all living together. They would literally just sit around all night playing drinking games. No conversation unless it related to the card they pulled or the number they rolled on the die. They were basically alcoholics for an entire summer. Not to mention we were in a new country and all they wanted to do was stay in our apartment. Lame.

In my discipline most TAs do grading (with office hours) or run a lab or tutorial section. They very, very rarely teach a class. Your language difficulties will be less of a problem if you're simply grading, but running a lab/tutorial could prove more challenging. I got very used to having foreign TAs and professors during my undergrad, you just adjust to the accent eventually.

Looks like you pissed off a bartender... A lot of bartenders at the major bars/clubs in my city act incredibly entitled and do not provide good service. As a result they don't deserve a tip. If it takes me a really long time to get a drink (unnecessarily long), the tip is gone. If the bartender has attitude, the tip is gone. Getting a tip is not a given. It needs to be somewhat earned.

Sounds like things worked well. I would probably do the same if I was in your position.

It depends on how competitive TA positions are in your department. If there is someone else who would do a better job who would love to have some funding, then maybe one screw-up is one too many.

It depends on the person. Some people are very fun drunks, others are very annoying. It's the same with sober people though, you never will like being around everybody.