Done

Although having licenses for EndNote etc. the best thing i ever did was switching to Latex, especially because I often need to use math operations in my works. The two good things about latex are, that I can define my on style and latex will do the rest for me and secondly I can just put all quotes in a big txt file, where I can put in the data I need/want.

Hey, I will start a Master in engineering at Columbia University this Fall. I already have two bachelor degrees and I am just 22 years old. My problem now is that I will have to figure out where I wanna work after Columbia or if I wanna go on for a Ph.D. I already talked to a lot of companies and have a lot of ideas and I definitely wanna do a Ph.D.. I just do not know if I want to do my Ph.D. straight after my Master, if I wanna do it in corporation with a company or if I wanna go into one of these programs where u sign up for 4 years, whereof u work two years and get the other two off by full payment to do a Ph.D. Furthermore I also know the companies I could imagine working for, but they are more than two To sum it up, I am already pretty sure what I wanna do, but not when and where. Unfortunately I never had time to do a lot of internships because I had to write all my tests (10-15 every semester) in the end of my lecture-free time. That was just how our system worked. Thats why I feel that some time-off could really help me to figure out what to do after my Master. I wouldn't sit around, I would spend the time on internships in companies I really could imagine to work for (not just do an internship to put it on my c.v.) I also don't feel that this semester off would hurt me, as I would still be done with my Master at 24 and as it is sth. I can easily explain to everybody. So before talking to my professor, is this even possible in the US, is there sth. special I need to say? Is it a problem that I would have two winter semesters instead of one winter and one summer semester? Thanks a lot for the input

Hey, i did my undergrad at the TUM (engineering - robotics). I guess I can answer most of your questions. Usually we use a point system to evaluate our applicants. If u want to you are free to leave me your Skype name via PM and I can try to answer all of your questions this evening.

Hey, I am just wondering what this sentence means? Option 1: A letter from your bank in your own name with the exact amount of the balance(s) in your account(s) on the date it is written. The Personal Funds - Readily available liquid funds only in checking, savings or money market accounts or certificates of deposit (time deposits) that mature in less than one year. balance(s) must be sufficient to meet your expenses for the first year of your studies. The letter must be dated within the past 3 months. Is it enough that my bank sends a letter which says that I have no problem to pay for xx dollar in the next year? To be honest I do not feel that good sending them my whole account information.... Thanks!

hey Hitman, check your pm

engineering. But I only need to do have of my credits in engineering so I think I will visit some business lectures as well.... Why did u pick German btw? It is not a very popular language is it? If u need help with it, I am happy to help

haha I am German and I will attend Columbia this Fall, but I will not be in the German program

Yeah its first in Germany and 4th in Europe.....so it def is not a bad school! Money isn't the problem. The master costs about 42.000 dollar for the 30 credits and living in ny isn't much more expensive than in munich for me. So overall it is "just" 30.000 euro more than munich. I also have to admit after Columbia I will prob go to a consulting or investment firm. I have the feeling Columbia is not the best place for research, although the program isn't ranked that bad, but it's great for getting you a good job in business?! But I haven't accepted the offer yet so I am open for every kind of input. As I said for me its hard to evaluate how much I can profit from Columbia, as everything happened so unexpected. Edit: I forgot to mention that I already did my undergrad at the Technical University of Munich

hey, i am from europe so i cannot tell u what asian companies think but if we talk about good business schools in london we usually name the LSE. Even I do not know UCL and I usually no most of the popular universities.

Thanks to both of u! @dedicateddan: What do u mean by "paying tuition might be an offer though". Do u mean a company might pay my tuition? And do u refer "If you were to apply to schools..." to the time after Columbia - in case that I will go for an Ph.D. or MBA - or do u suggest to wait for another year?

I will prob go. haven't made my decision yet, but everybody urges me to go ^^...

Hi, I planned to apply for a Ph.D. but after consideration I delayed my application bc I wrote 2 (Mechanical Engineering and Business) Bachelors in only 2.5 years and thought I would need to do more research. So my plan was to do the Master at the Robotic Department of the Technical University of Munich (I am German) and to go to the Carnegie Mellon University for 8 month to publish and research (I already have both admissions) and then apply for a Ph.D. But as my professors already wrote all my LORs I just applied for a Master at Columbia University just because I did not want to tell them: Well u spend so much time on my recommendation but now I do not need it anymore..... Long story short yesterday I got accepted to Columbia and now I do not really know what to do, especially because I did not even consider the option. So right now I try to figure out how much I can and will profit from a Master in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University? How hard is it to get a well paid job afterwards if u come from an ivy school? As I have 2 degrees I could imagine to work in Consulting/Banking or to write a Ph.D. and do research. Overall I am just lost and I need to make a decision till April the 16th so there is not much time left, because I just did not prepare for this situation. So thanks for every kind of input!

hey thanks so far. I applied for the mechanical engineering department.

Hey, I have a little problem: I planned to apply for a Ph.D. but after consideration I delayed my application bc I wrote 2 bachelors in only 2.5 years and thought I would need to do more research. So my plan was to do the Master at the Robotic Department of the Technical University of Munich (I am German) and to go to the Carnegie Mellon University for 8 month to publish and research (I already have both admissions) and then apply for a Ph.D. But as my professors already wrote all my LORs I just applied for a Master at Columbia University just because I did not want to tell them: Well u spend so much time on my recommendation but now I do not need it anymore..... Long story short today I got accepted to Columbia and now I do not really know what to do? How good is a MS from Columbia (My field of interest is robotics) and how hard is it to get a good job? How likely do I get into another good Ph.D. program after my MS at Columbia? How good is the school itself? What would u do? thanks a lot! Oh and i forgot: My second bachelor is in business-corporate finance. So I could also imagine to go into consulting or banking after my MS. (I know these two subjects differ a lot but its an option)

Hey why don't u just ask him? I mean if u work with him anyway u should know him well enough to just ask how far he is.

hi, would somebody please be so nice and tell me if the things happened with the calculator are typical for the GRE, especially 0.23*0.47 = 1081 instead of 0.1081, or if it was just something my computer messed up?

Hey, i made my first powerprep today and i had two problems: a) The calculator gave me strange results. 0.23*0.47 = 1081 instead of 0.1081...is that common? Moreover: 73/3 = 42.x i typed it 4 times in because i could not believe it??? And at the end it just said error. Can i just use it a certain amount of times? The y in the pic. is it just wrong or was it a "trick" of course it is clear that the median has to be 10 regardless the value of y, but i am still wondering?

I think that advice if the letter is strong one or not is a very good one. (I already assumed that) But one question to u runonsentence: Giving the fact that both of his other recommenders are not the best choice to rate his academic strength, don't u think there should be at least one letter from a real professor? I am asking because i had a bunch of recommenders from different fields (university, industry...) and when i called the admission office, they all told me that these letters should come from persons who have the position to recommend me for a phd program. In this case that meant professors.

Hey, first i do not know much about letters of recommendation, but as nobody wrote here, maybe my opinion is better than nothing. All the schools i talked to suggested me to send in academic letters when applying for a phd program and not for a work oriented-master degree. That is what Berkley wrote me towards the question if they just want to have professors or a mix: Following this advice i would try to get as many professors as possible. Maybe u can work sth out with your professor. As he is willing to write you a recommendation the question is only why it will be short. Maybe he does not know u well enough or just is to busy to spend hours on a recommendation. (Consider how many people want to have recommendations...) So it could be a solution to provide more information in form of bullet points or even a written recommendation. If you make sure that there will be as little work as possible for the professor i would assume you have a good chance to get a non-standart letter. Also i cannot tell u how much reputation vs content values, but i think that standard compared to all the outstanding letters they (university u apply for) get will not help much except his name is obama ;-)

Hey and another question: should professors just sign with their academic titel or with every titel say have? To be concret: my prof is also a CEO... Please do not be surprised by all these question, i just never had to submit a LOR as they are uncommon in Germany...

Hey, as I am allowed to see all me letters of recommendation and edit them, i was wondering if somebody would be so kind and review them. I do not want to upload them here, so if yes please be so kind and give me your mail adress. Thanks :-)

Hey, the math part is working pretty well so far, but I still have big problems with the verbal part. So what I did so far was learning the 300 words from Kaplan, the 800 from Baron, learnt the word roots (btw I had 6 years of latin), but what else can I do? So far I would say I have so many mistakes (4-9 per section), because of two reasons: a) I just do not know what the words mean, so I can often rule out a lot of them but if two are left, 50% will still be wrong Sometimes I get the whole meaning of the sentence understand all the words below and then I just pick the wrong one, because I think it makes the most sense. So what I tried once, I translated the question in my native language and asked a friend what he would take, and he took the wrong one too... So far I do the verbal tasks in the 'new GRE' book from Kaplan I still have two weeks left, so I would be thankful for every tip + where can I find more vocabs? I can usually do 50-100 new ones a day so 500-1000 more would be fine i guess. Thanks!

Hey, thanks first! I assume that the thermo prof writes a strong letter, as he asked me for a lot of things (Area of research , statement of purpose, CV, plan of study, my grades and every thing else i want to be in this lor). Besides that I am allowed to see every recommendation and also have the possibility to change little things, if my prof is ok with it of course. As mentioned the only thing i am worried about is that I i don't have any research interest in thermo. It was just a course i liked and did pretty well.

Hi, I want to apply for a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. My research field so far is and should be robotic. What I have so far: a) The Prof i work for. Robotic Department/Teaching Assistent; he used to teach at CalTech and had a fellowship at the NASA, so he should know what he talks about. My bachelor degree overviewer: Robotic Departement, Multi Body Systems/Resarch; I support his Ph.D. with my bachelor thesis. So he can write about research. So far these two persons know me pretty well and are both in the field i want to do my Ph.D. in c) A Prof I took an additional course. Adhesive Bonding. He is a kind of hybrid. He only teaches a few lectures, and spends the rest of his time in a research-company. He told me he'd like to support me but as he has so much to do, I should write my own letter and he'll look over it/correct it d) Another Prof I heard. Thermodynamics. He has its own chair like a) and earned his Ph.D in the US, so he has experience in studying abroad. As u can prob. already see these fields don't have anything to do with my research field. Thermodynamics was a required subject. I only took adhesive bonding because I was interested in, but it is not a core subject like mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics etc So what would u take and how bad is it, that these two subjects differ a lot from my research interest. ------------- e) There is a human resource manager from a robotic company, I sometimes go to ( I haven't worked there for a long time, its more like little internships) . The company is in the states. She could write about my interest in robotic, BUT she is not academic staff! So what do u guys think? Besides that: There are 5 Universities offering a robotic program I am interested in. Of course their programs all differ a little bit. I will talk about that in my statement of purpose. (explain why this program, which prof i'd like to work for and so on) But can i always submit the same lor or should they already announce that program in their lor? thx

Ok so to sum it up: a) 1-2 mistakes overall (section 1+2) on the math part is fine for 750-800 4-5 mistakes on each section is fine for around 600? on the verbal part? Thanks!