hungry

UCLA is in Westwood which is arguably the nicest part of southern cal aside from the OC. It's nothing like being in LA or around USC - where I went , so don't let the idea of it being a bad area influence your decision.

This was awesome, thanks

OP, I think you vastly overestimate how much people will care, as nearly everyone has a fellowship... Just use your name, nuff said. They will judge you based on the school name in your email anyway, no need to start making every email into a resume. As far as if it comes off wrong, yea, it will.

One problem might be in making sure it's ok to use funds for grad school vs. undergrad, but here's some things I've found. Groups on campus: IEEE, Eta Kappa Nu, Alpha Lambda Delta... all those worthless societies you paid $50 to join when you were a wide eyed freshman? A lot of that money goes to scholarships. Greek: Almost all fraternities and sororities have them. Conferences: This is where I have had the best luck. Lots of academic conferences have scholarships. And not just the big ones, even small ones - and the conferences are really fun to go to! Plus almost no one applies because a lot of people don't know that conferences have scholarships. Companies you have worked for when you were younger / in high school: KFC, McDonalds, even Safeway had scholarships I applied for. Big Online Scholarship Repositories: ScholarshipExperts.com etc... thousands of listed scholarships but you are competing with kids from all across the world. Not worth it in my opinion.

i would absolutely ask for a refund, that's crap!

Also it's not like you're choosing between Stanford and a community college... it's UCLA. I hate UCLA, all their fans, and all their teams (USC undergrad ), but I'd still probably do a PhD there over paying for a Masters myself at Stanford.

I took the old version so I'm not sure if it's still the same, but about half of the "hard" words that showed up in the verbal section were exactly from the list of words given in the Princeton Review book. Making the flashcards takes a while, but it was worth it in my opinion.

You might want to not mention your specific lab at UT Austin in your post, you don't want them happening across this and seeing you are less-than-enthused about the acceptance and money they are throwing your way! But I have two co-workers who did the MSEE program at Stanford. It is extremely intense, and you will not have much, if any, time for research during it. That being said, one of them went on to get their PhD (at MIT...) so I think it is good preparation for the PhD anyway, as long as you can manage to work or squeeze some type of project in there that you could talk about for a grad app afterwards. As far as the cash cow, my recommenders told me the exact same thing, and that it wasn't worth it. But then again, he said the same thing about every MS program so maybe it's just a common sentiment amongst older professors who got their PhD and think MS people are not worthy haha. Anyways, I wouldn't discount the UT Austin program, but I bet you'll make some good decisions and it looks like you have some good options. Good Luck!

I can't even imagine this. Did you contact profs / write custom SOPs for each school? I applied to 6 total and it literally took me almost every day from August till January! Maybe I'm just slow.

If it were me, I would email them immediately and then follow up with phone calls. Unfortunately they are probably closed until Tuesday. But best of luck.

There is a chance the Ivy League 'name' could help you get a better job afterwards, and that might make up for the lower ranking when it comes time to apply for PhD programs in 5 years. Visit both!

For the Mitchel Scholarship Skype interviews the coordinator told us to look at the following 2 links beforehand. I never actually watched the video but I found the article to be very helpful. If you are less lazy than I am, maybe the video will be helpful too. Link 1 (Article she sent out): http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1933214,00.html Link 2 (Video she sent out): http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,46937715001_1933401,00.html Best of luck! Just remember to relax and be yourself

This made my day haha

gradcafe overdose

i think there's a lot of overlap. I'm interested in controls, and depending on the school, that's either EE or ME. About half the grad schools I applied to were EE and the other half ME. I think if you are interested in programming then EE may be a better choice for you, as most of the programming involved in a strictly ME job (at least that I've seen) is VB-like macros or scripts for modeling things in Solid Works. I'd take classes in both and make up your mind later on. If you're already willing to wait a few extra years for that degree you want, then you might as well take a semester or two to do research / take a few classes across the board and make sure you make the right decision.

Yup, thanks for asking! He called me about 5 seconds after I sent that follow up you guys suggested haha. He said that he thought I had a good chance, and sent me a project proposal for what I may be working on if I worked with him. He asked me to think about a few questions at the end. I emailed him back my answers to the questions the next day (you know, after spending about 10 hours straight thinking about it ... http://www.phdcomics...hp?comicid=1047), and he immediately replied "you'll hear from us in 2 weeks". UGH!!! So either I completely blew it or, well, we shall see.

Thank you all. I'll wait till its the evening for him then go for it

I got an email from a professor three days ago saying "We are in the final stages of the application process and it might be good if we could chat on the phone or via email." I responded saying I'd love to talk, but he got caught up at a conference and couldn't call that day. He emailed saying he would call me the next day (which was yesterday), but I waited all day and he didn't call. Now, I really want to email back and say "I'm sorry I missed you but I'll be free anytime etc etc," but is that too much? This will be the 3rd day, and I don't want to be a pest. I'm probably thinking too much into this, but it is my absolute dream school so I don't want to blow it. Any advice by the end of today would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Maybe you could make that spreadsheet editable by all? That'd be a lot of work for you to do it for everyone!