AldonSmith

Which school do you guys feel has a better reputation and career prospects? PhD from U.Mich or from Columbia?

Also, the past few weeks have been NSF proposal deadlines for many departments. During these weeks schools basically come to a halt as they prepare proposals. Your professor (or any of ours) could simply have been swamped with securing as much money as possible....for us?

I agree with everything you said, however, the difference in rankings is completely negligible. Stanford, Cal, and MIT's rankings always swap through 1-3 depending on which ranking criteria and website you look at. As other people mentioned, fit/adviser/research is much more important. I would also like to point out, future careers. If you are hoping to get a job in California/Semi-Valley, I am willing to bet that having a degree from Cal or Stanford is much more beneficial than having a degree from MIT. The networking possibilities or internship opportunities will be far easier to come by and greater than if you were in MA.

For structure phds, how common is it to receive an interview either an invite or from a POI directly? I know in some other disciplines, interviews are generally required for admissions, but I've noticed it varies for engineers. For those who have already been accepted for PhD programs, were you contacted before you were notified of your acceptance? If we don't hear back from either a POI or the graduate office, should we just assume we were rejected?