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canuck

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Posts posted by canuck

  1. Hello fellow Canuck.

    Both are very highly regarded as engineering schools. Pretty much equivalent. With schools of such similar reputation, the overriding factor should be who you want to work with. I mean its a long hard four years, I've heard horror stories about some advisors, while others can be so great. Talk to people get a feel for different professors. I picked my school because a) my advisor is a star B) he is fantastic to work for.

  2. I'm almost completely convinced that the people behind application/scholarship process don't set firm dates in order to test your ability to endure a mountain of stress before you even get to graduate school, otherwise there would be no sane reason not to let you know in advance what day you will get notification and how.

    I am in San Diego, I will be checking my mailbox like a lunatic probably for the next week...

  3. You are a freshman?

    Probably the first thing to worry about is learning some mathematics; you could find out you are mediocre. You should probably focus on classwork and maybe even reading some papers for a couple of years to decide that you want to be a professor at an American university. You'll have to be miles better than everyone else if you want to start thinking about Harvard.

  4. Alternatively you could do an MS and find out that you are an utterly ordinary researcher or worse. The point is that by assuming you could do an MS and get into a better school, you have to concede that there is an equal chance you will only get into worse schools. In the end, unless you had a disasterous application strategy, you are probably only about as good as the schools that accepted you.

  5. I think if you're unsure about whether doing a phd or doing a phd at UCSB is right for you then do the MASc. UBC has a great mech department particularly in fluids. Overall I think UCSB and UBC are roughly equal (according to ARWU). I know going straight to a PhD is common in the US but it is unheard of in engineering in Canada, usually MASc's are funded however.

  6. linguistically playful and creative authors -- Vonnegut, Bukowski, and Pratchett leap to mind, but there are hundreds of examples.

    I love Bukowski, particularly Ham on Rye, but I would have to say he'd be the last author I'd point to in order to expand your command of the English language. He writes about as bare and as terse as is possible.

  7. I think theres really no question that there are very good students and very good professors at smaller schools; perhaps not world class, nobel laureate material, but very good nonetheless. However I think some of what santana is saying is very true, no matter how indelicately put his comments are. In my own experience applying to engineering programs, looking through the entire faculty directory at all the schools I applied to I could probably count the number of professors who did their PhD's out of the top 30 on one hand, maybe two. Out of hundreds of professors thats a pretty terrifying thing to realize. Even more horrifying is that probably around 50% did their PhD's in the top 10. It's a bit sad really. There are no doubt a myriad of reasons not the least of which is that a department may receive 80 applications for a single tenure-track opening. It's hard to stand out, we've all learned this from the grad school application process and it seems like it gets worse... but at least you get to do what you love.

  8. I mean if the schools are roughly equivalent in stature which they are you should be focusing on much finer details, like advisors and research and even if you like the city, that should be pretty obvious though.

  9. I disagree. Especially at big schools. Your research and your pedigree are overwhelmingly more important than your TA experience. If you produce significant work, you can literally be a disaster in the classroom and get great positions (you see this often and its too bad really); conversely if you can inspire 1st year undergrads with great lectures but your work is insignificant, then forget being a professor at a big school.

  10. I'm saying that Cambridge is one of the the most highly regarded universities in the world whereas Georgetown is highly regarded in the DC area. Unless you plan on studying modern US history I would think Cambridge would be a much wiser career move. I can only speak really about engineering but every faculty at a good school seems to have Cambridge PhD professors.

  11. My guess is that you already tried to get into Stanford and didn't make the cut. I'd say its just as likely that an MS will make you less appetizing to Stanford. A few bad grades or a weak pub record during an MS could torpedo the sense of worth you seem to have acquired. You need to remove your blinders and realize UCLA is a fantastic school.

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