TeaGirl

They may make their own decisions, but now that you've been accepted it's still a good idea to scope out those professors who you'd like to work with and bring yourself to your attention. They may have dozens of accepted applications to the department, so it's not likely that each professor is gonna go through all of them or if they do, that they will spot yours. If you contact them, then if they need students, they may look up your specific application and see if they want to interview you. From what I know, the way funding in universities usually works is first they accept a bunch of students. Then they wait while the professors interested in new PhD students are asked to look through the applications and see if they find someone suitable, OR, while some of the accepted students contact their POI and then their POI looks for that application. Also during this time different POIs will contact different students (whether the POI or the student initiated the exchange) and which may lead to interviews. Some of the students will receive an RA. For the rest, the department looks at how much funding they have and assign TA and Fellowships to the other accepted students. At this point, if some students decline their admission, they may make new offers to additional students.

Thanks! I read some reviews online about Troy not being a very safe/friendly town, how true do you think that is? Is it a big concern. One of my favorite things about going places is to explore a bit the towns I'm in, different stores/shops/meet people. Would it prevent someone from exploring the town and are people in general friendly? Also, how about the restaurant/activities situation? One more question about the school, what do you think of the facilities and help available, i.e. libraries, classrooms, staff in general. I would also love any opinions about their career center if you've ever used it. That's one of the main attractions for me about CU because I love hiking and skiing (not that my scaredy butt is anything more than a novice ). I am a little concerned about cost of living, although for the first year, I am planning to stay in the graduate housing so either way, similar costs. I was a teeny bit alarmed by a lot of bad student reviews on this one site (they were undergrads so I'm not sure it translates to grads). Basically lots of complaining about it being a rich kids party school.

So I'm going back and forth between these two programs and leaning a little toward RPI. Since I'm unable to visit either at the moment, I'm hoping for a little advice Does anyone have any experience with their engineering programs, reputation, ease of finding non-academic work after graduation, etc? Or even just general info about the schools. Also any info about living in Troy or Boulder would be appreciated!

You can find the NRC rankings in the posts above. The US News rankings for Civil are here. 1 University of California--Berkeley 1 University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign 3 Georgia Institute of Technology 3 Stanford University 5 University of Texas--Austin 6 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 6 Purdue University 8 Cornell University 8 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor 8 Virginia Tech 11 Carnegie Mellon University 11 Texas A&M University--College Station 13 California Institute of Technology 13 Northwestern University 13 University of California--Davis 16 University of California--San Diego 16 University of Minnesota--Twin Cities 16 University of Wisconsin--Madison 19 University of Washington 20 North Carolina State University 20 University of California--Santa Barbara 20 University of California--Los Angeles 20 University of Colorado--Boulder 24 Lehigh University 24 Princeton University 24 University at Buffalo--SUNY 24 University of Maryland--College Park 24 University of Southern California

Ah so it's an online exchange. Interesting. From what you wrote I took it more in a "I say potayto you say potato" way. As in if we both accept that we are what we are and that each person will do their own thing, then we are of a mind and we'll get along just fine As to smileys I don't know. Some people use them. I know some people with a sarcastic sense of humor, the kind where you're joking with a straight face. So different senses of humor translate differently online. For what it's worth I don't think the person who said it was being in any way mean or meant "leave me alone" at all.

I think there is a problem in making science and fashion/beauty connected with a causal relationship in the first place. As far the science cheerleaders go, I'm not sure I appreciate trying the sexy sell on science. Yet again, instead of dealing with a problem, we're selling something else with the sexy-woman body image. Rather than establishing some new stereotype and adding to already enough pressure on girls to look a certain way in order to feel accepted (it's not enough that you're a scientist, you must be a sexy scientist!), I think a better way of going about it is to simply show different female scientists. They come in all shapes, colors, and kinds, and in all ranges of fashion consciousness. The idea here is to make women comfortable to pursue science in their own skin without having to conform to one stereotype or another. I'm not sure I understand this. What is male thought here? Science is science. In it's pure form, there's no male thought and female thought: There's the scientific method, logic, facts, etc. To be a scientist, you get rid of your personal biases, social background, etc. and just address the facts and problems. I don't see that women are trying to think like men. I think both are thinking and producing science in the same way. If you mean there's a male social culture and pressure in some scientific fields, then that's true. The problem is in being treated fairly and equally in the social professional sphere.

I was 22 when I when to grad school the first time and got my MS. I'm 26 now and will be turning 27 when I start my PhD. I feel a lot better prepared and more mature going into this now. I'm glad I took a little time off.

Sounds like a funny exchange Why would anyone be offended?

Sometimes I'll drink tea or have some cheese and/or fruit. Although I avoid constant snacking because it makes me feel... not so great. I can end up just snacking my way through the whole day and never having a proper meal. If I feel I need some energy/food I'll just go and make myself a plate and fill it with proper food. I do have "afternoon tea" with some fruit and dark chocolate since I eat dinner a bit late. I guess that could be considered snacking

The best place to get a definitive answer for this would be to email some graduate schools that you are applying to and ask them what their policy is.

Agree, email/call graduate admissions. It could be that they're busy or it could be that they never received one item or another. If it's the latter you should make sure that you'd still be considered for admission because there's a chance that you wouldn't be.

I second the suggestion of getting out with a Masters degree and leaving it at that. If you are only in your first year talk to your school's graduate advisor about the possibility of transfer to a Masters program in engineering. Try and get a summer internship in an engineering firm to get some experience. That should make it easier to find work as an engineer when you get your degree. Since you are talking about feeling burned out (and I know the feeling) I highly highly recommend to take a 1-2 year break between your masters and going for a PhD. I did my Masters right after my BE and trust me, even when you love your field, you can feel burned out and forget why you ever got into it in the first place. Get a job and see what the world is like and decide later on if you want to dive back in. If you're already past your quals/candidacy/etc. then you should talk to your advisor about your wishes to change fields from physics to engineering and about your goals in life and see what advice they can give. They may try talk you into staying, so you should be sure of what it is that you want to do. An LOR is a requirement from your MS advisor for most schools should you decide to apply to a PhD later, so you need to present this as a responsible decision that you made because you know what your goals are. Either way, if engineering is your end goal, start investigating what courses you can take right away and look for internships and jobs in the meantime.

I wouldn't worry about it at all. My percentiles also changed slightly from what was reported to me I did my test to what showed up on my account when I submitted my applications. GRE changes and updates their percentiles as more people do the same exam/questions and they get additional data. I'm pretty sure ad-coms and graduate schools putting together your file know very well that the percentiles change plus/minus a few points during the year.

Yes I think there is such a thing as safety schools and one should try to apply to them. A safety school would be one where your GPA/GRE/etc. is way above the average incoming stats, you have great research fit for that school, and finally it has a higher acceptance rate. However, I agree with uromastyx that they should be schools that you would be perfectly happy to attend. Never apply to a school where you would be less than happy to go and if that means no safety, then so be it. Of course nothing is ever guaranteed and plenty of people get rejected by their safety and only to be accepted into their top choice. You're just trying to maximize your chances of getting accepted. It's possible for some programs, it's already too competitive so there really are very little or no "safety" schools.

My sleep time is probably more important to me than anything else. Sleep is pretty important and being deprived of sleep will affect your mental abilities negatively and decrease your focus, so I think as grad students we really should try to get enough of it I used to do something similar. I'd stay up really late (sometimes until 3am) and then wake up for 8am classes like a zombie. No focus or real concentration. After spending a few years feeling like I'm constantly trying to catch up on sleep, I made a decision to sleep early and wake up everyday at the same time. I started going to bed at 10-11pm and setting my alarm to 7:30am. The first few nights were horrible and I couldn't sleep for hours because my biological clock was out of whack. I stuck with it though and after less than a week I started falling asleep right away and waking up refreshed before my alarm even rings. Buying a sleep mask was also the best $11 I ever spent. The best part? I discovered mornings! You have no idea how productive and focused you can be in the morning after a full good night's sleep. I find myself getting a lot more things done in 1 hour pre-10am than the same amount of time spent in the afternoon or at night. The most important thing to get out of this cycle is to set an earlier time at which the day is over. Once that clock strikes 10pm (for ex.) that's it as opposed to your current 1-2am.

Check the results here. I believe I saw that all 4 schools have already started to send out acceptances, rejections and invitations for interviews.

The NRC rankings were revised in 2012 and there were some pretty significant changes. You can find them for all programs here. Once you go outside the top 5 schools rankings from different sources can become really random. As an example, I just compared some of the programs in my field. The ranks of the programs in the past couple of years according to U.S. news are Purdue(9) UT-Austin (13) VTech (14-18) and CU-Boulder(32-35). The same programs according the NRC s-rankings get Purdue (17-45), UT-Austin (38-82), VTech(33-72) and CU-Boulder (13-40). Sometimes even the s-rank and r-rank of the same school will vary widely, like ASU. In the s-rank it's 17-49 while in the r-rank it's 34-74. I would say that's kind of a big difference even though NRC says both rankings are valid. At least CU-B falls within the range. For all the others, the usn rankings aren't even in the NRC range. I mean one puts UT-Austin at 13 and the other in the absolutely best case scenario at 38. So how useful does that make rankings? Not much honestly. I'd say rankings can give you a list of universities to choose from and some general guidelines about a program (strong, good, average, weak etc.) As far comparing specific programs that are within 10-20 places of each other, you really don't know which is better. It's best to choose universities not based on ranking but based on what you want to study, how many professors they have doing that research and how good it was, and finally take a very good look at their websites to see how long their students took to graduate and what kind of jobs they got. I only used ranking info as a rough starting point to see how tough a program might be to get into and the general outlook of the program by others in the field.

You can view the results page and search for mechanical. I believe I saw some rejections and acceptances posted on there.

Parent/family member/Advisor after getting my first acceptance telling random strangers, colleagues and everyone they meet "Oh, TeaGirl is going to University X for her PhD!" Questions ensue about specific plans, travel dates, etc. Err.... I don't even know I'm going there yet!!

One of the programs I applied to started sending out acceptances yesterday. I wasn't one of those. I'm getting worried I'm so glad I have a couple of acceptances under my belt to keep me a little sane. Besides that, I almost had a heart attack when I saw an email with the word "Admission." It was some spam email about getting an online degree

The most important thing is the advisor. Other than that, all things being equal, I would go for the larger department since they usually have a lot more chances for collaboration and more social options. I also don't think large departments are necessarily more competitive since there's too many people to keep track of what everyone else is doing. It might be more of an issue in a particular cohort depending on the people, and this is whether it's a small or big program.

bone dry

Yes! I just want to get past all the waiting and not knowing and start planning already. At this point I spend Mondays waiting for the East coast to wake up :/

about face

I don't see a problem with joining undergrads clubs. I was a member of one during my MS and I'm definitely planning on joining at least an outdoor activity type club wherever I end up, and maybe something else.