zilch

Old School Accepted Scrubs (technically they're still in med school) also, as an engineer who dabbled a bit in physics I rather enjoy the Big Bang Theory, it's delightfully awkward.

sub 3.5 gpas can be a pretty big negative in some disciplines (engineering and applied science tend to frown upon them). During undergrad i had a 3.3 (3.4 in major), research experience, was on one publication and was about to submit for a another at the time of application, had lots of extra-curriculars, a 1440 GRE and most of the schools I applied to said that my GPA was 'worrying' or 'weaker than we'd like' or something to that effect. The discipline/field has a large effect on how GPA is viewed and weighted.

sometimes the comments will mention specific things that they think need to be re-worked, it depends on the reviewer and probably also the discipline. I've talked to a few of my fellow engineers who had also applied before and a large number of us got comments on our personalities such as 'good entrepreneurial spirit' and 'student displays strong independence'.

Chocolate Rain

Game Face

avoid it if you can. Because the father/child relationship is as direct as you can conceivably get, the assumption of bias will be gigantic. A lot of schools require 3 letters but will take more. You can ask him to be your 4th as a supplemental writer. Your 3 'official' letter writers should not be directly related to you.

Good Will Hunting Flubber The Nutty Professor

the IM comments I got mostly referred to my research proposal and previous research experience. the BI comments cited one of my rec letters and the personal history. None of reviewers seemed to care about the GRE.

hmm, I'd like to think that my chances are at least ok. good gre scores, lowish gpa from the number 2 institution in the field, research experience with publications, a long list of extra-curricular activities. I managed an honorable mention last year and my reviewers seemed to really like my broader impacts. Oddly enough, my ratings in intellectual merit were higher than in broader impacts even though my gpa was pretty low.

professors have been entrenched in their disciplines for so long that it is very hard for them to step back and look for a fresh perspective. also, grad students aren't necessarily admitted for ability to develop independent thoughts. In fact, it's damn near impossible to evaluate that particular aspect based on an application. That being said, most academic institutions need grad students to do work (teaching and/or research for a professor) and they are generally ok with unoriginal students which doesn't help the whole 'stimulating discussion' thing. Some might even prefer them because they do what they're told. perhaps visit a professor during office hours and bring up a few of the alternative perspectives you've found and see what their thoughts are. They may have a good reason for not including it in their way of thinking or it could be that they simply don't know where to look for views outside of their own discipline.

I got the 'you've been rejected' message about 5-6 weeks after my exchange with the professor (I think the rejection was sometime in March, but it honestly just all blends together in my memory). Although I think my case may have been particular to that school realizing it was short on funds or something as I met someone else on a visit elsewhere that had the same thing happen to him. TA/RA's generally are on a waiver + stipend, depends on how much they expect you to work. best of luck to you

definitely a good sign but as repatriate said it is also only a chance. when I was applying last year I was notified by a professor that he was looking into getting me a fellowship and then I got rejected by that University a few weeks later.

we have weekly seminars. It's conducted in the form of a pass/fail course that all graduate students have to be registered for. But we only have to attend 3 per semester. I don't think my department requires giving a seminar, but if you're going for the PhD you will most certainly be giving talks during your degree but they will be to area specific audiences rather than the entire department. However, my department is probably a little different from most, we are humongous (1200 undergrads and 400-500 grads) and many of the sub-fields and concentrations are almost un-related to each other.

problem with music is that people have very well defined tastes by the time they get out of college. if you can afford, you can take your host out to lunch and avoid having to think about what they'll like or what's appropriate.

I write things, come up with ideas of questionable feasibility, do a few things for a student organization, enlighten undergrads with my cynical observations, and sleep.

a local (local to you, exotic to them) edible goody. that way, it doesn't clutter up his/her house.

poor asian kid here. Meritocracy does exist (its how I got into college), although it is far from ideal. George Bush is a case of political clout, while we can't escape that it is also a very small percentage of cases. the world isn't perfect, nor is it fair. You will have privileges and you will be gypped. I've never really cared that AA seemed to disadvantage me. All I do is try and if I fail I figure out something else. Also, this debate has about run its course, interesting points were made on both sides but it's unlikely that either side is going to convince the other.

State schools in Illinois are taking a beating. I think stated this in a post somewhere else but here it is again. UIUC, the flagship institution of the University of Illinois, has only received 7% of their appropriations from the state for the fiscal year ending this summer. Furloughs have been implemented for faculty and staff and they're scrambling to cut whatever they can in case the state just doesn't cough up the money. Southern Illinois was actually facing the possibility of having to close http://thesouthern.com/news/local/education/article_b073fbbc-e54e-11de-8ddb-001cc4c002e0.html), granted it's not really a research institution but it's still 20,000 students (grad and undergrad combined).

I've known many who cheated their way through undergrad to stellar GPAs and are now in grad school (some are even in highly prestigious institutions). I have no reason to believe that they've changed so I assume they're still doing. The most cheating that I've come across in grad school are people who cheat on homework, but in my curriculum the hw is never worth more than 15% and no one seems to care at all if people are copying or using solutions guides. Anecdotal evidence during my undergrad suggested that whenever anyone was caught cheating on exams they were almost always caught in rather large groups of 6 or more students who had combined forces like Voltron, except evil and not righteous.

when colleges say "minority" they actually mean "under represented minority". The asian population in the United States is most definitely not a representative sample of asians in general. We (I am an asian american) tend to highly educated or the children of the highly educated which means college or grad school has been a part of our family's culture and expectations since the beginning. When you take into account the relative scarcity of schools in Asia compared to the population (especially in China) which serves to drive a lot of students to apply overseas, it's not surprising that in a large number of disciplines we are over-represented. The asian college/grad school population also leans toward the sciences, I suspect this is due to a few different reasons. One, as immigrants or children of immigrants, the memory of struggling in a new country is still fresh and the sciences (engineering, medicine, etc.) are seen as fields with good job markets and high job security. Two, asian cultures don't have the same concept Liberal Arts and Humanities as the United States so it doesn't make sense to a lot of us (whereas in science, gravity is gravity no matter what culture you're from). During my undergrad, being an asian in engineering was definitely not to my advantage. We were over-represented in the field, the department explicitly stated that we did not qualify for minority scholarships, there was a certain expectation of high grades/book smarts and low networking/leadership/social skills. Being an asian-american also added the annoyance that many people assumed I was an international student. I've had many forms and such misfiled by administrators because they saw my name and stuck me in the international pile (it wouldn't be so bad it they didn't keep asking me for proof of english proficiency). For grad school, I don't think it really matters. But my perspective is from engineering and that's a field where individual professors hold a lot of sway over the admissions process. If a certain professor wants to admit someone and has the funding to do it, you can't stop them short of a veto from a department head/dean. That being said, gender definitely does matter in engineering, even for grad school admissions. My specific flavor of engineering is 10% female and there's a lot of push from all over the place to increase this. I went on a visit last year and of the group of 12 that was invited, none of us had been admitted yet except for the 2 girls who had gotten acceptances weeks before the invitation (I would've just thought that they were the top candidates except there was a guy in the group who was damn near a prodigy and hadn't gotten his acceptance yet). in short, ethnicity doesn't seem to matter in fields where personal perspective doesn't matter (after all, there's only 1 correct solution for the hydrogen atom, if your life experiences tell you otherwise then you're either crazy or a future nobel laureate, in which case they'll still think you're crazy until you publish it).

I would suggest taking the GRE before you go to work for the following reasons 1) Your undergraduate experience is still relatively fresh in your mind so a lot of the math problems will still seem like easy homework problems for you 2) Once you start work, you will not have nearly as much time to prepare for the exam. 3) It gives you plenty of time to get your scores and re-take (if necessary) before you start work What do you mean by electronics courses?

I have a common name and it can be good and bad. If you googled my name you'd get at least 2 dozen prominent/semi-prominent people who have the same name as me ranging from a CEO to professors to grad students to bloggers to a 6th century prince. It's not all together surprising that I don't show in the first two pages. Although this makes it fairly difficult to find the actual me, it can also give the impression that I'm insignificant/have low impact to which a potential employer may say "why would we hire a guy that hasn't done anything worth mentioning". The whole point of a professor/researcher having a website is to have it serve as a public resume that lists all of the stuff that they've done, I'd imagine that you want people to look at it rather than trying to dig you up on facebook.

computer science is one of the few fields where a low GPA doesn't get your app tossed out instantly. They want to know more about what you've done, if you released a bunch of programs that show your ability they wouldn't really care that you didn't do well in class.

starting a consulting company as an engineer is a bit different from the most popular connotation which revolves around business/IT consulting. if you're going to offer structural/civil engineering services, you need to be licensed (PE), otherwise you can't sign off on anything. For Architecture, the most important part of your credential is going to be your portfolio. start up costs can be as low as whatever it takes to get a business license in your city/state, a website that serves as a 'storefront' and whatever specialty equipment you need (surveying tools and the like). Since consulting is project based, you don't have to rent an office and hire an administrative assistant until your client base is big enough to actually need them. It's not uncommon for small consulting firms to be based out of a home office and have the points of contact be a cellphone and email address. I think the biggest challenge for starting a technical/design consulting business is not in the start-up funding, but rather in being able to consistently get paying contracts. if you're looking to go the whole nine yards (with office and staff) right away the most common sources of start-up funding are friends and family, venture capitalists and angel investors. You can generally raise on the order of $10,000 from friends and family, venture capitalists typically make investments in the range of millions and angel investors (they're like VCs except they invest their own money) are the in-between.

application fees and getting mixed messages from schools.