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ditch the third paragraph. Aside from the reasons already mentioned, it just felt awkward to read. The SOP needs to have one cohesive theme, it needs to discuss your abilities and how you can fit into their program. In its current state, I can only describe your SOP as spastic. You are applying for a technical discipline, one that requires licensure (after your degree). Your SOP needs to cover your technical skills, why you're qualified and convey a certain amount of professionalism. Think of it this way, if you were giving this as a speech, could you do it in a suit and facing PhDs in your field? There is room for personality but that should not be the focus.

engineering and computer science tend not to care about whether you're an international student. It has partially to do with there being a large international population at the undergrad level. Regarding your chances, your numbers look good, how's the rest of your app? Research experience? rec writers? rank of your undergrad institution? For financial aid, each school (each department sometimes) will handle things differently, the only good way to find out is to snoop around the school's website and contact their admissions office.

I think Fuzzy covered most of it. Your SOP doesn't say anything other than "I want to be a civil engineer because it'll make me qualified to do these jobs". since you're applying to engineering, you need to list more than a physics and chemistry class as your 'science' experience. A math degree generally states that you have solid computational skills but you're probably weaker in terms of applied science and laboratory skills. You should discuss any experience you have with applying your technical knowledge to solving problems (anything from school projects to home improvement to research experience). If you have experience with things like finite element analysis, definitely discuss that as structural engineers use such techniques heavily. the SOP is suppose to highlight why you're a good fit for the program and for engineering programs a big part of that is whether or not you possess the technical capability. Also, since you're looking at structural engineering, you should look into the FE and when you want to take it.

GRE quant is really not something you memorize things for. Learning the reasoning behind solutions will help you much more than memorizing formulas. Most of the word problems boil down to an algebraic expression, you just have to interpret the words into math. The best thing is practice and becoming familiar with the types of questions that are given. Also, read up on the tricks that ETS uses to try to divert you from the correct answer.

tweed

most rec letters paint a pretty rosy picture. The most important parts are where he/she talks about what you did with them (research experience or whatever). Adcoms are looking to see what the rec writer is saying but also how qualified they are to make those statements. For example if a previous supervisor for a job starts commenting on your research ability in an academic setting then it's not going to mean nearly as much as your research advisor saying the same things. regarding your writer not writing two versions for the two different types of programs you're applying to, it may be that it just slipped his/her mind that you were looking at business programs as well.If they're already mailed then you're pretty much out of luck. You can go to your other rec writers and just say 'hey, wanted to remind you that I'm applying to 2 different types of programs, it popped into my mind the other day when I almost mailed my psych SOP to a business school' or something to that effect.

I believe acup was talking about the subsidized loans that do not have interest while you are in school. Money is a commodity, and since we live in inflationary times it's always advantageous to take government subsidized loans, even if you just return it immediately.

Microsoft Fellowship 2 years, tuition + stipend Must be 2nd or 3rd year PhD student Must receive nomination from University http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/awards/fellowships.aspx Deadline ~Early October (already passed for 2009) Harriet G. Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship Operated by NASA 3 year fellowship, tuition + stipend Targeted at Women and minorities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines http://www.uncfsp.org/spknowledge/default.aspx?page=program.view&areaid=1&contentid=177&typeid=jpfp Deadline ~February (opens the September before)

What are the risks that you're referring to?

Given that if you're looking for full-time positions or summer internships after this academic year the search is already underway and it may already be interview season for some of us. It may be beneficial to share experiences and read about others and get a feel for what tricks HR has up their sleeves these days. The trend with interview cycles recently has been to have multiple rounds and each interview focus on specific aspects. The first round seems to always be a general interview and later rounds will be technical, behavioral and case interviews (if applicable). I had an experience where if you had made it all the way to the end, you would've gone through 12 interviews, I didn't make it anywhere near the end but it still took a lot out of me and it was really annoying having to balance interview prep on top of school and everything else. Anyone have questions/thoughts/insight on the interview process nowadays?

I suppose I come from the other end of the spectrum, I entered grad school at 21 right after undergrad. My cohort appears to be split between people who entered from undergrad and people who went to work for a while and decided to come back to school. One of the things I considered was going straight for the PhD and staying in the academic arena and it appears that for fields where professors are expected to be heavily involved in research as well as teach it's almost unheard of to hire one in their 20s. The most common path seems to be get a PhD, do a few years of post-doctoral work somewhere and then apply for the professorships. Even in my case, if I decide to go for the PhD I'll be done at 26-28, and after doing a post-doc I'll be around 30 (or just short of it). The difference between 30 and 40 is much smaller than the difference between 20 and 30. Also, age is not as much of a concern since professors tend to have long careers and retire late (if at all). I would say the more pressing concern for landing those types of jobs is their relative scarcity. Those positions open up one retirement/dying professor at a time.

The GRE is trying to do too much. It tries to cover every student under one exam, and given that a single university can have over 100 majors, that's just not feasible. It tries and it fails. In order for it to be at least somewhat viable (and less of a joke), in needs to be split into a technical one and a humanities one. Verbal skills are important for technical majors, but they don't need anywhere near the same amount of expertise that some other fields do. And everyone should know basic math and stats (esp if you're going to be dealing with data) but I really don't see why a humanities/liberal arts major would ever need to mess with conic sections.

Whether or not to apply for these programs really depends on what you want to do after you get your degrees. The Brown/Carnegie Mellon programs sound very similar to other programs that have been popping up in engineering schools for the last 5 years or so. People have realized that great ideas and technical ability don't mean anything unless you can sell it. In terms of jobs, it looks like those programs that you mentioned will train you very well for roles such as technical program management and a MSEE will train you for hardware/software engineer. Although there are many who get MSEEs who go on to do more business/management oriented roles, it's a bit less common for someone with an Innovation Masters to end up in a pure tech position. I don't know too much more about these new programs, perhaps some of the other forum members have some insight. If you're interested in the program you should definitely give them a call and ask to be put in touch with current students or someone that can answer your questions

didn't mention this one because the deadline for this year is in 3 days, but for future information. EPA Star fellowship Fields limited to social and physical sciences that tie in to environmental issues. 37k total (12 for tuition, 20 for a stipend, 5 for expenses) http://epa.gov/ncer/fellow/ Deadline ~ Mid to late October [edit: looks like UnlikelyGrad beat me to it ] I don't know too much about fellowships for humanities and social sciences, but I've had friends apply to this one Jaob K. Javits Fellowships program Run by the US department of education Up to 30,000 (based on financial need) 30-70 new fellows/year http://www.ed.gov/programs/jacobjavits/index.html Deadline ~early October (already passed for 2009 I think)

Here we go National Science Foundation - Graduate Research Fellowship Program Perhaps one of the largest fellowship programs in the country. ~1000-1500 fellows per year Each fellow receives a certain amount of money towards tuition and a stipend for 3 years. (10.5k and 30k as of 2009) http://www.nsfgrfp.org/ Deadline ~ generally early to mid November Hertz Foundation Applied Science Fellowships Very difficult, very prestigious. 5 year award, 15-20 are selected each year 2 rounds of technical interviews by "4 experienced phD engineers/scientist interviewers" http://www.hertzfoundation.org/ Deadline ~late October, Early November National Physical Science Consortium Fellowships are funded by companies ~16k a year http://www.npsc.org/ Deadline ~early November Department of Energy - Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program Requires almost the exact same stuff as the NSF fellowship Started in 2009, looks like they're copying the NSF template, I don't know much beyond that. http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/SCGF.html Deadline ~late November [edit] forgot NDSEG and a few other things National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Similar to NSF in terms of funding Sponsored by the Department of Defense, thus you probably need to be able to pass a background check Limited to fields that DoD deems interesting. http://ndseg.asee.org/ Deadline ~ January Department of Homeland Security Fellowship ~20 awards (out of ~100 apps, small program) Full tuition + 2300/month stipend Fields are limited http://www.orau.gov/dhsed/ Deadline ~ January (opens relatively late, in late october, early november) Semiconductor Research Corporation Graduate Fellowship Tuition +stipend for 5 years Limited to the area of Micro-electronics Need to have an SRC approved research advisor http://grc.src.org/member/about/about_igfp.asp Deadline ~ February

admissions committees can be sneaky but not always in the way that you think. I've always thought that leveraging 'hardships' on these applications are rather insincere. Unless the experience resulted in a horrendous semester or something directly related to my schooling, I'd rather not share those kinds of personal details with strangers. I've also sat on the side of a selection committee (not for graduate admissions, but one of the essays the applicants had was similar) and those that talked exclusively about the difficulty of their experience were tossed out immediately. What we were looking for (and I'd imagine that adcoms are looking for this as well) is whether or not you can take initiative. If you grew up near a University, they want to know whether you took advantage of having such a resource close by. If you had a family friend or relative that was an expert in something, did you ask them questions. If there were community service projects at your school, did you participate. If you had difficult experiences growing up, what did you do about it. It's not about the obstacle/experience, but rather how you got around it and what you took from it. if you had a box of legos, did you follow the instructions or throw them out? the question asks about your experience, what they're looking for is how much of that experience was handed to you, and how much you made on your own. This is, of course, my opinion. Be mindful that I come from a perspective that may be biased very differently than those in your field. If you have an academic advisor or professors you know well, you should seek them out as they'll have had students go through this before and they may have even sat on admissions committees before.

I had to reset my password, perhaps something was corrupted in the updating process. not too big a deal but just a heads up.

That sounds like a mix between astrophysics and aerospace engineering. It may not be called aerospace at all Universities. I know that a lot of places have it as a branch of mechnical engineering. I'd suggest snooping around the websites of some engineering schools and find out how they categorize it. you may want to start by looking at UIUC (http://www.ae.illinois.edu/) UT-Austin (http://www.ae.utexas.edu/) Purdue (https://engineering.purdue.edu/AAE/) USC (http://ae-www.usc.edu/) Cornell (http://www.mae.cornell.edu/) All of the above are top 20 programs in AE. They are reach schools for almost any candidate but it should give you a feel for what those programs are looking for.

The economic stimulus has led to a new graduate fellowship opportunity, the Office of Science Graduate Fellowship program under the US Department of Energy open to graduate students in areas that are aligned with the mission of the DOE. You must be a US citizen so it is a bit more restrictive than NSF. However, the application materials are almost identical to what NSF asks for so if you're already applying to fellowships, you should definitely consider this one as well. http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/SCGF.html

I would be wary of internet proofreading services. There are a lot of scams out there and you don't want copies of your SOP floating around. Worst case scenario is a scam company gets it and sells it to someone else applying to the same programs you are. I'd try to get a friend or an academic advisor (some schools even offer writing workshops and proofreading services) as fuzzylogician mentioned. Friends also generally accept forms of payment that companies don't. cookies and milk come to mind.

Most of the test prep books will have a list of 'high frequency' words. These are the ones that have shown up many times on actual GRE tests in the past couple of years. Definitely review those and memorize a few if you have to. A lot of them will also have lists of latin and greek roots, knowing those can be very helpful as you can figure out quite a few of words through their etymology without ever having seen them before. I honestly didn't feel that the GRE was that different from the SAT. the only thing I kept thinking when I took it was 'this is the SAT except I'm 4 years out of practice'. the SAT feels easier because to a certain extent, it covers material that you're learning in high school. No college curriculum I know of looks anything like the stuff on the GRE (which makes you wonder what its actually testing). In the end, how heavily an admissions committee ways a GRE score is highly dependent on the field and the school. From personal experience, the admissions committees for engineering and the physical sciences basically just go "high quant score, check, moving on". I don't know what psychology programs look for, perhaps some of the other forum members has insight into this area.

fuzzy I know someone in your program, it would be strange if we actually knew each other. If you really had time to burn I think you could figure out the identities (or at the very least come up with a good guess) of anyone who's posted more than 10-15 times. I do the same thing as KieBelle, if I don't know the gender I tend to just assign one based on my gut feeling which may or may not be completely wrong.

research interests are not defined in neat little boxes. You'll find that there is a certain amount of overlap even between seemingly unrelated areas. What you can do is look at your interests and how they fit into the big picture. Then go to the professors with somewhat different interests with the mindset that you're going to bring something new to their group. Think of it as pitching an idea to venture capitalists, you should address what you want to do and emphasize how it can benefit their interests. As for getting a TA-ship, generally those are handled slightly differently than RA-ships so you should ask your department about that. regarding your choices, I don't think you have to pick just one, you can talk to professors, talk to your department and look for internships at the same time. I don't really know anything about transferring but I'd imagine that you'd want to be very careful about how you phrase things (to your current school and new school), the research community is small and you don't want to burn any bridges.

GRE scores are based on percentiles. What you see on test day is an estimate based on a comparison of your performance with previous data (and for the most part they're dead on given that ETS has been doing this for quite a while). Your official scores are calculated by comparing your raw scores with those of everyone who took that particular exam so it takes a while to come up with them and there is a chance that they may be different from the unofficial scores.

and what does kill you makes your mom and dad stronger. if you look at it that way, it's sort of a win-win :?