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There's a reason they say that grad students don't sleep. If you're really having trouble, you should arrange to meet with your professors or go to office hours and ask them to help you with the material. Other than that, just sleep when you can, remember to eat and keep working. I know a couple a friends who pull 16 hour days 3 or 4 times a week and spend all weekend sleeping so they can keep going next week. We are still students, we put up with this now to enable something better later on. You should also try to set limits (ie in bed before a certain time regardless of whether the assignment is done or not). And every few hours set everything aside and go outside and walk around for a few minutes (weather permitting of course). I use to take short walks all the time, it really does help clear your head a bit.

sending out applications now or later is really up to you, since they're mostly electronic now, it's unlikely that they'll get lost. Since you have them finished already I would recommend not looking at them for a little bit and then go back and read through it with fresh eyes as a final check before you submit it. fuzzylogician that's pretty rough. I remember sitting during one of my early deadlines constantly hitting the refresh button on my browser to see if my last letter had been submitted yet. It is not a pleasant experience.

With structural engineering, there are relatively few new advancements (the ones I can think of off the top of my head are those related to earthquake proofing and efficiency) so it only really needs new blood to replace the retiring professionals where with some of the other engineering fields that need new people constantly because new areas of expertise keep popping up. You'd have to make a pretty clever argument to say that we need a better building than the sears tower (or whatever it's called now). As for the PE license, The requirements are 4-fold. First, graduate from an accredited university. Second, pass the FE exam (relatively easy). Third, have a few years of work experience deemed appropriate by the state (the number of years and what not will vary by state, generally 3-4). Fourth, pass the PE exam. As a PE, you are allowed to sign off and seal plans and engineering documents (basically you gain the power to approve plans as safe, workable, etc). You are also allowed to start a company with the word 'engineer' in the name, among other things. The reason that so few engineers are PEs is because only the traditional engineering disciplines really require the approval of plans (Civil is about the only one I can think of where it's pretty much required, Mechanical is another field where it's a good idea but may not be necessary depending on what you do). For a computer engineer or bio-engineer for instance the license is almost completely moot so most don't bother.

you just pick one and put it in. They don't hold you to it, they just want to know where you're considering working. I know for engineering, one of the considerations is whether the school (s) you've picked have the facilities to perform the project in your research plan. They're basically looking to see if you've actually investigated where you want to go to school. If you end up at another school, you just call them and arrange to have the funding set up at the new school.

The university is considered to be Top 100 in the world, so you should be fine. I can't really figure out what the different campuses mean. It really seems like the university didn't have enough space in one location for all of their facilities during expansion so they started new campuses.

based on the program announcement, it says that each reviewer makes a recommendation on each application that they review and all of those are sent to the lead reviewer for that area who then makes another recommendation on the app and sends it on (this may explain why it takes so bloody long). the scores may not tell you exactly how close you were but they may tell you where you were considered weak (in intellectual merit or broader impact). It looks like your second reviewer thought that your broader impact was not as strong. And I guess this falls under general advice, one of the professors in my department who has reviewed applications for this program did a workshop and made a few comments that I thought I'd share. 1) When the review process happens, all the reviewers are apparently called to a hotel in the middle of nowhere (so they'd have nothing better to do than review apps) and they spend a few days just reading the applications that they are assigned. If your essays have a grammatical mistake or something that's worded oddly, snarky comments will fly. Although it's understandable considering they've been doing nothing but reading for a good bit, this hurts your app a lot more than it should. 2) Along the same lines, be concise, giving them more pages to read without the substance to back it is just going to annoy them. If you can't fill 2 pages, just leave it, don't try to fluff it up (none of my essays last year were pushing on the limit, one of them of just a page).

I think each university will also have a different conversion table, you probably want to contact the admissions office of each school that you're applying to and ask them how you should handle it. Some of them may give you a formula, others may just tell you to send your grades as is and they'll do the conversion. Grade inflation is not as prevalent as the media makes it out to be, however it does exist it depends on the discipline as well as the school so a direct linear conversion is not going to tell you much.

I suppose it sort of worked. I only submitted it to NSF. engineering programs generally toss your essay aside and different schools will put different and sometimes strange stipulations on them (for some schools it's less SOP and more previous experience). I didn't get any negative comments on it so I assume it was at least ok. I used the childhood dreams as a frame, much like an epistolary novel, it provided context but took very little space and was not the focus.

for my SOP last year I treated as an actual essay (ie, going to be read by more than one person) and had sort of an overarching theme. I started by mentioning what my dream jobs were when I was younger (astronaut and batman ) and then quickly stepped through how my interests and motivations evolved to what they are now and from there spent the bulk of the essay talking about why I'm applying to grad school, why I choose my field, what experiences I had etc. At the end I simply tied it back to what my dreams were as a child

With a GPA of 3.3-3.4 it'll be difficult to get into top programs (my undergrad gpa was around that). You will need excellent rec letters and research experience would definitely help. If you want to go to grad school, try to get some research experience and do some independent investigation regarding what schools will take the BSEET (ask alumni, email schools, etc).

The extenuating circumstances essay is an optional 1 page essay. Basically it gives applicants who feel that their circumstances have had a negative impact on their application to explain themselves. For example if you have a semester of withdraws/incompletes because of some personal issue or other outside factor that required you to take time away from school, your transcript would have that semester but no explanation as to why. If you choose to switch fields, all of your background will be in field A while your research plan would be in field B which generally makes for a disjointed application. The essay gives you a chance to explain. It is pretty much up to you if you want to write the essay. If you feel that your circumstances are strong enough that they've had noticeable effects on your application then you should definitely look into it.

Most professors are pretty good about not promising money that they don't already have in hand, but there are exceptions. Last year was rough everywhere in terms of funding and this year is looking to be just slightly better. Both myself and a friend were promised TA-ships and possibly fellowships by professors at UT-Austin and they rejected us at the last minute. New faculty hirings being frozen isn't necessarily disastrous (it's certainly not good), but it'll help them regain stability by cutting expenses for 2-3 years. The money crunch is being felt everywhere, I know a lot of people that just entered grad school with limited or no funding that would've been fully funded a few years ago. 2009 was, unfortunately, a horrible time to graduate from undergrad. Severely limited job markets, and much tougher graduate admissions due to record numbers of applications and limited funding. And so far, 2010 is not looking great either.

I got an honorable mention, ratings VG/E VG/VG E/E I do agree that the comments were not helpful. All the reviewers seemed to like what they called my 'entrepreneurial spirit'. It's definitely worth trying again. The previous experience and personal statements are pretty much recyclable and it doesn't really cost you anything. It's also an excuse to ask professors for their insights on how to write good research plans and what not and this can only help you.

depends on where you're weak. Verbal takes the longest time to improve whereas the math section can be 'crammed' for. The analytical writing is somewhere in between. The only good way to improve verbal is to read (lots of different things) to broaden your vocabulary, memorizing will help if you're pinched for time. A lot of review books will have lists of the most common words to appear in the GRE. Learning the latin and greek roots can also help. For math you can sit down do some practice exercises, memorize the solution paths for the types of problems that give you issues, or learn the tricks that the test writers use to try to trick you. for aw, you can just look up examples, and read up on logical fallacies and how to deconstruct an argument.

in short. yes. Stanford is actually pretty lax in terms of GPA requirements, the impression I got is that they focus more on rec letters, essays and previous experience. Graduate school in engineering is something of a trade, the university needs qualified people to assist the professors in research and the students need an education. If you can prove that you're an able researcher (and given your experience I'd say you'd have no issues with that) then you have a big advantage. You have a shot at top 25 programs, but keep in mind that competition will be stiff, especially with a slow economy and more people applying for grad school. Although for our professors (ie when they went to school) it was frowned upon to get all your degrees from the same place, I don't think the stigma is quite as strong for our generation (I've met a few younger professors who've gotten they're degrees from the same place). UM - College Park is also a very good university, and you can always do a masters there and somewhere else for a phD For reference, I am doing my master's at my undergraduate institution. In my case I was already at a top 5 institution in the field, going elsewhere just seemed like a step down (also, MIT rejected me )

I agree with mtlve. The comments I got on my application last year focused on my essays and rec letters. 2 of the reviewers mentioned my gpa and that was it. The nice thing about nsf is that they focus on the picture provided by you and your recommenders rather than a transcript because they realize that curricula and courses will be vastly different across different universities and you can't draw comparisons from them. Focus on your research plan, your reviewers will be professors as close to your field as they can get them and they will have at least some familiarity with the topic of study and will be able to spot fluff right away.

Adding in my 2 cents, The major difference between a small town and a big city is going to be the population diversity and availability of resources/amenities. Chicago, for example, has a gigantic immigrant population (I think it has the biggest polish population outside of Warsaw). While small towns tend to be much less diverse. College towns are small-ish towns that are dominated by a University (or universities as may be the case). Urbana-Champaign (where I am) has a small urban setting with a population of around 120,000 (somewhere around there), during the school year the university adds around 40,000 students (grad and undergrad). On top of that, the University is by far the largest employer in the area so the town is incredibly diverse and the culture is very friendly towards college students. The local residents also tend to be highly educated. Ithaca and Urbana-Champaign were both ranked in the top 5 college towns (pop. under 250k) in the united states by USA Today(http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/ ... htm?csp=34). Wikipedia actually has a pretty nice definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_town)

Depending on the field of study, the weighting given to the gpa will vary greatly. For intensely technical majors it is a huge part of the application while the more liberal arts type fields are going to be more interested in essays and portfolios (if applicable). Speaking as someone from a technical discipline I had a very frustrating application experience where I had excellent LORs, published research, leadership experience (generally doesn't count for much in tech fields), a good GRE score and a GPA in the low 3's from what is now the 2nd ranked undergraduate institution in the field (it was 3rd when I graduated). During the process I received communications from professors at the schools I applied to who expressed interest in having me join their groups and I ended up getting rejected at nearly every school, all of whom cited that they were concerned about my GPA. On the flip side, organizations like NSF, love to see demonstrated ability and I ended up getting an honorable mention from them. It all depends on who's reviewing your application, if your app can successfully convey to them your ability then you're golden.

I think you'll be a competitive candidate for all of those schools. Stanford and Berkeley are probably the 2 schools with the stiffest competition but given your profile you should definitely try. I am currently a grad student in EE at UIUC. I'm not sure what the policy is at other schools but most of the graduate students in ECE here are funded either at TAs or RAs. Those assistantships carry a tuition waiver and a stipend.

so this is from the grad advising office of my undergraduate alma mater who handle the graduate admissions. I got an acceptance very late and the standard email put the decision date within a week so I just walked in to talk to them about getting an extension and they seemed happy to help me out and told to send the records person an email so they have a written request of the action. So I do that and I get an email back saying it was ok and also telling me that if I end up accepting I would need to fill out an international student verification form. I am not an international student nor have I ever been, I applied as domestic and not only that I did my undergrad there and they have my records and documents, I am of asian descent and thus have an asian name (that's pretty much the only international thing on my app). so I went in to tell them that I am not international and the lady looks at me and says "so what are you then?". I then asked if my application was processed as international as it changes my eligibility for funding options (international students have to taken english proficiency exams in order to qualify for TA-ships among other things) and instead of answering the question she just tells me it doesn't effect funding when in fact all of the application materials say that it does.

just got an admit from UIUC on April 9th

UIUC's ECE department just sent out the last round of acceptances. I had talked to them last week when I still hadn't heard anything and they said they were still sitting on a few. I just got an acceptance without funding a few minutes ago and I had not been wait-listed beforehand. I'm going to guess that this is the last round that's being sent out.

total fail for me. still waiting on a few schools but it's looking like rejections across the board with one wait-list and one school moving my app to the masters program pool. my expectations were 3 or 4 out the 7 apps. My gpa is a little low for a electrical engineering PhD, but I come from a top 5 school in the field (both undergrad and grad), I have research experience and publications. Never expected MIT or berkeley but I applied to a few smaller/less prestigious schools as well. on one of my visits all of the professors seemed to like me, a few of them were interested in the research I'm currently working on as an undergrad and one requested a pre-release of my current paper because he said he wanted to use the model I've built to investigate some stuff for his own research. and then 2 days later they wait-list me. and he's still bugging me to send me him that pre-release once its out...

I actually haven't gotten anything from UIUC. going to have to bug them for my rejection tomorrow.

stilling waiting on UIUC (ECE PhD) and Purdue (ECE PhD). I was under the impression that they were suppose to tell you something by April 1st, going to have to call them tomorrow.