hsiying

I would definately be interested in joining a quals study group. Are these official groups or just students who get together and study? Either way, I'm interested.

I wanna go somewhere different for grad school, i've been in the midwest pretty much my whole life so I'd really like to experience another part of the country. Plus I figured I would be able to network and meet new faculty and people at a different school.

Thanks curious_zygote! I actually got the response from the admissions office today, 2 days after I emailed them: "Dear Steven, Congratulations on receiving the NDSEG and SMART fellowships. Admission to our PhD program does not depend on students coming with financial support. This year, the number of applicants seeking admission to our PhD program exceeded the number of spots we have available. As there are many exceptional students among these applicants, the competition for admission was extremely intense. We hope you will consider joining us at Stanford in the fall and taking the qualifying exam in order to join our PhD program. If you decide to enroll in the master's degree program, we highly recommend that you enroll in EE 390 or EE 391 your first quarter here, as it is a research class. Taking these classes will be a good way to meet faculty and get the research experience that many faculty are looking for in students they hire to work with them. This will also help as you petition to take our qualifying exam. Sincerely, EE Graduate Admissions" Do you know if they favor "pre-admitted Ph.D track" students over those who had to petition during the quals process? I heard Stanford Quals were brutal and that around 70% don't make the cut each time...

My top school is Stanford but I was only admitted to the M.S. track program there and would need to find an advisor to petition for me if I wished to continue on the Ph.D track. I would love to attend Stanford but unless I were given the chance to get get into the Ph.D track program, it would be difficult for me to pass up a chance to obtain my Ph.D at Georgia Tech, UIUC, Cornell, or Michigan, all of which have admitted me into their Ph.D track program with fellowships/aid and seem genuinely excited for me to come there. However, I recently won 2 federal fellowships (SMART & NDSEG) and have 2 more pending. I was wondering if this financial aid would enable me to easily find an advisor at Stanford and allow me to pursue my Ph.D there. I sent out a couple of emails to some professors that I would like to work with, but so far they're enthusiasm is pretty lukewarm with no one wanting to make any guarantees until they see my classwork. I almost feel like everyone at Stanford has some sort of major fellowship and so these don't even make me stand out. Georgia Tech and UIUC have both seemed like really good options for me for a while now. They both have relatively easier Quals to pass, and I have professors at both schools who I would love to work with, but more importantly would also like to work with me. However, my end goal is to be a professor at a top 10 EE school and after looking at UIUC and GT, their placement of graduates into top tier faculty positions is not as frequent as those coming out of Stanford. Could anyone provide some advice or insight? Thanks!

I was sponsored by AFRL/AFOSR as well, I had a pretty strong defense background so IMO it made up for my weak GPA. My GPA actually went further down this last semester so good thing I didn't have to reapply... University of Michigan Senior, 3 year graduate EE Digital Signal Processing/Communications 3.76/4.00 Overall GPA || 3.84/4.00 Major GPA 800 Math / 720 Verbal / 5.5 Writing GRE 2 Research Internships [Air Force Research Lab, MRLets (Signal Processing Startup)] 2 Corporate Internship [McKinsey & Company, Business Analyst; Capital One, Business Analyst] 1 IEEE Published Conference Paper First Author 1 International Journal Paper First Author 1 International Journal Paper First Author Submission/In Review 2 U.S. Patent Applications Submissions/In Review Co-Author