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Yesterday, I received an email from Kathy Westberg at THE Oregon State University telling me that I had been awarded the "Laurels Block" scholarship for civil engineering graduate students. This scholarship, for which I had to do little in addition to my application than just submit a paper that said I wanted to apply for it, covers the full costs of out-of-state tuition and fees for three quarters. Under this scholarship, I could take whatever classes I wanted that applied toward the Master of Science (Thesis/Project) or the Master of Engineering (Coursework Only) degrees. Considering the course scheduling that's available at Oregon State, I could probably finish either master's degree in four quarters, meaning that I would need to take an additional quarter beyond the scope of the scholarship. The cost of out-of-state tuition for a single, full-time quarter is about $6,000, which isn't bad at all as long as there's only one of them. In addition, it would be possible that I could procure some sort of assistantship for that final quarter that would provide additional funding.

This doesn't all mean that I will necessarily be booking it to Corvallis this coming fall. There is still a possibility that I could get funding from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and I haven't heard back from Virginia Tech that I won't be getting funding, though it seems unlikely. I have to make a decision on this scholarship by April 15th, so my prediction that I'd make my decision by mid-April was eerily accurate.

Here's hoping all this wasn't just an April Fools Day joke.

Edit: [It was not an April Fools joke. Now busting out the sparkling cider. :D]
Edit: [New grad school odds, as of 4-3-11: Oregon State - 3:2, CU Boulder - 4:1, BYU - 30:1, Virginia Tech - 36:1, Washington - 90:1, UCLA - 90:1.]