The Final Report

So, after spending the last seven months applying to master's programs at grad schools all across the country, I have finally made my decision and will be attending Oregon State in the fall. After going through the application processes, there are some schools that I won't be attending on which my opinions have changed significantly and some that really haven't changed at all. With this post, I will be pretty much closing the book on the 'grad school' tag that I've used in many posts before (not that anyone even pays attention to those things) unless I start thinking about a Ph.D. which, I hope, will not happen for at least another 12 years, but who knows. But don't worry, I will blagging plenty about my experience in grad school under the tag 'Oregon State.'

Here's how I feel about each of the schools to which I applied:

CU Boulder - Stock: way up. - I wasn't terribly impressed with the application process to the university, but after visiting the campus and the civil engineering faculty, I was pretty much hooked. I grew up cheering for CU and it would have been really interesting going full circle and matriculating to their grad school. If they had had funding for me, I totally would have been heading to Boulder in the fall.

BYU - Stock: high as ever. - BYU will always be my alma mater, and there will always be a special place in my heart for the BYU campus and Provo. It saddens me that I will have to leave on a permanent basis.

Purdue - Stock: pretty much the same. - I was never terribly excited about the prospect of moving to West Lafayette and going to Purdue, so it didn't break my heart too much when I didn't get in. Though it was shocking, considering that I would have been an above average admit two years ago.

Virginia Tech - Stock: down slightly. - I have been, and will continue to be, impressed with the academics at Virginia Tech. They manage to produce cutting-edge research that's useful in industry as well as in the ivory tower of academia. However, I wouldn't be terribly disappointed if I never had to step foot in Blacksburg again. One of my fellow prospective grads at the geotech group visit said, "I like it here, because I think that anyone could fit in here." In a sense he's right. The students come from all different backgrounds and geographic locations and they are bonded together by a common thread: the copious consumption of alcohol. Yes, you can fit in in Blacksburg... as long as your liver sports the school colors.

UCLA - Stock: down. - My initial distaste for UCLA came from them not telling me that letters of rec had to be signed in ink until after my recommenders had already all submitted their letters. This boondoggle was, at least mostly, ameliorated when I found out that my application had actually been completed and that I had been accepted. However, with the application letter came the notification that they had no funding for me. This was followed by an email to my hypothetical adviser that went unanswered for 6 weeks and to which the response was two sentences. On the net, I'm just much less excited about UCLA than I ever was in the past.

UW - Stock: way, way down. - UW began crapping on me from the moment that I started filling out their obnoxious application and didn't finish until I filled out the last piece in a large pile of profoundly Byzantine paperwork, which told them that I would not be attending. I was absolutely shocked that the application process would be THAT terrible for a school that's not even THAT good. Oh yeah, and don't forget that tier III (the tier system is just a testament to how awful the bureaucracy really is) graduate tuition is $8,600 A QUARTER!!! Oh, and that's going up 16% each year for the next two years... which means that, by the time I finished my master's degree, I'd be paying about $11,500 A QUARTER for tuition. The list just goes on and on.

There's a good chance that I will never step on and any of the campuses in the latter 2/3 of this list (again, in one case.) If I was going to apply for a Ph.D. at some point in 12+ years, The University of Colorado at Boulder would probably be the only one of these 6 to which I would consider applying. Also, at this point, I've been reading about how profoundly weird Austin really is, so I'm not even sure I would want to go to the University of Texas at Austin. However, I'm planning on making that decision in the distant future, so I'll have plenty of chances to expand my possible list of schools from just Georgia Tech.

I've said a lot about different schools in this blag post. In all this smorgasbord of information, let's not forget that I will be going to Oregon State in the fall and that my master's degree will say, "Oregon State University" on the front. Let's go Beavers.

Edit: [On second thought, Austin might just be the best place for me. :D]