ProcessControl

Huh? Waterloo is the best school for CS in Canada.

The essential rules to remember are the stoichiometric mixing rules: C1 * V1 + C2 * V2 + .... = C * V V1 + V2 + V3 + .... = V where Cn's are concentrations and Vn's are volumes of the components. The RHS C's and V's are of the final product. With these two rules, any simple mixing problem simply becomes a set of simultaneous equations.

1) The interval [5,15] is of length 10. When something is twice something, you know there is 2x + x make up the whole, so there's three parts. The question wants a point that's further from 5 and closer to 15, so the distance from 5 must be 2x. 2x + x = 10 so x = 3 1/3 and 2x = 6 2/3. The answer is 5 + 2x = 11 2/3 © 2. Again a ratio quesion. If something is 3 times something else, there must be 4 parts (3x + x make up the whole). So you're looking a number that's divisible by 4. There's a trick.... any number whose last two digits is divisible by 4, is itself divisible by 4. e.g. 1996 is divisible by 4 because 96 is divisible by 4. The only number on the list that's not divisible by 4 is 54. So the answer is (E). (I think your answer key may be wrong) 3. I'm a chemical engineer, so my instinct is to write a mass balance. There must be an easier way, but right now, I can't think of it. In - Out = accumulation rho * (Fin - Fout) = rho * dV/dt Canceling out the density terms, and substituting Fin = 2 gal/hr, you get 2 - Fout = dV/dt Integrating both sides, and setting limits: / 96 | (2 - Fout) dt = /0 / 64 | dV / 0 Fout = 2 - 64/96 = 4/3 The answer is (D). Again, I think your answer key may be wrong here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah... for the 3rd question: I just remembered my first year chemical engineering -- so here's an easier way. TRICK: When you have a rate question.... the first thing you should do is to pick a basis. (usually it's a time basis) The purpose of the basis is convert a constant rate into a static quantity. In the question, the basis is picked for you. Time = 96 hours. Now, in your case: IN = 2 gal/hr * 96 hrs = 96*2 gal OUT = x gal/hr * 96 hrs = 96*flowout gal TANK = 64 gal TANK = IN - OUT 64 = 96*2 - 96*flowout flowout = 4/3 (voila)

This is interesting. To my understanding, admission commitees are not supposed to ask that question, or at least, that information is considered private information. I know this is especially true for undergrad admissions to Ivy League institutions (there was a big story about this years ago, about academic cartels), where it is considered a faux pas to ask for competitive information such as this. I'm not implying it's the same deal at the graduate level, but in my opinion, I think you are not under any obligation to reveal the other schools you're applying to, if you don't want to. But if you want to, here are my opinions about the schools you should select: 1) don't list your safety schools. You don't want to undersell yourself. 2) don't list stretch schools. The admission committee might or might not buy those, but you don't want to waste space on your list. 3) list schools that the admission committee thinks you have a realistic chance of getting into. (btw, the Big10 schools like to compete for each other's students, so if you're applying to a Big10 school, make sure you shove one or two other Big10 schools in your list to bait them... make them smell blood a little...heh heh. Ditto with the Ivy Leagues.) Remember, the Big10 (like the Ivy League) is not just a sports conference. There are deep underlying ties between member institutions. There is a spirit of cooperation as well as a spirit of competition between those schools -- for instance, it is a well known fact among the cognoscenti that while the Big10 schools will generally not hire a PhD from their own programs (to avoid academic inbreeding), they tend to want to hire PhDs from other Big10 schools over others, to keep things in the family so to speak. 4) When you refuse an admission, you do not have to mention what school you're going to, so you don't have to worry about that. In fact, I think mentioning which school you're going to instead of theirs in a refusal letter can sometimes be interpreted as being bad form i.e. scoring off: it's kind of like saying, you're not good enough for me, so I'm taking an offer that's better than yours. The standard practice is write a carefully worded statement of refusal, thanking them for their offer, thanking the admission commitee and graduate secretary for their time and effort, and then stating that you are accepting an offer to another program that you feel is a better fit for your particular research interests. That's it. ------- My reasoning is this: the admission commitee probably uses the information to assess: 1) where you think you stand (if you're confident enough to apply to good schools, you may well be good enough for them) 2) how good your judgment is (if you're applying only to good schools, but your academic profile is weak, they might think you're a bit of a dreamer) 3) whether you're applying to competing schools 4) whether you're likely to take a competing school's offer over theirs 5) if their aggressive enough, whether it is worth adjusting their offer to attract you to join their program.

Not all Canadian schools require the GREs btw. As for which schools to apply to, depends on your field of study. Here are some schools to consider (just off the top of my head, based on reputation). 1) Pulp and Paper - Toronto, McGill 2) Biotech - Toronto, UBC, McGill 3) Genomics and Proteomics - McGill 4) Polymer Engineering - McMaster 5) Process systems engineering/process control - McMaster, Queen's 6) Colloids - McGill, McMaster 7) Separations Processes - Alberta 8) Petrochemical - Alberta 9) Fuel cells - Queen's, Ottawa (although the guy there who's famous for electrocatalysis is probably going to be retiring soon), McGill For chemical engineering, the strongest schools in general are: McMaster, Toronto, McGill, Waterloo, Alberta (there is also the famous École Polytechnique de Montréal, but it's French speaking) As far as I know, McMaster has one of the biggest chemical engineering research programs in the country. As for funding, I know the following schools generally guarantee funding for all accepted M.Sc. students: Alberta, Western Ontario, Toronto Whereas these schools do not guarantee funding (although if you're an exceptional candidate, they will extend a funding offer, as far as I know): McGill, UBC Disclaimer: I went to McGill, so I may be biased.

Hello, This is just a matter of curiosity: I've heard that for science and engineering, IITs are in the top tier while BITS are in the second tier. Now, what is the difference between BITS and BIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birla_Institute_of_Technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birla_Institute_of_Technology_and_Science And when people say BITs which do they mean? Which is more prestigious?

I think I ought to clarify my answer on the above point. (it didn't come out all that clearly). By the above, I mean you can apply for a TA-ship in the second semester. You still have to pay full tuition in your first semester, and have enough money to support yourself. And there are no guarantees about getting a TA-ship in the second semester either, so you must be prepared for that contingency. Generally, not being funded sucks.

Yes, some schools like the University of Illinois require it. I believe that although all applicants are required to submit it, it's really intended for M.S. candidates who intend to fund themselves. Most Ph.D. candidates will usually not go to a school where they need to fork out cash up front. I think you should look at your application checklist. If it is considered part of the application package, you must submit it in order for your application to be considered. When I submitted my financial statement, I had nowhere near the amount required for 1 year of residency, which was US$36,000. They admitted me anyway. It depends on the university's policy. If you're an M.S. student, they probably won't offer you an RA/TA ship in the first semester anyway. But once you're there, you can always apply for a TA-ship. They can't turn you down then. Most international students know this: once you have one foot in the door.... I don't think the university is going to check on your account balance. They can't, at any rate. I suppose you can just pool your money, put it in the bank for one day, get a statement from the bank manager, and then disburse the money to your relatives the next day. The purpose of the financial statement is really only for them to assess if they ought to admit you without funding. You see, I believe the logic goes like this: M.S. funding logic If candidate fits profile and is exceptional: offer admission and funding If candidate is strong but does not fit profile, but has enough money to attend for 1-semester so we can assess him during his 1st semester at no risk to us: offer admission without funding. If candidate is strong but lacks certain things, and has no money to attend: do not offer admission at all. Too risky. If candidate is weak: do not offer admission at all. But don't quote me on that.

There are a few kinds of financial support: 1) TA - Teaching Assistantship, you have to teach/facilitate a course 2) RA - Research Assistantship, you do research for a prof (this is usually rare) 3) Entrance scholarship (if they want to offer an incentive for you to accept their offer) 4) Graduate scholarship/Stipend (this one covers your living expenses) 5) Tuition-waiver (exemption from paying tuition)/ There are others (merit scholarships, external scholarships), but these are the main ones that are offered by universities. Normally, a school offers you either (1) or (2), not both. If you're an exceptional candidate, they might offer you (3). Some schools don't distinguish between (4) and (1) & (2). U.S. schools generally give out assistantships which pay enough to cover all expensese. As for (5), this normally depends on the school. Some schools have what they call Half-TAships and Full TA-ships. A half-TA means you can TA one semester in a year, whereas a full-TA means you can TA two semesters. If you get a half-TA, normally you either get a half-tuition waiver or a full one. Normally, when you get a TA-ship, the school will automatically give you a full tuition waiver. A half-TA will usually get you a partial tuition waiver. But this is highly department-specific, so you must check with the department you're applying to. You are usually offered a RA/TA either: 1) upon acceptance 2) after acceptance, and after you have emailed some profs asking for free positions (if the school encourages you to do this) 2) after 1 semester of attending the school It depends on the school, but normally a TA/RA income is enough for you to live on. And as I said, in most U.S. schools, if you're offered a TA/RA, the tuition is usually automatically waived. For the most part, financial aid is a blanket term for all the forms of financial support I've described above. Most international students go to schools that provide financial aid. As for how school decide which candidates to fund, well... if I knew that, we wouldn't need this forum, would we? But in general, schools that offer funding to M.S. candidates fund the best candidates, or candidates who fit a certain profile. Very important. Financial aid in many schools are competitive, so you'll only get aid if you're among the best candidates in the pool. The GREs can sometimes determine if you'll get aid or not. Depends on the school policy. Usually you need just enough to settle in. This varies from place to place, but maybe US$1500 to $2500? I'm not sure. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the stipends: (these change from year to year, and depends on various factors) University of Michigan - Math Ph.D. - about US$20,000/yr University of Illinois - ChE M.S. - about US$22,000/yr University of Minnesota - ChE Ph.D. (before qualifiers) - about $18,000/yr Either full, partial or none. Full = enough to live on Partial = may need to supplementary income to survive None = forget it. Depends. This varies from university to university, and department from department. Many good and bad universities offer financial support. You'll also find that some departments offer aid while others don't.... in the same university. As you can see, it's very difficult to answer general questions like the one you've just posted. If you narrow it down to specific departments in specific schools, you might get a better answer.

With regard to your question about taking a bank loan, let me tell you my story. I was accepted into the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) for an M.S. degree two years ago. When I got the acceptance letter I was both excited and sad. Excited because I have always wanted to attend the University of Illinois, and sad because the offer came without funding. The tuition+expenses for an international student that year was US$36,000. After talking to some profs, I discovered why my acceptance came without funding, despite the fact that my academic record was strong: 1) I applied for the M.S. program when I had really wanted to do a Ph.D. The department I was applying to generally did not fund M.S. students in their first semester. 90% of the M.S. students get TAs and RAs in their second semester, contingent upon a good academic record in the first semester (which meant students generally had to fund themselves during the first semester, i.e. fork out US$18,000 for out-of-state tuition). Only in exceptional cases were M.S. students funded in their first semester (I only knew of one guy there who was funded for his M.S., and he was from an IIT). (Note: Then again, this wasn't exactly my fault -- that department at UIUC did not allow direct Ph.D. applicants unless they did their undergrad degree at UIUC. Peculiar policy.) 2) I applied for a major different from that of my undergrad (I was switching fields). Which meant I couldn't TA most of the courses in that department. Although my academic record was strong, they didn't think I could TA courses I've never taken. So I wrote to the admissions committee asking for a 1 semester deferment of my admission so that I might have some time to look for alternative sources of funds. They agreed. Meanwhile, I went back to my home country and got a job, and explored options. I tried applying for private scholarships, but the economy was tight then and very few companies were giving out any. I looked into government scholarships before dismissing them (too little, and too many strings attached). The final resort was a bank loan. I looked into a education loan from a bank in my country and at first glance, the plans looked very attractive. Education loans were low-interest, and the repayment terms were flexible. Then there was this U.S. education loan by Citibank USA, which was open to international students provided they could get a U.S. citizen to co-sign. This sounded promising, I thought. I figured I only needed enough money to fund myself for one semester (US$18,000 -- realistically US$13,000 if I lived cheaply, and I can be very frugal). At this point, I decided to have a talk with a family friend (who is, coincidentally, an alumnus of the UIUC econometrics program, did his B.S. and M.S. there 40 years ago). We worked out how much the bank loan would cost, and what the risks were. In the end, our conclusion was this: unless I was American (in which case I'd qualify for U.S. federal loans), taking a bank loan from a commercial bank isn't worth it. 1) If I took a loan from a bank in my home country, I'd be a slave to the bank for life if I didn't get a high paying job after I graduated. (and seeing that my final goal was a Ph.D., I wasn't planning to graduate that soon) 2) Ditto with the Citibank loan. Banks are not your benefactor -- and if you have to take a loan in a currency that's worth more than your own, the risk is multiplied. I was crestfallen. But in the end, I snapped out of it and decided it is simply not worth paying that kind of money for just one semester of a Master's degree, even if the school is very famous. I remembered what a professor of mine back at McGill told me: he said I should never have to go to a school that will not fund me, because if a school didn't fund me (no matter what its reputation is), some other school would. He also asked me to consider staying in Canada, where most Master's students are funded. Canada views M.S. degrees very differently from the U.S. In Canada, it's perfectly acceptable to terminate your studies with an M.S. degree. It's possible to do solid research at the Master's level, and professors and the Canadian government generally fund such research. In the U.S., the M.S. degree is seen either as a consolation prize for those who failed their qualifiers, or those who just want to get their feet wet in research. (To be fair, I don't think everybody subscribes to this, but I get the impression that the profs from Big 10 schools that I've talked to do). So I'm now back in grad school, having the time of my life at a school that I like (and surrounded by people who are at the top of their game), doing what I want, and not having to pay a cent for this privilege. The message here? Unless you're applying for a professional program (where nobody gets funded) or to a humanities program (ditto), don't go to a school where there's no funding. Taking a loan to fund a U.S. education is extremely risky, and only worth doing if you're American or think you can get a job that pays well enough for you to repay the loan in a finite amount of time. ;-) No point saddling yourself with debt for a 2-year degree. If you're really desperate for an M.S., try Canada. The system's not too different from the U.S., and we do have some top people here. And if you decide to do a Ph.D. at a U.S. school after that, you'd stand a much better chance of getting in with your Master's than you would with your bachelor's. As for whether you'll get into a Top 50 university in the U.S., I'm not qualified to judge your credentials... but other people here might have a better idea about where you stand.

Just a little diversion... This guy must be extremely good: IIT Delhi, CGPA 9.41/10.0, Rank 1/53. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mtawarma/

Point taken. Some programs like aeronautical engineering at MIT explicitly state that a candidate needs a score on the 80th percentile in Q and AW to be competitive. Here's another opinion: http://www.physics.cornell.edu/~larrimore/gradschool.html Some have lower cut-offs: http://esd.mit.edu/esd_educational_programs/faqs_esd_sm_phd.html#required_gre I guess it depends on the program.

When I was applying to Purdue (long time ago), I visited the department with the intention of talking to some profs and finding out more about their graduate program. I only got as far as the secretary. She gave me some brochures and told me to check the website. Most of the profs weren't that interested to see me. I gather some departments don't think it's such a great idea. On the other hand, if they invite you to come visit, then they can be great hosts. I was admitted to the University of Minnesota once, and they flew me down from Montreal for recruitment weekend. They even paid for my flight and accomodation. They also scheduled one-to-one sessions with profs, paid for some very expensive dinners and scheduled a tour bus to take us around the Minneapolis-St Paul area. That was the most wonderful 4 day vacation I ever had. I ended up not going to UMN, but they certainly gave me the impression that they treated their grad students well.

I read here that 60%-100% in an Indian institution is first-class standing: http://upload.mcgill.ca/gps/gpa-calculation-conversion-oct2004.pdf http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=348579 Some schools don't require you to convert: http://scl.ece.ucsb.edu/html/admiss.htm Most IITians just report their GPA on a scale of 10.0. Perhaps you could try that too? Also, take a look at this site: http://www.imahal.com/mentor/archives/d001/q000030.htm It seems to be a very informative site for Indian grad students in particular. This is all very interesting.

I personally think that GRE scores, while not completely useless, are of limited value in determining the quality of a candidate, especially the quantitative portion because it relies too much on test technique and not on inherent numeracy. The ETS justifies it by saying that people who are numerate should be able to do very well on the quantitative since such questions ought to be second nature to them, and they back it up with statistics. As a metric, however, it often turns out to be a poor indicator of the preparation the candidate has for graduate school. Many profs know this. I think that, and the fact that it is possible to "work the system" (as witnessed by the debacle in China and Taiwan), is leading the ETS is changing the structure of the GREs this October: http://www.gre.org/grechanges.html If you're taking the GREs in October, you'll be taking it in its new format. Some top schools use the GREs as a filtering mechanism. But not every one of them does -- some of the more enlightened schools recognize its weaknesses and consider it simply one of many factors that influence of the quality of a candidate and do not reject candidates outright because of their GRE scores. Some schools use GREs as tie-breakers for funding. Normally those departments are underfunded, so they have to resort to doing this. The GREs do not generally make or break an application, so if the OP is a strong candidate in general, a Q750 score will not hurt his/her application. (Unless he applies to certain programs that do use the GRE as a filtering mechanism) P.S. I have friends who have gotten into very good engineering PhD programs (top 4) with funding, and their scores were something like Q730 - Q750. They were top 2% of their graduating classes and were attending a very prestigious institution at the time -- just goes to show that some people don't test well. Of course, in their statement of purpose, they drew attention to the fact that they did very well in many quantitative courses (far far above the class average).