<p>Hi Aibarr, first time poster here...I'm a civil engineering senior and your post here...</p>
<p>is encouraging me right now in applying to top ranked grad schools as I also have just above a 3.5 GPA...</p>
<p>Could you please tell me what other schools gave you funding besides Urbana?</p>
<p>You ought to send her a personal message. She rarely checks the boards anymore, and a PM will send her an email notification.</p>
<p>I am totally going to start calling out people by SN from now on. Exclamation points will definitely still be used.</p>
<p>I miss aibarr! I hope she is doing well. :)</p>
<p>I believe I have to get to 15 posts for me to do that…sigh…but thank you…</p>
<p>I’ll try to get hold of her. She’s doing well!</p>
<p>Sorry! Hi! This doesn’t help you anymore, but I don’t think what I have to say would’ve helped you, anyhow. Illinois was the only program that actually gave me a full ride. Others gave me a partial assistantship (Cornell) and one program offered to give me in-state tuition (University of Texas, which ticked me off because at the time I’d applied, I had seriously only ever lived in Texas).</p>
<p>I’m doing well! I’m incredibly busy… I left my cushy job at a top design firm and decided to start my own firm. No regrets. I get to be a mad scientist and do research projects in partnership with a professor buddy of mine at U of Houston. I get to pick and choose which projects I work on (cool historical building renovation? house made out of shipping containers? town hall expansions? yes, please!). I have an intern (no, I am not hiring, not even for you, my dear; I cannot afford to hire anybody else, and there’s already a long list of people who want to work for me), and an office (in a beautiful old circa 1920s Baptist church, so my window happens to be a six-foot stained glass window), and we celebrated our first birthday a few months ago. My billings for the past year have exceeded my gross salary at my old gig, so I didn’t miss a beat.</p>
<p>Sanity is <em>greatly</em> improved.</p>
<p>Hope everyone around here is doing well!!</p>
<p>^^^Glad to hear you are doing well, aibarr!</p>
<p>Congratulations on everything aibarr!</p>
<p>Great to see a success story play out on CC over the years!</p>