Grad School Choice for PE Coring for Drilling&Completion

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Folks,</p>

<p>I need some help out for good grad school choice in PetE-drilling focus.</p>

<p>I am an asian currently working as drlg Engineer with CVX in my hometown and moving for grad school in PE with plan for research in drilling related topic this fall 2010.</p>

<p>My choices are A&M (accepted), OU (waiting), TU (waiting) and LSU (waiting).</p>

<p>I kind of see A&M got its ranking good and hugh PE school size but not sure how seriously faculties are good in drilling research topic and with this big size, how focus individual will get from prof. They seem to be real PE (reservior or production). I found OU and TU are good one. Both schools are smaller and seem to have good focus around reserch in drilling better than A&M (correct me if I am wrong). Especially TU got the best lab facility in drilling so far considering from the webpage. LSU is good but I am not yet get much detail about my interest field of focus out this school.</p>

<p>Main question is...if I am going to focus to deepen my core of drilling&completion expertise, which school will fit me most...considering class size, intention from professor, research facility in drilling and the reach of oil field technology.</p>

<p>Big thanks,</p>

2

<p>Toycoming,</p>

<p>I’ve actually underwent this process this past semester, and I intend to enroll in UT-Austin PGE for a PhD this coming fall, so I hope this helps.</p>

<p>First, I am not too familiar with these programs. I was able to evaluate UT, A&M, Stan and Mines (although I eliminated A&M due to the location) … So, it basically came down to the other three, none of which you are considering. I later eliminated Stanford due to their reservoir focus (and less generous package) and Mines was kinda a backup.</p>

<p>For me, I loved the UT PGE Dept and chose it over the other three. This is due to an experimental focus and a desire to work on fracture methods research (they hold a strong emphasis here).</p>

<p>On your end, you allude to drilling/coring, but the field is very large. Do you want to do work into drilling methods? rock mechanics? fracture technology? LWD? Wireline? LWD? or are you uncertain. Each of the programs listed likely has strong points in certain aspects of the drilling/completions realm.</p>

<p>This considered, there are two points you should probably consider. For one, Cost. All programs are quite strong and should have good placement, having a little bit of spending money is quite nice (and I personally don’t consider the program strength differences between the four to be worthy of significant cost considerations. </p>

<p>Second: If you are a PhD student or have received a Fellowship/RA, you likely don’t have to worry about cost. If you know exactly what you want to do, it should be very easy to look at the most storied professors at each institution to determine fit (are the top 3 professors in exactly your research interest)… However, if you are a bit uncertain, I would prob rec A&M. They have the largest and most prestigious (doesn’t matter too much) department. This should afford you quite a bit of flexibility in determining you research aims (more professors and topics in case they change). Likewise, I know personally that A&M is involved in several industry partnerships regarding instrumentation, fracturing (mechanics, experimental, etc), and logging-- all of which tie into drilling/completions.</p>

<p>Please take what I say with a grain of salt. I have only one industry internship and a non-petroleum undergrad, so you may be more knowledgeable than me.</p>

3

<p>Dear Mr_jones,</p>

<p>Appreciate you sharing. </p>

<p>Actully I used to have CSM and UT in my list. I ended up drop CSM and didn’t get accepted by UT for this fall 2010 T_T.</p>

<p>I find it a bit hard to see variety in reserch related to D&C in Master study of big school compare to reservior or production. To my best (may be change later), I kind of like to see myself working in wellbore mechanics, bit&drill string or may be formation damage. I am drilling engineer so not really focus much in service’s technology such as wireline or MWD/LWD. I would go more for topics related to the well behavior and help open my understanding/problem cracking when I am back to my work.</p>

<p>What stuck in my mind is A&M is surely good school with strong academic but from the web (currently only resource I have gone through), TU has best lab facility or even OU look has more prof with their research interest in D&C. I am not sure may be A&M also got good facilities as well but not fully presented in their website with details enough…so far I found only 3 possible professors in A&M having this research interest but not feeling exact fit on the topics. I am trying to seek help from my colleage from US working here to provide some comments.</p>

<p>Cost wise is not my concern. I am just lucky enough to have CVX support me the scholarship. </p>

<p>Deep inside I can feel my personal favor over A&M choice but just afraid if it may turn out to be a limited research choice of mine…^_^!</p>

<p>Anyway, I am sure your choice with UT is a great one for you. Wish you the best luck…who know some say “oil field is not that big”…we may come across one day.</p>