<p>Hi, I am from Jadavpur university, Calcutta, India. I plan to do an M.S. in civil engineering. My scores are: Verbal=800, Quantitative=800, TOEFL=287. I am among the top 4 out of 100 in class. Can anyone suggest the names of some universities I should apply to? I would be needing full financial aid though and that restricts my choices a lot.</p>
<p>i know that everybody gets tired of answering the same sort of questions. but please do answer one more time! anyone?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most graduate programs do not give scholarships to first year students. And for MS students, scholarships are even more limited tha they are for PhD students. I would say if you get lucky, you will get half of the tuition from scholarships covered. That means you will still have to pay roughly $20,000/year, including cost of living. </p>
<p>The only way to get a free ride is if you get an RA or TA position, but then you will have to be applying for a PhD program and even then, usually most programs will only give such positions to 2nd year students.</p>
<p>thanks Alexandre. i have seen your posts in these forums and they are such a great help!
well, bad news for me about financial aid. if i could cover the costs for one semester, do you think i could get some aid then? and could you suggest the names of some good universities? i have seen the usnews rankings but i don't know if i could depend on them entirely. i would rather do a job then go for a Ph.D so could you tell me which schools would be better and how they are perceived in the US?
i would be very grateful if you could help me one more time.</p>
<p>First let me start with my recommendations. I always recommend a mixture of four ingredients, each of equal importance:</p>
<p>1) Quality of the intended department. In this case, Civil Engineering
2) Reputation of the overall program, in this case, Engineering
3) Prestige associated with the university as a whole
4) Quality of life.</p>
<p>Given those 4 criteria, I recommend the following schools, in that order:
University of California-Berkeley
Stanford University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Texas-Austin
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
Northwestern University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Purdue University-West Lafayette</p>
<p>As far as getting aid as of your second semester, it is possible. You may even get aid as of day one. All I am saying is that funding is not always availlable. But if you apply to 7 or 8 schools, one may have something availlable. There is no sure-fire answer...no guarantee anybody can make.</p>
<p>But I do recommend you apply for your PhD directly. It is a little more selective, but chances for funding are better and if you DO decide to pursue a PhD, you are already in a program. Besides, immigration policies are much better for PhDs than it is for mere MS candidates. And should you get an offer of employment you cannot refuse, you can always leave your program.</p>
<p>thanks for your reply.</p>
<p>well, financial aid is a big consideration for me. i don't think i will be able to pay the full costs for graduate school. so here goes my selection:</p>
<p>mit (for the prestige, but quite impossible to get into)
ut-austin ( uiuc, umich and uta are similarly ranked, but i go for uta because of the lowest costs)
purdue
cornell (i got a good response from them. by the way, why is northwestern better than cornell?)</p>
<p>i am also thinking of applying to tamu, pennstate, ohio, florida. these universities are not in the same league as the earlier ones. but they are more likely to admit me and give me aid. do you think that there is a huge difference between these two sets of universities?</p>
<p>Excellent list. Cornell is at least as good as Northwestern. So you can certainly exchange one for the other. </p>
<p>There is obviously a drop between your first four and the next four, but the next four are very good just the same. </p>
<p>All the universities you are considering are excellent.</p>
<p>Best of luck and keep us posted.</p>
<p>Civil is too broad a field to make this a meaningful list, IMO. What type of civil? If you're interested in Structures, then Lehigh should be on the list for sure.</p>
<p>Yes, I am interested in Structures. But does Lehigh give aid to international students?</p>