<p>Well, a few days ago, I just got accepted into my school's MS program, but I've thought about waiting another year to apply to another school, such as MIT or Berkeley. My school had a late deadline and I missed the deadline for all the other schools, so i only applied to my current school. It seems that at my current school, alot of the grad students hang out with their friends they met during their undergrad, as they still live in the nearby area or are also grad students. Since i didn't make many friends during my undergrad after transferring here, i figure either way i'll be in a new environment. So i dont know if its worth it to wait a year to go to a different school...</p>
<p>I'm trying to get perspective on what life is like for a engineering grad student, namely on the social side of things. I heard lots of the grad students are depressed at some level. I'm just curious if that depends on the school or if its just like that in general for engineering MS students. What do their social lives revolve around? do they mostly hang out with their friends from undergrad, fellow grad students, or joining clubs, etc?</p>
<p>social life style varies from school to school, group to group, department to department, some students work in lab 24/7 and have absolutely zero social life and try to graduate in 3 years, some students chill and have fun and don’t graduate in 5 years, most students are in the middle. it depends most on your LAB culture and the people sit around you everyday. i’ve seen labs where students go out for afternoon tea on regular basis, and a round of beer before going home on some nights</p>
<p>As Mr. Zoo said, it all depends on your obligations, your ambitions, and your cohort. I have known people who had a partying time in engineering grad school, and have known others who asked at graduation what that round yellow thing in the sky was called.</p>
<p>I knew one lab group that started each day at one bar at noon, and ended the day at another bar at midnight - hard-working and hard-partying. I know another lab group (different school) where essentially no one talks to each other, and if they are having fun they are sure keeping it a secret from the rest. No, these are not exagerrations.</p>
<p>You can have whatever social life you want, provided you pick a compatible group and are willing to accept the consequences - perhaps taking longer to graduate, perhaps making hangover-addled mistakes, etc.</p>
<p>Depression comes more from the amount and difficulty of work you have to deal with. If you’re doing labwork it can come from broken equipment nobody will help fix or experiments repeatedly failing. I think a good social life can mitigate issues in a lab, but all of my friends have that little bit of frustration going on all the time.</p>
<p>As for my horror story of labs, I heard of one a few buildings over where grad students actually have to punch a time clock, get timed breaks, and are required to clock in at the lab at least six days a week.</p>
<p>There is one prof here who has webcams in all his offices to watch his students and make sure they are working 8 to 5 when not in class, and he has a remote desktop installed so he can X out of the internet if his students are spending too much time on it. If I had an advisor like that, I would immediately transfer advisors or schools.</p>