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To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:25 am
by megatron
I recently was offered admission here, but I want to hear about the visiting weekend before I make a definitive decision. Would you mind telling me how things went, what your opinions were, praises, concerns, and so forth? I want to live vicariously through your weekend! I have a very favorable view of the school and the area, but I want to be sure, and any insider's information would help.

Thanks!

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:34 am
by zxcv
Congratulations! I wrote a few thoughts about my UW visit in my blog but overall I really enjoyed it. I would have been happy to go there.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask here or by PM.

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 12:31 pm
by twistor
It was truly amazing.

We arrived early in the morning. We are given expensive golden rings but the rings were quickly stolen by a small green mutant. We had breakfast with the faculty then flew off to Alderaan to recover the rings when suddenly we were ambused by Klingons. They grunted something about us being late for the lab tours so we had to postpone recovery of the rings. We tried to meet with some graduate students during lunch but were thwarted by a robot from the future who wanted to prevent us all from discovering anti-robot weapons. We were given some folders with information and had dinner in a nice restaurant.

I didn't actually go nor did I apply there but I'm pretty sure (unless I'm getting my stories mixed up) that that is how it happened.

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:59 pm
by grae313
megatron wrote:I recently was offered admission here, but I want to hear about the visiting weekend before I make a definitive decision. Would you mind telling me how things went, what your opinions were, praises, concerns, and so forth? I want to live vicariously through your weekend! I have a very favorable view of the school and the area, but I want to be sure, and any insider's information would help.

Thanks!
I had a wonderful time at the visiting weekend and absolutely loved Seattle and UW. I would have been very happy to go there. Post or PM me with specific questions if you want.

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:58 pm
by doom
I didn't go to UW's visit weekend, as they didn't accept me until the second wave of offers, which was apparently too late for them to get me out there. Then they were acting like they couldn't reimburse me to travel out there, but that eventually came through, so I visited this past weekend.

Since I set up my own interviews, I talked exclusively to people in their high energy theory group or the Institute for Nuclear Theory. That was good for me, since I was sick of hearing people talk about areas of physics that hold little interest for me, but it also means I got a very selective slice of the department.

I've heard that their money for high energy theory is very tight from other people who visited. While that's true, I don't know if it's that much worse there than it is at other similar places. I do know that they have fewer students, (5 or 6 total) than other groups of similar size. And they have a system for bringing up and evaluating those students through quals, grades in classes, and performance in their journal club and their independent reading classes. It sounds like a lot of their students who don't make it end up in nuclear theory, and the interests of the groups overlap a lot.

The campus is very nice, a lot prettier than I expected based on their website for some reason. The cherry blossoms were in bloom when I was there, which actually attracted tourists to the Liberal Arts Mall. The physics building is very nice, and not very old. They have some of the important equations in physics engraved into the outside of the building, and a coffee and snack bar called the h-bar, which I thought was awesome.

Seattle is a very cool city. I took the bus downtown and wandered around by the waterfront. The campus is also on the shores of Lakes Union and Washington, which are very cool, in my opinion. The U-District is cool, with lots of different interesting restaurants and coffee shops. I was told by students that rent isn't too bad near campus. The nearby suburbs are more upscale, and I don't know how far away you would have to get before the rents start going back down. The bus system seems very good (although I have lived and gone to school only in Midwestern cities not named Chicago, so my standards aren't all that high).

It was definitely a place that I could see myself ending up, but I liked Minnesota just a little bit better.

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:38 pm
by vroomfondel
seattle was my best visit, in terms of the amount of fun I had. I met some awesome grad students, and would have totally considered going there.

I was looking at Experimental AMO mostly, and so spoke with Blinov and Deep Gupta -- both are very cool. If you're interested in nuclear theory then you already know what a great place it is for that subfield.

not sure what kind of details you want, but feel free to PM me.

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:54 pm
by megatron
Thanks to you all. I may PM you with further questions.

My field of interest is Nuclear Experiment or Particle Experiment. Obviously, for NEx, UW really can't be beaten. For PEx, I'm not sure exactly where they fit. The other choice I have is UCSC. While not as highly ranked, I enjoyed my visit there, and they offered me a chance to start some summer research, with the offer of later joining ATLAS. That's exciting, but my heart lies with UW, and I had really been waiting for this acceptance since that's what I had been trying so hard to get. SCIPP seems to be pretty good for PEx, though I don't exactly know where they rank with respect to UW. Santa Cruz was beautiful, but I still like Seattle better. I also like the facilities at UW about 20 times more. It's gorgeous there. Ultimately, I think I will choose UW, but I wanted some feedback from you all, though it seems that you're all theorists!

Nonetheless, if any of you feel strongly against choosing UW over UCSC, I'd truly appreciate your saying so!

Re: To those who went to UW-Seattle's visiting weekend:

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:49 pm
by grae313
megatron wrote:Thanks to you all. I may PM you with further questions.

My field of interest is Nuclear Experiment or Particle Experiment. Obviously, for NEx, UW really can't be beaten. For PEx, I'm not sure exactly where they fit. The other choice I have is UCSC. While not as highly ranked, I enjoyed my visit there, and they offered me a chance to start some summer research, with the offer of later joining ATLAS. That's exciting, but my heart lies with UW, and I had really been waiting for this acceptance since that's what I had been trying so hard to get. SCIPP seems to be pretty good for PEx, though I don't exactly know where they rank with respect to UW. Santa Cruz was beautiful, but I still like Seattle better. I also like the facilities at UW about 20 times more. It's gorgeous there. Ultimately, I think I will choose UW, but I wanted some feedback from you all, though it seems that you're all theorists!

Nonetheless, if any of you feel strongly against choosing UW over UCSC, I'd truly appreciate your saying so!
well, I'm condensed matter experiment, and I think you should go to UW!