And the Winner is...

Since last Fall I have been stressing about graduate applications, frantically making sure that all the parts of the application are in, worrying myself to death waiting to hear back from schools, rejoicing at acceptances, claiming "I didn't want to go there anyway" at rejections, and finally making the big decision on the next 4-5 years of my life. Being the nerd I am, I made a table of my results for your viewing pleasure.

School	Result	Funding
MIT	Rejected :(
UC Berkeley	Rejected :(
NSF GRFP	Rejected :(
UC Irvine	Accepted	None
Georgia Tech	Accepted	None
Virginia Tech	Accepted	None
CU Boulder	Accepted	Yes!
UI Urbana-Champaign	Accepted	Yes!

University of Colorado Boulder and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) were the only two schools to offer me funding and invite me to visit their campus, so the decision came down between those two. Both are great schools with excellent programs in ECE and power electronics. I liked both their campuses, professors, and graduate students. This really only made the decision MUCH more difficult. After several frantic tweets, many phone conversations, and various emails, I decided to take the offer at UIUC. Starting this Fall, I'll be a research assistant doing research somewhere in the realm of power electronics and working towards my MS and then PhD! I am very excited about next year and I hope it will be an excellent experience.

Part of me is amazed that I am doing what I set out to do just about a year ago. I somehow managed to come out of a bad job situation, get myself back on my feet and get back on the road to graduate school (with lots of help from my friends and family, of course). I know I still have a long way to go, but at least I am headed in the right direction. I have already started to settle into my life in Boston surrounded by great friends and living a happy (mostly healthy) lifestyle. I am sad to be leaving a place after just a year, yet again, but life is an adventure, right? And I'm really hoping I will stick to the whole graduate school thing for more than a year. Let's hope for the best. ;)