Hey Everybody-

The following is a video I recorded to discuss a bit about my graduate school selection. There will be a more detailed analysis in a post to come about the princeton visit. Thanks for visiting.

–nathan

Intro

Okay, so this is one of my first meaningful blogging attempts. Well of course the initial HelloWorld post is vital and essential. On to life though. If you didn’t know I’m going to pursue a PhD in computer science starting this fall. At the moment, I am attempting to figure out where I will pursue said degree. The potential candidates are Princeton and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This blog entry documents my recruiting trip to UIUC.

My website was down during the trip, so I didn’t get to blog while we were there, but I did copy some notes down. Overall it was an amazing trip. I really wanted to capture my feelings as we were on the trip because post trip analysis can easily change perceptions. Nevertheless here is an attempt at my day by day journey through the UIUC Computer Science visit weekend.

Thursday

Tonight was our first night at UIUC . I can say that it turned out to be a big time “WOW!”. Right now it seems as though this will be an extremely hard decision on where to go to grad school. I’m just praying, and believing that the Lord will reveal to both Audrey and I where His purposes lie.

Siebel Center! Man this place is HUGE!

So, UIUC is an amazing school. The Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science (right) is an immaculate building. It was pretty amazing, Okay more than just pretty, I couldn’t imagine getting to work in such a cool building. We started the night by meeting our graduate student guide for the weekend. He walked us from the hotel to the Siebel Center. The first hing I saw upon entering the building was a cool little coffee shop like you would expect to see an airport terminal. A coffee shop in the CS department building?! Next we (audrey and I of course) passed by a wall of huge TV screens and my name was on one of the TVs. It displayed a special welcome to me (my name on the screen). These guys know how to recruit. It was amazing.

The night went on, and I had several awesome conversations and went away with a great overall feeling. Audrey was included in the event as well by the UIUC staff. They had a name tag prepared for her, and she had several conversations with the locals. The people were so nice. They asked her what she was interested in, and she told them she would like to get a master’s degree in English, then they asked her if she would like them to call the English department and set up a meeting for her tomorrow. Wow! Not only did they make me feel like I was wanted, but also helped my wife feel wanted too. These people understand the importance of the wifey!

Of course this is a recruiting trip so it must be kept in mind that all this coolness could potentially be a show, but when discussing the evening with Audrey we both agreed that there was complete genuineness from our hosts. There is definitely a peace here.

I am blogging each night so that I can track how I feel during this process. As of tonight good feelings (great!), but we will see how tomorrow goes. The truth is that the Lord has this thing in His hands and it is going to work out no matter which choice we make (Princeton or UIUC).

Friday

Today was intense! For some reason I was sooooo tired. It was jam packed full of meetings with profs, discussion panels, and a good lunch. I met with several potential advisers and they did a great job of hitting interesting points. I realized that I started off asking the wrong questions to the advisers. I had come prepared with several questions that I though were relevant, it turned out that if one had only 15 minutes with a potential adviser the questions should really be focused on research and the types of skills that are expected from the specific adviser. I figured this out and made a lot more progress as the meetings went on.

For dinner we ate at Jim Gould’s Restraunt, which was very good. I had a steak, and Audrey had… I can’t remember. Oh well… The steak was impressive. I have been spoiled a bit by Todd’s Meat, but this wasn’t too shabby at all. The evening was a great success! After dinner we chose to go back to the hotel to get some rest over going on the scavenger hunt.

Tonight an extreme heaviness came over me. I truly don’t know what it was or from where it came, but the God of the universe revealed Himself to me in a mighty way. I praise the Lord for loving me. I praise you Lord. The day was full of questions and laughs and impressive talks, and my wifey finding that UIUC does in fact have the coveted MFA program. I’m going to be patient and see what the Lord opens up! Yay for Daddy!

Saturday

The day started off way toooo early! I didn’t fall asleep until 4 a.m. Got the good regular 3 hours of sleep! Yay for me. The good thing is that the day wasn’t too hard.

Once I got going the day started with a panel discussion with current grad students. Then more meetings with professors. Professor Sanders and I hit is off really well. It may turn out that I do research with him. We have similar personalities and approaches to research (this is a somewhat faulty statement because I don’t really know what my approach to research is yet… lol). We will see how it plays out. After a few more meetings Audrey and I said goodbye to the school and headed back to good ol’ abq!

Post Analysis

So as we got home we realized that Illinois is an amazing place, and that there really is not one negative about it. It will be really hard to say no to UIUC. The greatest positive about UIUC is the breadth. It is a place that allows students to do so many different types of research, and find suitable advisers. It’s interesting that until I visited I had no idea how elite and amazing UIUC is, and now I have such high esteem for the department. I realized how you really don’t know, or rather can’t say with any certainty how good/bad a place is until you have really experienced it. I beleive that UIUC is most definitely one the elite schools in Computer Science. I’m extremely glad I visited and will have more to talk about soon.

I hope you all enjoy the following pictures from the trip.

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