I want to thank you guys for all the feedback about Berkeley being a good university for engineering. But I have also heard about other bad stuff about it (undergraduate students not given priority, etc.) so I really need some feedback now. (If you are a Berkeleyian who stumbled on this blog, do give your comments as well)

Alright, granted Berkeley may not be as prestigious as places like Stanford and Princeton, but that aside is it really a good university? Why or why not? And let’s say you were given Berkeley, Princeton, and Cornell, which one should you go to?

The 2008 US News Rankings for undergraduate engineering are as follows but of course rankings do not tell the whole story and should only be used cautiously as a guide. I remember THES ranked Stanford at 19th overall last year, what rubbish.

2008 Top US Engineering Schools (Overall) - Undergraduate (Status in brackets)
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Rejected)
2 University of California, Berkeley (Admitted)
2 Stanford University (Rejected)
4 California Institute of Technology (DNA)
5 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (DNA)
5 Georgia Institute of Technology (DNA)
7 Cornell University (Admitted)
7 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (DNA)
9 Purdue University, West Lafayette (DNA)
9 Carnegie Mellon University (DNA)
9 University of Texas, Austin (DNA)
12. Princeton University, New Jersey (Rejected)

(DNA- Did not apply)

The engineering fields I am interested in and the 2008 US News rankings of universities in those fields:

A) Computer Engineering
(At schools whose highest degree is a doctorate)
1 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology
2 Carnegie Mellon University (PA)
2 Stanford University (CA)
4 University of California–Berkeley *
5 U. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign *

B) Electrical / Electronic / Communications
(At schools whose highest degree is a doctorate)
1 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology
2 University of California–Berkeley *
3 Stanford University (CA)
4 U. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign *
5 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor *

Full list here. * denotes a public institution.

Comments anyone? I need some advice here to make a decision. Really. Please drop a comment here.

(P.S. Sorry all my posts have been about Universities and Scholarships lately. This is my blog anyway and I blog about the stuff that concerns me the most in the present moment. So bear with me yeah. Things will be in place soon, I hope.)

E-mail came in at 5.11 am on Sunday morning, the day AFTER they were supposed to send out the e-mails.

March 28, 2008

Ern Sheong Lin
No. 21, Jalan BU 7/2
Petaling Jaya, 47800
MALAYSIA

Stanford ID#: 05522867

Dear Ern Sheong,

The Office of Undergraduate Admission regrets to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission to Stanford University. The overall quality of our applicant pool and relatively small size of our freshman class means that we disappoint the vast majority of our applicants each year. We acknowledge your strong interest in Stanford, which makes the task of sending you this news especially difficult.

To find answers to the most commonly asked questions about the admission process at Stanford, click here. I hope it will help address some of the questions you may have about our decision. Please be aware that we are not able to consider appeals to this decision.

Ern Sheong, you are a fine student with solid support from your teachers and advisors. I am confident that you will enjoy great success in your undergraduate education. I only wish we had room for everyone with talent and energy like yours.

We know this is disappointing news to receive; for that reason, and to be environmentally conscious, you will not be sent a paper copy of this letter by mail unless you instruct us otherwise. If you wish to request a copy of this letter by mail, you may do so here.

With best wishes for an outstanding undergraduate experience,
Richard H. Shaw
Dean of Admission and Financial Aid

So much for all the hype and that stupid Stanford campaign. Waited 25 hours for their e-mail only to receive a notice of rejection. All this even though I applied for Early Action and shown great interest in Stanford.

Somehow I knew that this could happen and surprisingly I am not so affected by this. In fact, I feel perfectly alright, thanks to the peace that God has given me.

I remember debating  in my mind for months whether Stanford or MIT would be better for me. But God has other things in mind. Now I don’t have to bother about that debate anymore. Neither accepted me.

I want to thank all the people who gave me encouragement =) I’m perfectly fine, though I thought I deserved to get in after an average of 5 drafts per every essay submitted to Stanford, for a total of about 6 essays. And I did show my passion to study in Stanford.

And don’t let the fact that Ern Sheong did not get into Stanford affect your dreams of going to Stanford or any other prestigious university. In the game of admissions, the best man or woman does not always emerge as the winner. There are innumerable and unpredictable factors which can affect the final admission decision. Continue to dream big, think big, and realize that by not applying at all, the chances of you entering any of these great universities is ZERO. So always apply and give it a shot.

Not giving up on Stanford yet. I’ll do my Masters there, God willing. Stanford remains as my DREAM SCHOOL.

Quoted from MercunyNews.com:

Stanford University announced Thursday that less than one in 10 applicants have been offered admission beginning in the fall for the class of 2012.

A total of 2,400 students were offered admission to Stanford as freshman out of more than 25,000 applicants, the largest number in Stanford’s history.

“The competition for admission to Stanford this year was unprecedented,” Stanford Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Shaw said. “Because of the large number of applicants, we were able to admit just 9.5 percent, the lowest admission rate in Stanford’s 117-year history. As expected, the academic strengths, talent and impact outside the classroom of this group is astonishing. They are distinguished on a global scale.”

I am still waiting for that e-mail. >.<

All the people I know who have applied to Stanford got rejected…. and I also heard of a few acceptances elsewhere but I don’t know those people…

It is 10.40 am in the morning. E-mails should have been sent by 5.00 am.

BUT WHERE IS THE EMAIL TELLING ME THAT I AM ACCEPTED OR REJECTED??????

I know I am not alone. A look at College Confidential brings me among people of the same fate: NO EMAIL YET. Mostly deferred EA people…

This waiting is agonizing and excruciating!!!!!!

Update: It is now 12.45 am, the day after, Malaysian time and still no e-mail =.=

I discovered randomly that the Astro Scholarship is now open for application! Deadline is April 20th, 2008!

This scholarship caters for overseas undergraduate studies as well as for studies in Malaysian universities.

Undergraduate Degrees Overseas

• Bachelor of Dramatic Art (Acting, Design, Production) in National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia (NIDA) or any other reputable school of dramatic art.
• Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science or Science related to media and broadcast technology including Computer Graphics.

Haha I think Electrical Engineering has got to do with media and broadcast technology right?

OK can. APPLY!

(I have submitted applications to 8 scholarship providers already. This is my 9th.) =.=’

This is so funny…

Congratulations and Welcome from Admissions Director Robinson

March 27, 2008

Dear Ern,

Congratulations! I am pleased to offer you admission to the University of California, Berkeley for fall 2008. You have been admitted to the College of Engineering.

Given the record number and extraordinary quality of our applicants this year, this offer is a great accomplishment. You and your family have every reason to be proud of your academic and personal achievements.

Enjoy this moment and picture yourself at Berkeley, a place where you truly can change the world.

The next step for you to take is formal acceptance of our admission offer. Everything you need to do and know is available in the Next Steps section on the Home page (click the Home tab above) in myBerkeleyApplication.

Again, welcome to Berkeley! We believe in you and the unique contributions you will make here at Cal.

Sincerely,

Walter A. Robinson
Director, Office of Undergraduate Admissions

I told myself that if one of the schools accept me I will go to the States. So…

I AM GOING TO THE STATES PEOPLE!

But I am not confirming that it is Berkeley that I am going to just yet… waiting for others…

Reply date for UC Berkeley: May 1, 2008

Somebody had the nerve bright idea to create such a countdown online for Stanford…

But hey… I could have been that somebody too!

(My Facebook Profile)

Dunno why the times don’t match though =(
miscalculation on my part i think

HECK la

Way to go Stanford, you are much much earlier than the rest of the pack! XD

————————

A Message from the Office of Admission

The Office of Undergraduate Admission will mail and email decision letters to applicants who applied for admission under Stanford’s Regular Decision process on Friday, March 28, 2008. Decision letters and emails will be sent sometime after 3pm (Pacific Time) on Friday. Decisions will not be available anywhere on our website, in person or by phone.

————————

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

That means that I will not be able to sleep until 7 am on 29th March 2008, Saturday morning (Malaysian Time).

=.=

Dear Ern Sheong:

As we near the end of regular decision application review for Cornell’s Class of 2012, we would like to share with you important information regarding admissions decision notification. Please be certain to retain this email for your reference.

You will be able to view your admission decision online on Monday, March 31, beginning at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) at https://app.applyyourself.com/?id=cornellu. More than 30,000 applicants will be eager to access their online decision at or shortly after 5:00 p.m., so we ask for your patience if you cannot access your decision right away. Please also know that Cornell will mail admissions decisions to all applicants, so you can expect to receive paper notification as well.

…

Best Regards,

Aba Blankson
Director of Information Technology
Admissions and Enrollment 

31st FASTER COME LAHHH !!!!

Admission decisions for applicants to the Princeton Class of 2012 will be available online on Monday, March 31, 2008 after 5 pm EDT. We also will mail decision letters by post to all applicants.

…

Thank you for applying to Princeton!

Sincerely,
Princeton Admission Office

I can’t wait… 5pm EDT means 5am Malaysian time on 1st April 2008, Tuesday morning.

Somehow I think Princeton is going to reject me.

No, this is not an allegation. I have data to justify what I have stated above. A very interesting observation indeed.

So, it turns out that I have worked for iZZi Wireless Broadband for 3 months already (iZZi’s service is only available in the Klang Valley for now). Until this day, I have sold broadband packages to 37 customers (each package requiring an upfront payment of more than RM 1000, so I can deduce that this group of people belongs to the middle class or higher). But that is not the point.

The point is that out of my 37 customers, 27 customers use 012, 4 customers use 017, 2 customers use 016, 1 customer uses 013 and another 3 customers use 019.

The breakdown (out of 37 customers):
31 Maxis subscribers (84%)
4 Celcom subscribers (11%)
2 DiGi subscribers (5%)

Interesting huh? Despite the rampant and aggresive promotions by DiGi and Celcom, middle and upper classers are not that price sensitive and do not see the need to switch from their beloved Maxis. And of course, Maxis is also offering very attractive rates and packages. But of course, this goes to show that different subscribers target different niche groups, and this finding does not represent the proportion of subscribers that each of the telcos have in Malaysia. (my findings are limited to the Klang Valley and are targeted at more affluent Malaysian users)

Nice piece of info yeah?

Well, they aren’t exactly new, but they have been improved from their previous versions. They are Firefox 3 Beta 4 and Safari 3.1.

I have personally downloaded Firefox 3 Beta 4 and tried it out, and it gave me a noticable speed boost. Putting Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3 browser windows side by side and comparing page loading showed that both were equally comparable in terms of rate of loading. Sometimes one browser loaded a page faster, sometimes the other browser won. The verdict is for you to determine.

Despite having Firefox 3 Beta 4, you can still start the good ‘ol Firefox 2 if you will. Please be aware that Firefox 3 Beta 4 is in development stage, and they have advocated that unless you are a developer you should not download it. (who cares anyway? it is rather stable) At this point in time, many if not all plug-ins and toolbars which work for Firefox 2 do not work on Firefox 3.

As for Safari 3.1, it is not wrong to say that this is the first workable Safari on the Windows platform. From personal experience, previous Safari versions on Windows XP have constantly crashed while surfing. This is the cheapest way to get the feel of a Mac on your Windows PC!

Internet Explorer has also launched IE8 for beta downloads, but well, IE8 fails to load many pages properly.  =S

But hey, try these 2 browsers! Anything is better than the annoying and slow Internet Explorer. To my disappointment, many government websites in Malaysia do not optimize their websites for anything other than Internet Explorer. These people are backward man… =.=

Yeah so I asked CIMB whether there really was the purported CIMB Scholarship as stated on their website.

They replied:

Dear Ern Sheong,

We wish to inform that currently, CIMB only offers scholarships to employees of CIMB Group. We however would like to thank you for your interest in CIMB and wish you all the best in your future undertakings.

Best regards

Thanks for the (very late) reply, CIMB. Too bad my father works at Maybank, which offers only local scholarships.

I applied for the National Infocomm Scholarship (half-heartedly, thus I filled up the application form at my whim and fancy) at the urge of my mum here and my aunt in Singapore.

(I’m sorry I posted this a day after the deadline of application for this scholarship but I wanted to just share what this scholarship is all about.)

Firstly, for the overseas programme, the scholarship offers to pay tuition fees, allowances, accomodation costs, airfare costs, medical expenses, etc. It covers many engineering courses such as E & E, computer engineering, information systems, etc. The Overseas Full Scholarship comes with a 5-year bond and if one is not a Singaporean, one has to become a Singapore PR. Is that good?

But here is another take on this scholarship by Jiin Joo, a Malaysian who is currently working in Singapore for the Infocomm Development Authority (former ASEAN Scholar): 9 Considerations for National Infocomm Scholarship

One thing in particular gained my attention from Jiin Joo’s post.

5. Do you know the difference between a salaried job and running your own shop?

Entrepreneurs beware. This is perhaps one of the most un-thought of consequence - the fact you have to run your passion “part time” while “bidding your time” in some government agency. This will be particularly true for geeks and wannabes as they are naturally attracted to NIS. You might say, hey, I don’t really have a passion, but you forget the fact that perhaps after going through uni life, you might hit on THE thing you want to do, and lo-and-behold, it doesn’t exists in Singapore, if not your bonded organization. You can’t be good at something you only do part time.

Ha! That is what I am afraid of! Landing on some great idea as an wannabe entrepreneur and being unable to work on it just because I am bonded to some stupid scholarship! This point applies to all scholarships as well, in fact. This is indeed a dilemma. No one makes it big doing something part-time. But without any scholarship, I will not have enough funds to study in the US in the first place. Is there another way out? How else would I get the money to go there?

Another interesting point regarding this particular scholarship is how Hongyi advised Haoyi not to apply for any scholarship in Singapore. Haoyi was considering applying for the National Infocomm Scholarship but his elder brother Hongyi advised him against it in a letter. (Hongyi and Haoyi are Lee Hsien Loong’s sons, and thus also Lee Kuan Yew’s grandchildren) Even though this account does not hold anything against the NIS Scholarship in particular, it reveals the sentiments that fills the minds of every bonded scholar in town (Lee Hsien Loong’s son notwithstanding)

Can there be another way out? It would be agonizing to get a bonded scholarship and then realizing that there are so many funding opportunities, grants and scholarships waiting for me when I am already there in the US. But the first step would have to be a leap of faith, paying my way there on my own first.

Well, 8 days to Stanford decisions and also those from Cornell and Princeton. I shall wait and see.

Went blog-hopping and found some interesting stuff, i.e. a clock (top right) and this widget:

My blog is worth $11,855.34.
How much is your blog worth?

=.= If that is really the case (as of 24 March 2008)… I want to sell my blog XD

Any takers? (Alright sorry my humour gets weird this early in the morning. Lame posts are a result of a sleep deprived ES) My blog is definitely worth much much more than that measly sum =P