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SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 4:50 am
by asdfuogh
So.. anyone apply for that? Seems like a crazy commitment to the military industry.. (say, an average of 12 years of service for the average phd student who gets it from the very first year), but it starts sounding reasonable when I think about how bleak jobs could be post-phd. What do you guys think?

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:23 am
by Bozostein
can you provide a link to the program so we can learn about it? i'm in favor of having a job when i graduate! btw, i just got into phd program you to right? where you headed?

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 4:02 pm
by asdfuogh
http://smart.asee.org/about

I'm still daydreaming about other places.. but it looks like I'll be heading to UCI. I think I'm going to start e-mailing/calling the other places to confirm my rejections haha. You?

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:38 pm
by SSM
You only pay back 1 year of work for every year they cover of your grad school, so you wouldn't need to work for the DoD for 12 years. I might think of that as an extended post-doc, or like two post-docs, depending on how fast you get done. I applied for SMART last year and didn't get it, mainly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and the DoD budget is really tight. Overall I think it's a nice opportunity, but if you want to do something like high energy in grad school you might be disappointed with your job.

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 6:27 pm
by asdfuogh
***! Did I read this incorrectly.. Damn. I guess I read 1 year for every 6 months of academic grant, instead of 1 year for every year, and 6 months for every semester or partial year. I guess I'm not smart enough to get this...

Anyway, I applied (waiting for a phone interview.. possibly) because I thought it'd be really cool if I ended up getting assigned to the lab that worked on the Navy's polywell experiment, and that's really all I talked about in the essays.

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:25 pm
by alphanumeric
asdfuogh wrote:.. but it looks like I'll be heading to UCI.
hey now, I love UCI. ;-) I won't be there next year, but I have a lot of respect for the faculty I've worked with. Have any questions about it there, pm me.

Re: SMART Scholarship

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:54 pm
by asdfuogh
Haha, sorry, it's not that I don't like UCI (I'm going to visit next week! or is next next week), but I would rather go to Berkeley (yes, I'm sure many others would..) because my family lives in San Francisco. I mean, after four years, I feel like I should be closer to home so that I can go back during slightly bigger events (ie. Lunar New Year's, when my whole family gathers which I've missed for four years..). The worst part of the feeling is that I could have been able to be there for those four years but I chose UCLA over Berkeley for that exact same reason. Damn. Don't you hate it when you grow old and learn to appreciate family duty.