Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Northwestern vs. UPenn

It's that time of year... when I get to hear back from all the grad schools that rejected me... TT.TT And indeed almost all the schools I applied to rejected me... *sigh* oh well.

The two that didn't are Northwestern and UPenn, which I visited on two consecutive weekends. Yay travel fun! And it was indeed fun (other than coming down with some awesome coughing ailment following the UPenn visit >.<).

It's going to be a pretty hard choice to make, since both schools have awesome programs with a good balance between theoretical, experimental, and computational research. And the funding packages they're offering me are pretty similar as well... *ponder ponder* Northwestern is located nicely NOT next to a "bad" part of the city, but then again that didn't stop me from coming to MIT... So yeah... decision time... -.-

But instead of continuing to whine and sigh, I shall offer some amusement by displaying the pictures I took during my visit to Northwestern. A couple of the current grad students were awesome and led an expedition into Chicago, which included a stop at the Chicago Cultural Center to look at their pretty stained-glass and mosaic domes, Millenium Park to visit "The Bean" and the spitting face fountain that was not spitting, the Art Institute of Chicago, and dinner.

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Pretty picture of Chicago from the lake-shore next to Northwestern. Apparently there's a tradition for couples at Northwestern to draw/write something in chalk or paint (hard to tell under all that snow and ice) on the rocks lining this shore. We found a heart drawn by one of the other prospective students' high school music teacher.

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Me standing in the middle of a street somewhere in Chicago... Look there's even a bright red sign saying Chicago on it!

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Look! A giant stained-glass dome! But it's so huge you can't really see any details in this picture -.- Luckily I also zoomed in on one of the panels and the center rosette ^.^

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Here's a picture from the mosaic dome. I actually couldn't get many good pictures of this dome... everything came out kind of blurry like my hand was shaking or something... oh well...

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Whee! Millenium Park!!!

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Shiny crazy-looking thing... Apparently it's an outdoor theater of some sort?

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Aaaand there's the Bean! It's very very shiny... much more shiny than I thought it would be... O.O Shininess results in awesome pictures!

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Yes I'm a dork...
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Me and two of the other prospective students taking a picture of ourselves taking picture of ourselves reflected in the Bean... ^w^

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All the snow that day made the park really pretty to look at. This picture totally doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I had apparently...

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The face is actually kind of scary... but it wasn't spitting since it was so cold out.

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Yay pretty river view!

All in all, Chicago was a really nice city! XD Too bad I forgot my camera when I visited UPenn. Although it was kind of a dreary day... rainy and cloudy... so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all :-P