Answers to Commonly-Asked Questions:

(A) Application Procedures

What materials do I need to apply?

Your application must include general GRE scores, official transcripts, a statement of purpose, the 2-page application form, and 3 recommendation letters. If you are a foreign applicant for whom English is not the first language, TOEFL scores will also be required (unless you have attended a university in an English -speaking country for at least two years).

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How can I get an application?

Application materials for Autumn 2003 should become available by early September. If you wish to be considered for financial aid, these application materials are due December 13. The standard application form includes a question on whether you want to apply for financial aid, so no special financial aid forms are needed.

The simplest way to submit an application is electronically on the WEB.

Alternatively, you may request a printed application by writing to the Graduate Admissions Office, Old Union 132, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-3005. They will need your name, mailing address, the degree (e.g., M.S., Ph.D.) for which you will be applying, and the name of the department ("Civil & Environmental Engineering Department") in which you are interested. They also ask that you provide (for statistical purposes) information on gender, and whether you are a US citizen, permanent resident, or neither. Please note that Stanford requires a $20 preapplication fee for mailing printed applications. Stanford will not send a printed application until this $20 fee is prepaid (in U.S. funds, to cover handling and mailing costs), and we are not able to waive this University-required mailing fee.

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I need a waiver on the application fee.

Starting in 1999, Stanford University has told us that they will not, under any circumstances, process application materials without an application fee. We realize that this strict policy presents difficulties for students from certain foreign countries, but Stanford will no longer allow us to make ANY exceptions to this rule. The University will allow friends/relatives living in the US to send payment on behalf of a foreign applicant; if this is done, the payer should mail the check to our department office, and clearly indicate on the check the name of the applicant for whom the payment is being made.

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What minimum scores are needed to be admitted?

Our department does not have any minimum numerical requirements for either the GPA or for the GREs. Instead, all application materials are evaluated in their entirety, to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of each applicant, taking into account various factors [described more fully below, under Admissions Procedures]. We will often admit an applicant with a weakness in one area if the applicant appears to be strong in the other areas; however, we are less likely to admit applicants who seem weak in multiple areas.

For foreign students required to take the TOEFL, the University does not allow us to admit anyone whose TOEFL score is less than 575 (paper-based, or 233 for the computer-based test); in the EES program, we seldom admit students with TOEFL scores of less than 593 (paper-based, or 243 for the computer-based test), because experience has shown us that such students find it difficult to do well in our graduate program.

Despite the lack of numerically-based evaluation criteria, some potential applicants still seek numerical data regarding our admitted students, to try and gauge what calibre of applicants we tend to admit. While we are willing to provide such data for the EES program, you must recognize that we do not use these numbers as criteria --- while most of our admitted students meet many of these criteria, there are also applicants meeting most of these numerical measures who are not admitted to the EES program.

About 2/3rds of the Master's students admitted to the EES program for 2002-2003 had undergraduate GPAs of at least 3.6, 2/3rds had verbal GREs of at least 550, 2/3rds had quantitative GREs of at least 750, and 2/3rds had analytical GREs of at least 700. For those admittees who were foreign students, about 2/3rds had TOEFL scores above 620 (for paper-based exam; >260 for computerized test).

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How do I decide whether to apply to the EES or EFMH Master's program?

While there is substantial overlap between the two programs, EFMH emphasizes more the fluid mechanical, hydrological, mass transport and modeling aspects of environmental problems, while EES is more oriented towards chemical and biological aspects, with an emphasis on treatment technologies.

If you still feel uncertain about which program would be a better fit with your interests, we urge you to examine the MS course requirements for each program at our website:
http://eep.stanford.edu/SEEPWeb/ews/EWSBROCH/home.html

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Both the EES and EFMH programs are structured to allow MS studies to be completed within 3 quarters, so many of our winter and spring quarter course offerings have as prerequisites courses offered in the autumn. Because of this, these 2 programs only offer admission starting in autumn quarter.

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Where do I send the application and supporting material?

On-line applications are forwarded directly to the department. Supporting documents, i.e., transcripts, letters of recommendation, and test scores, as well as paper applications, should be mailed to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Graduate Admissions, Room M-42, Terman Engineering Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4020.

Return to top of page What is the application deadline?

Applications and supporting material are due December 13, 2002.

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(B) Admission Procedures

Criteria for graduate admission decisions?

The EES program evaluates graduate applications based on 4 general criteria.

First, we evaluate your academic preparation by looking at where you went to school, what you studied, and what kinds of grades you got (not just your GPA, but which classes you did well/poorly in, and whether your grades tended to get stronger or weaker as you progressed).

Next, we look at your standardized test scores. We do not view these as a perfect measure of your abilities, but they do provide us with a way of comparing the different applicants. We look mostly at the Quantitative and Analytical scores, as a rough measure of your technical abilities. [For verbal skills, we rely much more on the english skills you show in your statement of purpose, and on TOEFL scores for nonnative speakers.]

We look closely at your statement of purpose, to evaluate how well your interests and abilities match with our EES program's focus areas. We also look for the answers to 3 questions: (1) Why are you interested in environmental engineering and science; and (2) Why do you want to continue on for graduate studies? and (3) Why do you feel that Stanford's EES program will help you fulfill your educational objectives?

Finally, we look closely at your recommendation letters, to find out what others say about your strengths and weaknesses. So we hope that your letter writers know you fairly well, and have a technical or scientific background, and can provide insights into your suitability for our academic program.

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Procedure for admissions at the MS Level?

At the MS level, each program in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Dept. chooses a faculty committee to review the MS-level applicants. This committee evaluates how well-qualified you are for admission, and whether your interests are a good fit with the program. In the EES program, we have a target class size of 30-35 MS students; by looking at what fraction of the admittees in recent years have chosen to attend Stanford, we can estimate how many students we should offer admission to. We do not use waiting lists; instead each applicant is either offered or not offered admission. In recent years we have typically had to turn down well-qualified applicants in order to stay within our target class size.

If you are offered admission, we will indicate in the letter whether we will be seriously considering you for merit-based funding. Our funding resources for MS students are quite limited --- the entire EES faculty reviews the applications of those students being seriously considered for financial aid, and decides as a group which individuals should receive funding offers.

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Procedure for admissions at the Ph.D. Level?

Our department's policy is to only admit Ph.D. students who have full funding (stipend plus tuition), either from an outside fellowship or from funds being provided by their faculty research sponsor. So to be admitted, a faculty member needs to (i) judge you to be a promising candidate for their research program, and (ii) have funds available (usually a research assistantship from a funded project) to fully support you.

At the Ph.D. level, applications to the EES program are circulated among our faculty, so that each one can assess whether their research areas overlap with your background and interests. The decision to admit is made by the individual faculty member whose research group you would be joining. Typically, Ph.D. applicants do not receive decision letters until mid- to late March, due to the time it takes to complete this review process.

Because the Ph.D. admissions criteria include funding, and because funding depends on getting research projects funded, the number of students admitted as Ph.D's varies greatly from year to year, and from faculty member to faculty member. Only rarely do we consider applications outside of our usual January-March schedule, because usually the number of applications we receive in January already exceeds the amount of funding available.

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Do we accept non-engineering majors?

The EES program gladly accepts students with non-engineering academic backgrounds. Indeed, we purposefully strive to compose a class that embraces the full range of backgrounds compring the multidisciplinary environmental field. Almost every year, our MS class includes students with undergraduate degrees in areas like Biology, Chemistry, and Geology, and we also occasionally get students with more unusual backgrounds, like Ecology, Physics, Economics, and Mathematics. We find that students having a strong chemistry background tend to do especially well in our EES program.

For prerequisites, the EES program would most like to see a year of college calculus, an introductory class in fluid mechanics, and an introductory class in organic chemistry. While we will admit students who lack some of these prerequisites, we strongly encourage them to pick up the course background they lack BEFORE arriving at Stanford (because we assume in our fall quarter classes that they already have this background).

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Financial aid for MS students?

Financial aid decisions are made once the admissions process is completed. We are able to offer a small number of financial aid packages to MS students using funds made available to our Environmental Engineering & Science group. These 9-month fellowships are awarded based entirely on merit (without any consideration of financial need or citizenship). In a typical year, 4-6 financial aid packages are offered at the MS level in the EES program.

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Should I send an updated transcript with my fall quarter/semester grades?

Yes, do go ahead and send updated versions of your transcript. While this is not required, it is helpful to see what classes you are taking in your senior year, and how you are doing.

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How about research opportunities at the MS level?

The 9-month MS program in EES only requires 45 units of coursework. Research Assistantships tend to be given to Ph.D. students, so this is not a reliable source of financial aid for our MS students. However, all of the MS students in the EES program, whether funded or not, are offered the opportunity to participate in research projects as part of their first year of study --- it is up to them to decide how they want to divide their time between classes and research. [A total of up to 9 units of research coursework (which is equivalent to a 25% Research Assistantship over three quarters) can be credited towards the 45 units of coursework required to earn an MS degree in the EES program here at Stanford.]

Students wanting more extensive involvement in research typically stay on to pursue an Engineer's or Ph.D. degree after completing the MS. For post-MS studies, students are only admitted if full financial aid is available to them (either from their research supervisor, or from outside funding sources).

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How am I assigned a faculty member as my MS advisor?

Since the 9-month (3 quarter) MS program in EES focuses on coursework, students do not need to affiliate themselves with a research group. Instead, each MS student admitted to the EES program is assigned a coursework advisor by the admissions coordinator. At the MS level, the primary responsibility of the advisor is to assist the students in selecting classes.

Students wishing to continue on for PhD-level work typically spend the first few months of their MS year becoming better acquainted with the various faculty and their research areas before deciding with whom they would like to work.

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(C) Questions Regarding Submitted Applications

Have all my application materials been received?

Please wait until mid-February to ask about the status of your application, no matter what program in our department you are applying to! We have a single departmental staff member who, in addition to her regular responsibilities, is in charge of logging in and sorting out the more than 500 graduate applications that are received by our department in mid-December. It takes her most of January just to assemble the individual application folders and assess whether each one is complete. The department will send you an email sometime in January acknowledging receipt of your application. If anything is still missing from your application in early February, we will send you a second email telling you what is missing.

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Why haven't I heard yet whether I've been admitted?

Since our department receives over 500 applications (for all our programs combined), an entire month or more is required for the department staff to sort out the materials into separate folders for each applicant, and log their information onto the Stanford computer system. When folders are considered "complete", they are then given to the faculty admissions committee in the appropriate program for review. We do not use some kind of mathematical formula to arrive at an admissions decision; instead, we literally read the entire contents of each folder to assess the overall strengths/weaknesses of each applicant. As you might suspect, this also takes quite a bit of time; the EES program typically spends more than 6 weeks reviewing the applications we receive. This is why the decision letters for our admissions get mailed out continuously from mid-February through late March.

We realize that environmental graduate programs at some other US schools mail out admission decisions more quickly than we do. However, it is important to us to evaluate thoroughly each set of application materials, and to carefully consider each admission decision, so we are not willing to institute shortcuts that might speed up our application review process.

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Why haven't I heard yet regarding financial aid?

Decision letters on admission are typically mailed out between late February and mid-March; these letters will indicate whether or not your application will be considered for financial aid.

Each program must wait to hear from the Department and from Stanford's School of Engineering before knowing how much funding will be available for financial aid in a given year. There are also two types of School of Engineering-level fellowship awards where we must first "nominate" candidates, and then wait to hear whether our nominees have been selected for funding. Thus, while you will be notified of the decision regarding admission sometime between late February and mid-March, we usually are not able to make financial aid offers until late March.

Since Stanford does not waive tuition, we usually offer "full" fellowships, in which tuition is fully paid for, and a monthly stipend is provided which is considered enough to fully support the student. In recent years, the EES program has been able to offer 4-6 students full financial aid packages at the MS level, with funding recipients selected based on who appears strongest to us academically (without consideration of financial need or citizenship).

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I applied to the Ph.D. program but was admitted to the MS program. Why?

We admitted you initially to the MS program because you do not have an MS degree. Stanford School of Engineering requires grad students to fulfill course requirements equivalent to an MS even if they are interested "just" in the Ph.D. These MS course requirements can typically be completed within a 9 month period (3 quarters of study).

Students admitted to our MS program who are interested in continuing on for a Ph.D. fill out a simple form in January of the MS year, indicating whether they want to pursue an Engineer's or Ph.D. degree, and which faculty member(s) they would like to work with. Then the application materials used for the MS admission (like transcripts, recommendation letters) are reused. Whereas we do admit MS-level students without financial aid, we only admit post-MS students if full funding (tuition and stipend) is available to support them. Also, whereas MS applicant folders are reviewed by an admission committee for the program (based on mutually-agreed-upon criteria), Ph.D. folders are reviewed just by the individual faculty member(s) whose research group the student is interested in joining. To get admitted for Ph.D. studies, the faculty member has to (i) judge you as a good prospect for doing PhD-level research in his/her group; and (ii) have adequate funding available to fully support you [unless you have an outside fellowship].

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