Programs Getting two different master's degree?

[wukunlin]

So here is my situation:
I'm planning to finish my final bachelor/honour's year next year (2012) and I plan to apply for grad school (electrical engineering)in US (looking at UT Austin at the moment). The final exams/presentations should finish at mid november, results should come out early november. If things don't change much, deadline at UT's ECE department for registration is at 15th of December so in theory I can submit everything just before the deadline assuming I can get the reference letter somewhen mid year.

or I can have 1.5 year gap doing... nothing (except for stuff like self study and whatever work I can find locally with my honours)

And I realized, in my university I should only take one more year to get masters in physics, with way better chances of getting funded for it (I just found out the level of difficulty of getting money to study in US as international student...)

So basically I can take my time applying for US (electrical engineering) grad schools in 2013, while getting my (physics) masters degree at the same time and save up more money.

Would this be a good idea?

 

[physiker_192]

some thought:
Are you a Physics undergrad ?

If not, then have you thought about admission into the physics programme or if you had spoken with admission committee ?

Also if you're from engineering background and if you didn't have any Physics BSc courses, then the master's degree shall be no easy, and it might take more than one year.

 

[wukunlin]

strictly speaking I'm a student of the physics department but I'm doing an interdisciplinary study for my bacholor's involving physics courses and ECE courses (roughly 40% in upper division)

 

[physiker_192]

Then I'd say go for it, sounds reasonable.

 

[Pyrrhus]

I have two Master's degrees. Civil and Economics. I see no harm.

 

[wukunlin]

Awesome, hopefully this will be some sort of advantage when applying for jobs or the engineering grad school.

I guess the least I can gain from this is the experience in academia, since physics masters in my college is solely on thesis.