Schools SUNY Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

[daveyman]

I want to apply to the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at SUNY Albany for a PhD in Nanoscience. Does anyone know anything about how difficult it is to get into this program? I know it is relatively new, but I have no concept of acceptance rate. Any help would be great!

 

[qpd]

I go to school right down the road (literally) from them. I have visited them a few times and talked with a few professors there. It seems that most of their work is for near-term commercial applications. As you noted it's a relatively new (and growing) program.

My impression is that it's competitive, but not nearly as much as most other schools. If you have a decent (> 3.5) GPA and GRE's, I'd think you would have a good shot. I don't have any quantitative data though... this is just based on my impressions from discussions with the faculty there.

 

[daveyman]

qpd,

Thanks for your reply! This is very helpful information. I'm a physics major with a GPA around 3.6, so I'm thinking I probably have a shot. I realize that most of their research is for near-term commercial applications, but that's also how they are able to have such incredible facilities. Personally, I'm interested in slightly more fundamental research, but I love the fact that I won't have to worry about equipment availability.

 

[daveyman]

Since this is a top hit on Google, I thought I would update this thread.

Like many graduate programs, the actual acceptance rate is kept secret. The people who decide to keep this information secret think that this will allow them to get a better pool of candidates. In reality, it means that students who might have eliminated themselves through self-selection are left naive, forced to pay costly application fees to schools where admission is statistically improbable for them.

With CNSE, however, it is pretty easy to get a rough idea of what the acceptance rate is. The school has only been accredited for 4.5 years. The total number of students that were accepted into the program during that time frame was roughly 180. This means that about 40 students were admitted each year. The number of applicants at schools comparable to the CNSE is about 150.

Using these parameters, the acceptance rate is about 25%. Since the college is expanding, the actual acceptance rate may be slightly higher, but 25% is probably a good lower bound.

If anyone else would like to add some information that I may have missed, it is certainly welcome.

 

[aston]

I'm also interested in this for grad. Not sure when the site was last updated but csne.albany.edu strongly recommends a min 3.0.