Life update: I’m transferring from Princeton to UIUC

16th May, 2023

Table of Contents

Background

Princeton’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), unlike most other universities, doesn’t admit PhD students directly into research groups. They instead have an advisor matching process after the first semester where students submit advisor preferences and the professors decide who they want to recruit in their labs (ref: ECE Graduate Student Handbook, page 7).

What happened

The professor I was hoping to work with at Princeton decided not to take me in his group. This was mainly due to an important new responsibility that he has taken up which requires a lot of his time and effort and made him extremely cautious about bringing in new students. The primary reason why I had applied to Princeton was my interest in working with this professor - I had indicated the same in my statement of purpose (SoP) and our conversations had been highly positive both during my admission interview and the open house. But at the end of the winter break he told me his final decision of being unable to take me in due to certain constraints.

I spent a lot of time considering my other options and meeting different professors. Two other professors that I was open to working with had recruited the maximum number of students they wanted to recruit as per their admission plans and didn’t have the funding for more or didn’t think I was a great fit to justify stretching their funding further. The admission yield rate for engineering PhD at Princeton was at a 10-year high for my cohort (ref: Princeton Graduate Admission Statistics), which probably contributed to this situation. There was a significant research field mismatch or advising style mismatch with every other professor who did have a research opening and probably would have taken me in, so I decided not to pursue their groups.

Both these factors - research field and advising style, were important to me since I had to make a 5 year commitment and the group would also shape my life beyond. I was willing to be flexible on the former factor. The prerequisite to pursue any PhD is willingness to learn new things and I was open to diving into other areas but not at the cost of completely giving up my core interest - the very thing that was motivating me to pursue a PhD in the first place. I decided I would rather give up Princeton. To stay and commit to a group I’m not highly motivated to work with just because I had already spent a year doing coursework, would be falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy.

Last year when I was deciding which university to join for my graduate studies, I had narrowed it down to two places that had accepted me - Princeton University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Both universities had a professor that I was highly interested in working with. I had finally decided to go with Princeton purely based on secondary factors like stipend amount (Princeton had offered me the Gordan Wu Fellowship), weather and overall ranking, although UIUC has a better ECE ranking and a much larger department.

Now once I decided that I didn’t want to stay at Princeton and I also didn’t want to give up the pursuit of a PhD, the next logical step was to try to transfer to a different university. I was still very interested in working with the professor at UIUC I had interacted with last year. So I reached out to him again in the middle of my second semester at Princeton. We had discussions over several weeks and incredibly he finally decided to accept my application. I got a formal offer by mid-April.

Transfer logistics

UIUC’s ECE department was considerate of my situation and allowed me to apply several months late based on this professor’s recommendation. I could import a lot of material from my previous year’s application. But I couldn’t transfer any Princeton course credits since I’m entering their direct PhD program (not MS+PhD) which doesn’t allow for credit transfer. So when I say I’m transferring it basically means I’m quitting Princeton and starting fresh at UIUC. The good thing though is unlike Princeton, PhD students at UIUC are expected to start research right away from the first semester while doing courses in parallel.

My SEVIS record and my F1 visa is currently linked to Princeton. The process for transferring it is fairly straightforward and luckily doesn’t require visits to any visa office, it is handled by student International Center offices from both universities. Princeton would be releasing my record after the completion of my first year enrollment period and UIUC would then be able to issue me a new I-20 document.

I also asked my advisor and the ECE department at UIUC if I could start early in Summer instead of waiting till the Fall term for which new students are typically admitted. They figured out a way to get me started early. I’ll be arriving on campus towards the end of May.