This page is intended for individuals who are contemplating application to or have applied to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Graduate Program at Rutgers.

Admission Requirements

The MAE graduate program requires applicants to have a bachelors degree or the equivalent from an accredited college in the United States or an approved institution of higher learning abroad with a minimum grade-point average of 3.1 on a 4.0 scale. For a broad comparison with other countries, a 3.1 grade-point average is considered the approximate equivalent of a "Very Good," a "Second Class, Upper Division" (British systems), 60% and/or "First Class or Division" (most Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi), 80/100 (other Indian Institutions, e.g., IIT), 80/100 or "Good" (People's Republic of China), 79/100 or 3.5/4.0 (Taiwan), 2.9/4.0 (Turkey).

Application Deadlines

We do not have strict deadlines. However, we strongly recommend that your completed application should be in our hands by the following dates:

     Fall semester admission: February 1
     Spring semester admission: November 1

The dates mentioned above are important for two reasons:

1. For the fall semester, we begin to consider admitted students for financial aid in mid February. So, if your application reaches us after March you will miss out on a good chunk of the financial aid decisions.
2. Foreign applicants need quite a bit of time for their student visa to be issued. You need to document finances (either financial aid from Rutgers or your own funds), we send you the I-20, you make an appointment for a visa interview, you go through a background check and if everything is OK go for your interview. If there is a problem, you may need to go for another interview. All this takes time (up to six months).

Rutgers has rolling admissions, meaning that if your application is not acted upon by the semester you intend to enroll, your application is considered for the next semester.

Thinking About Applying

Thank you for your interest in the graduate program in MAE at Rutgers. To make an informed decision about applying to Rutgers MAE, we strongly recommend that you to first review all the information on our web site and familiarize yourself with our graduate program, our ongoing research, degrees offered, and faculty profiles.

Each year we receive about 300 applications from all around the world. We admit less than a third of these applicants and offer financial aid to about 10-15 of the admitted students. Our students come from respected U.S. institutions, as well as top universities around the world (e.g., Tsinghua, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Ch. Aca. Sciences, Beijing U., Anhui, Fudan in China, IIT or IIS in India, METU or Bogazici in Turkey, Seoul National in Korea, National Taiwan)

We advise you to contact us first by e-mail, informing us of your intention to apply. In that e-mail you should indicate the following:

1. all undergraduate and graduate institutions that you have attended or currently attending;
2. the grades you have received in those institutions and, if you know it, your class ranking (e.g., 3rd in a class of 149);
3. your scores in standardized tests (GRE, TOEFL);
4. your current position, what you are doing, and industrial experience (if any).

Please keep your message short (less than 100 words). You can also use our on-line form to submit this information. We will let you know by return e-mail your chances of being admitted. If you do not hear from us in two weeks, please contact again, as we usually have quite a backlog. While a negative recommendation from us does not prevent you from applying, we advise against it. Please note that a recommendation to apply is not a guarantee of admission.

Application Process

Now, let's say you e-mailed us, we recommended that you apply and you decided to do so. The first step is to fill out an application form. You can do this three ways: on-line, or by printing an application form from the web, or by requesting that an application form be mailed to you. More information on this is available at the home page of the Office of Graduate and Professional Admissions (OGPA). Please follow closely all of the instructions for submitting an application. You must submit, in addition to the application form, at least three letters of recommendation, official transcripts from your previous universities, GRE scores (the Rutgers code is 2790 and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering code is 1502), TOEFL scores (required of foreign students only), personal statement, proof of financial support (if you can do so - for foreign students only), and the non-refundable application fee. Rutgers has a policy of not processing an application unless the application fee is received in full.

We have no special cutoff numbers for minimum GRE scores. However, admitted students' test scores usually exceed 450 on the verbal component, 720 on the quantitative component, and 4.5 on the analytical writing component. TOEFL score should exceed in Writing: 22, Speaking: 23, reading: 21, Listening: 17 (in old system, the TOEFL score should exceed 270). If any of your scores is below these numbers you are not automatically eliminated, but it affects your chances of being admitted. As indicated further down in this page, we do not consider the GRE as the sole indicator for admittance.

If you are an applicant from outside the U.S. or another English speaking country (Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand) the TOEFL test is mandatory. This requirement is waived if you meet both of the following two conditions: 1) You are currently in the U.S., Canada or England attending graduate school, 2) You have taken the TOEFL before and you received a satisfactory score.

The GRE requirement is waived if you are currently pursuing a graduate degree in a U.S. university and you have taken the GRE before.

While we do not require you to take the GRE or TOEFL if certain conditions (described above) are met, we still consider the scores that you have received when making our admissions decision.

The application documents must be mailed to the Office of Graduate and Professional Applications. If you have sent any of the application materials directly to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department don't worry, we'll make sure OGPA receives them.

In your Personal Statement, please indicate which broad area(s) of research (Design and Control; Fluid Mechanics; Solid Mechanics, Materials, and Structures; Thermal Sciences) you prefer to study. If you have no preference state so.

Please limit your Personal Statement to 500 words or less.

Applicants from outside the U.S. must take the paper-based GRE exam, rather than the computer-based GRE. Starting with Fall 2004 applications, we require that all applicants take the Analytical Writing portion of the GRE. This requirement is waived if you are enrolled in a graduate program in another U.S. university and have have taken the GRE analytical test before.

Note: It is your responsibility to make sure that all of the application materials are sent to Rutgers.

What happens to the application materials? OGPA collects your application materials and sends it to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department for evaluation.

Note: Anytime after you have submitted your application, you can check your application status from the OGPA web site. There is no need to contact the MAE Dept. or OGPA and ask about the status of your application.

Once your application materials are complete, the MAE Dept. begins to evaluate your application. We process the application forms on a first-come-first-served basis.

The decision to admit or reject an applicant is based on a series of factors (not necessarily in this order): your grades; GRE and TOEFL (if applicable) scores; strength and reputation of the institution(s) you have attended; industrial and academic experience, if any; letters of recommendation; your essay; and career goals.

Notification

What do we do after we decide to admit a graduate student? We first e-mail our decision to the successful applicant. We then transmit our decision to OGPA, which mails the official acceptance letter.

Note these two important items: A) At this stage, no decisions have been made yet about your application for financial aid. B) The letter that you will receive from OGPA will indicate that there is no financial aid available to you. Don't be confused by the wording of this letter. Remember that if your admission was acted upon before mid March no decisions have been made yet regarding financial aid.

If we were not able to accept your application, please remember that our department receives over 300 applications every year and only a small fraction of that number is admitted.

The next step is for the MAE Dept. to examine all acceptances and determine which will receive financial support.

Distribution of Financial Assistance

Every admitted student to Rutgers Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering graduate program is automatically considered for financial aid. Financial aid is in one of these forms:

1. Research Assistantship. If you are offered a research assistantship, you will be contacted by the faculty member whose research funding will pay for your assistantship. Note that if you accept an offer for a research assistantship, you have in essence selected your advisor in graduate school. A research assistant is expected to do research related duties in conjunction with the research project which is supporting the assistantship.
2. Teaching assistantship. The chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering will contact you offering this support. In general, teaching assistants are expected to work 15 hours a week to fulfill their teaching duties. Such duties include grading of homework and projects, assistance in proctoring and grading exams, as well as teaching of laboratory and recitation sections.
3. A fellowship given out by Rutgers. All applicants to the MAE graduate program are considered for departmental or university-wide fellowship awards at the time their applications are evaluated. These fellowships are awarded on a highly competitive basis. If you receive such a fellowship, the chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering will contact you. In general, recipients of fellowships are not expected to perform any duties in return for their fellowships. The MAE Dept. has a limited number of such fellowships, which are funded by the MAE Dept., School of Engineering, or by the Graduate School. These fellowships are usually limited to one or two years.
4. A fellowship outside of Rutgers. You apply for these fellowships directly. Most of these fellowships require U.S. citizenship. Some require a joint proposal with a faculty member (check the details carefully). We strongly encourage all applicants who are eligible to apply for these fellowships. Given below is a partial listing of fellowships of interest to mechanical and aerospace engineering students:
   • Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative University Fellowship Program
   • AT&T Labs Fellowship Program (for women and minorities)
   • AAUW (American Association of University Women) Fellowships
   • Department of Energy Computational Science Fellowships
   • Department Homeland Security Graduate Fellowships
   • Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowships
   • Ford Foundation Minority Fellowships
   • Gates Millennium Scholars
   • GEM Fellowships for underrepresented minorities
   • The Institute for International Education (resources for foreign students)
   • Lucent Foundation Fellowships
   • NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program
   • National Defense Science and Engineering Grants
   • National Science Foundation Fellowships
   • Nuclear Regulatory Commission Graduate Fellowships
   • Oak Ridge Associated Universities
   • Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
   • Whitaker Foundation
   • Office of Naval Research Fellowships
   • Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship Awards
   A more comprehensive listing of fellowship programs can be found here.
   
   Printed information on many fellowships is sent to all schools each year, usually in the fall. Please check your bulletin board or with your school´s financial aid office. You may also find the FastWeb site and the Financial Aid Information Page of interest. Rutgers students, check out the CHaSeR site.

5. A combination of the above. If the combination involves a research assistantship, you will directly be contacted by the faculty member involved.

Note: The financial aid awards are made solely by the MAE Dept., NOT by the Office of Graduate and Professional Admissions. Please do not contact OGPA to find out if you have received financial aid.

For the Fall semester we begin to evaluate admitted students for financial aid towards the end of February. For the Spring semester, we evaluate admitted students in November. Please note that most of the financial aid we offer is in the Fall.

If you are offered financial aid in one form or another, you will be given a deadline by which to respond to accept the offer. Because the number of admitted students is much larger than the number of financial aid positions, we observe this deadline very strictly.

If you are an applicant from outside the United States admitted to the graduate program in MAE and you have not received financial assistance, an I-20 form will not be mailed to you unless you can show that you have the necessary funds to support yourself financially while at Rutgers. If you show such proof and come to Rutgers, you should not count on finding financial support a semester or two later and you should make plans to finance your entire study while at Rutgers. While it is possible to find such support, especially in the form of a research assistantship or a grader, experience has shown that it does not happen very frequently.

Deferral of Admission

If you have have been admitted to our program and are unable to come (due to lack of financial support or another reason) you can request deferral of your admission to another semester. For this, all you need is to do is to contact the Director of MAE graduate program, by phone or by email. No other paperwork is necessary. We will consider your request and inform you if we are able to honor it. NOTE: You have to make your request for deferral within one year of the start date of your original admission. Otherwise, you will have to reapply and resubmit all documentation.