What Students Say
Likes
- The University of Miami(UM) is known for its friendly and diverse pool of faculty and student.
- UM situated in heart of most iconic city Miami, It has a lake inside the main campus.
- There are numerous clubs(especially fof every country) and that helps you to grow and provide ample of opportunities for students to get involved.
Dislikes
- Miami is expensive city, the students often find that cost of living is very high as compared to other city.
- The carrer services are subpar and they have once in year career fair ( It's quite difficult to get a good incampus job).
- UM don't have dormitories for graduate students and the one for undergrad are very expensive.
Course Curriculum
10
- The course curriculums are easy but tedious. They gave us a lot of assignments, and it requires a lot of time to solve that. They were more focused on learning rather than just scoring good marks. I liked the way they explain each topic, even if it is basic and try to explain each and every topic. They heavily rely on the presentation of each course module, so they only focused on that.
Admission Experience
-
I applied for the following universities:
- University of Illinois Urbana—Shortlisted
- University of Miami—Admitted.
- I didn't get a rejection from any of the colleges. I always prefer to contact the professor's research work perfectly aligns with my research background. To get admission in a PhD programme, you have to look into the profile of the professor and then make your CV around their work. Always try to make a conversation with the professor through cold mail.
- Based on my experience, I am providing you with a detailed overview of the PhD application process for civil engineering at the University of Miami.
- Application Process:
- The UM's Civil and Architectural Engineering (CAE) Department offers a PhD program in Civil Engineering with various areas. The application process has some standard procedures:
- Initial Contact: I reached out to a professor whose research aligns with my interests. This is an excellent approach, as it allows us to gauge potential fit before applying.
- Application form: I applied through the official admission portal. This is a crucial step, as all applicants must submit a complete application package.
- Document Review: The department scrutinised my CV, transcripts, and report and my academic background. This is part of their comprehensive evaluation process.
- Interview: I participated in an interview with professors, which is an important step for assessing candidates' potential and fit with the program. Sometimes it may be with a bunch of professors or an individual professor.
- Selection: Based on my overall performance throughout the process and evaluation of my research background, I was selected for a PhD position.
- Program Requirements:
- Language Proficiency: For the language proficiency, there is a requirement for TOEFL or IELTS with a minimum score of 7.5 with the university's standards for international students.
- Academic Background: You must need a strong academic background, which is accurate. The CAE department considers applicants with degrees in civil or architectural engineering, as well as those from related fields (multidisciplinary).
- Research Opportunities:
- The interdisciplinary nature of research aligns well with the University of Miami's approach. The College of Engineering encourages collaborative projects across multiple faculty and departments. The CAE department offers various speciality areas.
- Program Structure
- The PhD program requires a minimum of 72 credits after a master's degree, including coursework, supervised research, and a dissertation defence. If you are applying after your bachelor's, you may need to earn extra credit to graduate as a PhD. The UM's emphasis on cutting-edge technology and interdisciplinary research makes it an attractive option for PhD candidates in civil engineering.
- I applied for Fall 2024. I just finished my master's in summer 2024. So, I applied for it. I applied around December 2023 for Fall 2024. You need to apply around one semester before because the interview and visa process takes time. So, start as early as possible and make sure all your documents are ready by then, like your passport, your detailed CV, your report, your SOP, and all related documents.
Class Schedule
10
- I have 2 classes scheduled in a day and they are scheduled at the usual time. Faculty used to encourage and even provide support for them to find a job through their personal network. I admire my research supervisor most because he gave me the freedom to work at my own pace. He is not demanding and always encourages me to do my work in my own style.
Faculty
8
- The average number of students in my class is around 15-20. In my course there are 2 Indians, but many Indians are enrolled in PhD programs. Here, the faculty-to-student ratio is around 15. It helps professors to give extra attention to each student; they focus on each and every individual.
- There teaching methodology is more towards state-of-the-art teaching. They wanted students to be more engaged rather than to get marks. They even modify the syllabus as per student response and they are flexible with learning speed. They do take extra classes, and sometimes they assign TA's to explain some of the topics.
Campus Life
10
- It has 4 campuses; the main campus is at Coral Gables, and Jackson school of medicine and some other medical school are there which come under the umbrella of the U Health System. UM also has a Rosential marine campus situated at island of Key Biscayne.
- UM has 3-4 libaray and richter libarary is the main library, UM have sports ground for every sports like tennis, soccer, football, baseball etc and they are performing well in sports.
- They have one of the best medical facilities across world. Hoemcoming is biggest festivals, where all alumni comes back to campus and spend their time. UM always provide students to participate in extra curriculum acitivities there is many society and even for graduate they have graduate students association, there is indian students association also.
Part Time Jobs
- The assistant position depends on departmental funding, as it's a private university; they usually don't have TAs. The pay range for the College of Engineering is around $3400 but some other departments have a higher pay range than CoE. There are plenty of on-campus jobs, such as library assistant, lab assistant, and many other club assistant. A maximum of 20 hours are allowed to work per week. It is very easy to secure on-campus part-time jobs.
- Most Indian students prefer to do lab assistant jobs, and they earn around $20-25 per hour. It is very easy to secure a part-time job; you just have to navigate to the department notice board or university website. The usual process for applying for part-time jobs is very easy; you just have to reach out to the concerned person or just fill out a form on the website. Although some positions may require resumes and attending interviews, they mostly are very easy to go procedure.
Placement
8
- Most of the students secured their jobs at the campus research fair. In my programme, mostly people earn around $60,000-$80,000 after graduation. After graduation, they can connect to alumni and even faculty, which helps them with their contacts.
- Many of the construction companies visit here. Some of the alumni have started their own consultancy. 1 print, Turner, Jacobs, and Aecom are the major companies hired from our program.
Accommodation
Off Campus
10
- I opted for out-of-campus accommodation. I get my rentals through a realtor. I connected with him through Facebook. He is very nice to me and gave me numerous deals and I selected a rental near UM.
- My monthly rent is $2300 shared by 2 people. I didn't find much difficulty in finding accommodation because there are lots of options near to campus. Yeah, I will definitely recommend accommodation for future students.
- My accommodation is very near to campus; it hardly takes 20 min walking and its near the metro and other grocery houses like Whole Foods and Publix. Most of the Indian students live nearby me.
Exams
- I have to appear for TOEFL; you can opt for IELTS and GRE, but recently it can be waived off if your previous institute's mode of teaching was English. You need to have an English proficiency test certificate, LOR for 3 persons, detailed CV, reports of your research work, and a detailed SOP along with your graded transcript.
- Yes, the interview plays a crucial role in getting selected at UM. You need to perform extremely well in interviews because they have lots of potential candidates. For me it was online and it was conducted by one of the professors whom I emailed previously and he asked questions from basic to advanced level to test my knowledge on the research topic. It was a good experience.
Fees
- Tuition fees = $30000 per semester, depending on the number of courses you are opting for; sometimes it's going to be higher if you are opting for more than 3 courses.
- Hostel fees cost around $2000 but I opted out for hostel fees and am currently living near the university.
- For food in the dining hall in the hostel, it costs around $10 for every food. You can opt for it for each semester and can opt for it monthly.
- Rent = $1200
- Transportation = $100
- Other expenses= $500
- If you are living outside the campus. It will cost around $2000. Anyways, it's Miami, so it depends on you.
Scholarship
- Yes, I received an annual scholarship of $110,000. I got the UM PhD fellowship. There are many scholarships available for undergrads and grad students but you have to apply for that.
- You can also opt for other scholarships apart from university scholarships. Many of my batchmates received a similar kind of scholarship. Most of the PhD's get scholarships, even for master's students. Mostly for PhDs around $100,000 and for masters $50,000. The medicine students get more scholarship money than other engineering and science students.
