Q: I am a new graduate student in Computer Engineering. I would like to get my MS and possibly my Ph.D. I have learned that 90% of my department is from India and many others are from China. All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that? I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into medicine or the law and that is why there are so few Americans in engineering. Is this true?

A: Most Americans are probably happy with just an undergrad degree and don’t want to go to grad school.

Exactly. Americans find perfectly good engineering jobs with “just” a bachelor’s degree. There aren’t enough jobs which require advanced degrees in engineering to make it worth the time to give up 2-3 years of engineering paychecks, pay for college, pay for books, pay for living expenses, and earn those advanced degrees. More than likely, you’d graduate with a master’s or a PhD and work at the same job you could get with a bachelor’s degree.

On the other hand, foreigners looking to immigrate to the United States work under the assumption that if they go to school here and earn one of our advanced degrees, then we’d be more likely to allow them to stay once their studies are complete. THAT is why foreigners outnumber Americans in these topics. It’s not because they’re smarter, not because they love engineering more, and not because education is better in their country. It’s because they want to immigrate here.

Maybe one of my friend was right when she cited that I’m not kind of guy who could stick on one specific job for a long time. I intend to change careers frequently, without thinking much more than freshness. Others could say that I am abnormal or whatever out of it, but I am.

I’m tired of the manager position with pretending to be busy in front of my boss and I am sick of it. I hate being working in a family enterprise since which I need to follow the requests from those stupid offspring of my boss. I’m working for you does not qualify that I work for your damn holy daughter too! Can you dig this?! Hmm.. guess I need to take a rest.

I can read some books in the mean time, money’s not a big deal right now. I need to improve my English actually, I still encounter new vocabs sometimes, and it embarrasses me, a lot.

The necklace would reach me soon, probably in one or two days and I get my jade Buddha sent by my girlfriend. What all I care about is my girlfriend, nothing else. Simple is good, right?

Simple is good.

I talked with Znarl, the person in charge of Ubuntu Mirror, this afternoon. He praised me as my English’s good. I was kind of stuck and confused at that moment, since I’d never dreamed that my English could somehow be qualified as “good”.

It reminded me my QET test, hardly to believe that I failed all of them and I did! I hate English, especially the grammar, I can’t handle it. I feel difficult to compose an argument article, and I…blah blah blah. See? I can’t even make this post a little bit longer! Darn me, darn my English!

Oh, I know some of yo may think that I was trying to make some fun, but actually I was not. I am seriously targeting MIT as my next university to study in though I’ve already gained my bachelor degree in my previous school. I am gonna apply for being a freshman in MIT, and for you all know, I am gonna to take the computer science as my major.

So, friends from US, do you have some suggestions and tips on it? Do I necessarily take SAT test and SAT II as well?

According to Americanism, those who dreams and works for the dream, would finally make the dreams come true. Am I right? My dream, of curse not only to get into a univ, will also come true one day. I can see it, haha, yes, I can see it.

Ah.. let me be encouraged, come on!