<p>so I’m an environmental engineering student with great stats from a low end school. I have good enough stats to get into top schools in Canada (and maybe the US but I’m not too sure).</p>
<p>I want to focus on CFD. I’ve taken only 1 fluids class, 1 hydraulics and 1 numerical methods class so I don’t really have as good of a background as other students from say mechanical engineering. </p>
<p>Also, I’m not as ‘smart’ as some of the students i’ve come across but due to my hard work, I’ve been able to do well. </p>
<p>I’m a really hard worker and plan on reading up on the material I’m missing but i’m not sure if I can handle a top school like GaTech.</p>
<p>Well… I didn’t. But they gave me money, so I went.</p>
<p>Honestly, nobody can handle a top grad school. Grad school is moderately unbearable at times. At other times, it feels really worthwhile, like you’re truly at the cutting edge of human knowledge in your particular field, and it’s absolutely exhilarating. Other times when your advisor is being a schmuck and nobody understands what’s going on in any of the classes you’re taking, and you just want to get out of there and get a job and quit making up interesting dishes like “pasta with ketchup” to save money on things like food, you feel like you can’t handle it. </p>
<p>Somehow, everyone gets out alive, though, one way or another… and I think a lot more of it has to do with dogged persistence and intention than it does with brains or intuition.</p>