<p>To be fair, BoelterHall, UCLA is hurting right now along with the entire state of California. Funding at state schools is often tied somewhat to the fiscal situation of the state, so a lot of state schools are having a rough time right now.</p>
<p>MS funding seems to be more common than most people let on, but it is very uncommon to have it for the entirety of your tenure at the school. It is also a lot more common for a professor to shell out some money if you decide you want to stay for a PhD. MS students are rarely funded by the department, so you basically have to find a professor who is willing to fund an MS student, which means that finding a professor with a large budget is an advantage. The good news is that the fluids area is absolutely full of funding, and is one of the more lucrative areas to be for research.</p>
<p>Don’t expect MS funding right when you start unless you have like a 3.9 UGGPA and have previous research experience. However, don’t get too pessimistic, as it is certainly possible to get funding, especially in the thermal fluid sciences area.</p>
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<p>It is entirely possible since they are related areas. You may have to make sure you take ample coursework and have ample experience in the heat transfer area for them to feel comfortable with you doing their heat transfer stuff, but it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that you could easily get that experience. Make sure you take heat transfer classes. Of course doing something heat transfer related during your research would be the ideal way to do it, but not the only way.</p>
<p>Still, I think it is important to tell you that saying you are going to do your graduate work in CFD is kind of a misnomer. Many graduate students, even on the experimental side, know how to run FLUENT/GAMBIT and do CFD. The graduate students/professors that work on numerical fluids are more typically working on new CFD codes and methods, such as direct numerical simulation. If this is something that interests you then it is a great area to get into and gets a lot of attention from industry. However, it is a lot more than just sitting down and running CFD programs. I would suggest you look into this or ask around before you commit to it.</p>
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<p>I have a friend doing his MS/PhD in Aerospace Engineering whose undergrad was in Physics. He is fully funded. It helps, though, that he is in the dynamics and controls area, which means he has done all the stuff he needs for his research before and just needs to learn fluids and materials to pass the qualifying exam. Basically, he was already plenty qualified for his position and so he got funded. If you did your undergrad in physics and are wanting to do your grad work in fluids or something, chances are that you would have a hard time getting funded as easily and would also probably have to spend more time in school catching up before you could do any real research anyway since you don’t have that fluids/heat transfer background.</p>