all right welcome everybody uh my name is Masha pranovich and I'm a professor and Associate department chair also graduate admission chair at University of Texas petroleum and geosystem engineering program and here with me is Professor seori he is a professor and graduate advisor uh in our department as well Amy Stewart who is a graduate student coordinator will be coming in every moment and when she comes in we will introduce her but for now I'm going to start uh start the presentation as I said I'm recording this I will probably then post the video uh later on our YouTube channel as long as you just unmute yourself and don't show your picture you your privacy should be protected just fine all right let's get started so first I will briefly overview University of Texas Cal School of Engineering as well as our department petroleum and geosystems Engineering our research areas of focus and projects and what are the requirements for uh application to our masters and PHD programs I will then stop we do have quite a bit of details on how does the Masters and PhD program uh proceed but we will open it up the questions and proceed from there on we would like to answer your questions more than anything else okay so first of all University of Texas is one of the largest uh universities in United States it's one of the four uh largest public schools it was established in 1883 and you can find a whole lot about it on the on the uh web page which you probably know is www.utexas.edu our campus mascot that you will find all over the place uh both in um at the various websites and logos is a long horn it's actually shown here on the picture and it's an actual uh type of uh cattle that is fairly common on ranches as you drive around Texas so just you might not know where is this Lorn and the horns overall where they coming from okay uh we are about uh what you also see a picture here is the about main 40 acres of the campus uh as well as the UT Tower they also uh often show up in various websites okay now we are uh very famous pretty famous for sports uh at the University as well American football is very very popular you can see here the size of the stadium in the upper corner I hope everybody sees my mouse as I'm moving around however uh we also have one of the top uh women volleyball uh team volleyball teams in the country they're current uh NCAA Champions um in the country for the second year in the row and uh also we have outstanding swimming um track and field uh as well as other teams such as basketball teams however petroleum engineering here is actually here to make our sports teams proud we are number one right so we are number one graduate program in petroleum uh Engineering in the nation um if UT was a country it would have sent about 30 of its Affiliates students and alumni to Paris Olympics uh V a total of eight medals so that is pretty good um you might say and what's really cool is that not only uh that we had that many people participate in uh the recent Olympics but they actually represented a total of 14 countries different countries all over the world so we are very proud of uh those achievements now let's get back to the academics or actually just the central uh Texas in uh General so Central Texas whether you not know that or not is famous for its barbecue um there's a lot of food that is a mix of Mexican food but also all other influences so you will find very popular food is breakfast tacos uh Margaritas to drink so those are some just some examples that said we are mix of all kinds of foods that you can find all over the Austin one thing that people don't know as much about Texas typically for Texas ranches and cowboys and all kinds of things come to mind but in April and May we are actually famous for wild flowers and as you drive around the roads in um Texas you will see a v flower display such as the one shown here uh in the picture and you will see the blue ones are Texas blue bonnets they're actually the state flower other than that this is a region full of limestone and Associated um C topology above the ground so you can see the Natural Bridge Caverns as well as Barton Springs Pool which is a CS spring feeding up a large very large pool here in Austin just in the middle of the town uh but also there's a lot of uh Great Outdoors around Austin you also see uh Enchanted Rock State Park this is a granite monolith that is a uh fairly popular for hiking so there is a lot of outdoors and it's not all desert as the popular movies would have it about Texas Texas is a large place and very diverse in its both natural surroundings and foods and people that are here okay now my video there University of Texas at Austin back to the academics is consist recently ranked in top 10 best engineering programs in the United States uh based on US News and reports currently its current rank is number eight but this is keeps going a little bit up a little bit down uh it's always in it has been in the top 10 for the uh good number of years it has seven departments so this is basically integral ranking of all of the Departments uh it has seven engineering departments with 6,000 undergraduates in engineering and 20 about 2,300 graduate students in engineering the total number of students uh for the entire University is typically between 50 and 51,000 for again all undergraduate and graduate programs in the entire University so this is these are the rankings of the uh oops the rankings of the universities again we are very proud to be number one in petroleum engineering but you can see all other engineering departments are very highly ranked with ranked which ultimately uh contributes to this top 10 best engineering uh program in United States and we are uh have a lot of um awards that are given to current F uh faculty uh as well as uh the current faculty so you can see also John gotten off here what he won a 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for lithium ion battery development overall uh we are in addition to the Nobel Prize in chemistry we're home to a lot of other prizes about more than 40 faculty members are members of the National Academy of engineering uh three are recipients of national medal of Medal of technology and Innovation and 90 plus of Junior faculty so it starts early have received a National Science Foundation early career development award okay um Department of petroleum and geosystems Engineering is number one both under graduate and graduate program and it has on the order of 150 students the number the exact number of course changes slightly from from year to year but 20% are female uh 80% are international so uh we represent a lot of countries all over the world and here I have a map that I trust is slightly outdated uh uh the the at some point we counted 22 countries represented in our uh graduate program overall we have more than 6700 alumni of the graduate program uh uh of the total program and more than 1,700 of that are graduate program alumni so there's 27 faculty and principal investigators we actually have one that has just joined that is not here on the list because officially I think the officially the start is next week on Monday so Dr H Tang so she will be added to this list uh very soon but she's actually uh hiring for spring so make the note of Dr H Tang as well uh added to this list uh our web page is the best source of all um faculty in their research here I'm just listing some uh common areas so we are doing traditional research in oil and gas Engineering in all different areas uh such as Drilling and completions enhanced oil recovery natural gas engineering petrophysics uh Reservoir characterization Reservoir simulation hydraulic fracturing production engineering Reservoir engineering you name it those all are standard however in addition to that for years now we have been doing a lot of research in geologic carbon storage um natural gas storage overall that involves a whole lot of hydrogen these days um as well as geothermal engineering methane emissions and Engineering data analytics so those are all um pretty commonly po or common popular areas uh that are also in energy transition so overall I think we call ourselves the top program in subsurface engineering um this is very specialize now Amy Stewart has just joined us hi Amy so welcome so she's The Graduate coordinator and most likely she's the one responding to all kinds of questions that you might have about your application status good morning everybody good to see you good morning so I am recording this same just so so you know so um and then uh the the the funding again changes from uh year to year but overall right now we receive more than N9 million uh dollars in research funding per year and our top products are papers uh where graduate students participate a whole lot so we publish over 270 research papers per year cumula cumulatively as a department now our research in all of these areas ranges from um experiments to numerical simulation to Theory to these days data analytics so those are four pillars of uh scientific studies overall uh so every group does a little bit of both most likely though uh they have their primary research areas um that are uh different from from group to group so I'm just showing some pictures here of uh of different types of research areas so Dr rort has a lot of on automation of drilling uh drilling operations Dr perch uh has a lot of research a big consortion of data analytics um there are different types of energy sustainability projects that can be found all over Department such as Dr De Carlos decreasing methane emiss emissions in the peran Basin Dr deel reducing the amount of water that is used in oil and gas operations Dr charma making pipelines safer using Fiber Optic Cables uh Dr Ravi Kumar has a huge program on methane emissions modeling as well as monitoring and Dr vong has uh program on rare earth metals recovery so again I'm just making sure sure that everybody understands that we're not just in traditional uh not only working in traditional oil and gas areas but also in a lot of energy sustainability projects and have been for years where can you learn more the best source is the UT web page if you go to the research Tab and individual pages of the faculty uh we have recently updated our YouTube page uh to have playlists so you can find some playlists of graduate seminar talks we have mon um Monday seminars where different people come from all over United States to present on the most research uh Recent research and we do have a series of those from during the pandemic that were recorded otherwise those were not uh normally not recorded um and then there is also some uh videos on utge Department history that might be of interest um there is a lot of YouTube uh different talks that can be found on the center for subsurface energy and the environment webinars and I suggest that those one-hour webinars are one of the best ways to introduce yourself to the research that different faculty are working on and most of us have at least one talk if not multiple as they change of course research evolves so just spending one hour watching one of those webinars is probably uh very U the time very well spent uh to introduce yourself to different research areas okay um in terms of graduate student life so gra graduate student life is not just about research but also uh about having some life and having fun with friends uh we do have a mentoring group that we organize for the first year students but there is also various organizations all over the university some are specifically affiliated with our department and those would be Society of petroleum Engineers uh petroleum uh petroleum graduate Students Association uh drilling Engineers uh Well Log analysts uh women in petroleum and geosystems Engineering so those are specific to our department beyond that on so there's levels there's Department level then there's School of Engineering level there's a too many to count so there is a link and I can provide these um these Pages for you to review and you can find out beyond that and then above School of Engineering there is of course University of Texas so if any kind of any type of sports that comes to your mind we probably have a club and if we don't then you are very much invited to organize one on your own there's no problem um we also have Instagram and Facebook accounts where you can see some snapshots of what's going on uh during the year uh with our departments so for instance a Facebook page and there is a congratulations so we have a very active UT petol team that competes uh regularly uh so you can uh follow what they're up to on Instagram page yeah now we offer different programs and certificates um most uh often it is Masters or PhD in petroleum engineering we are about to uh approve Masters of Science and Earth Energy Engineering Triple E uh but truth is that's a formal program and formal program and uh formal programs they take a number of years to approve that said most of the courses that uh we would offer in such a program are already offered so we have a variety of courses um in all kinds of areas we are probably the top university in terms of the number of courses that we offer on The Graduate level in self-surface engineering we also have certificates but if you're in this call call you're probably not uh likely to be interested in a certificate program that is mostly for working professionals okay um now how to apply before I open this uh for questions so you will go to our web page and there's a link there to the application uh the deadlines are the one coming up is September 1st for spring 20 in this case 2025 admission but every year it's September 1st for spring admission and December 15th for The Following fall admission what you need to submit uh is application form that you fill out uh through the web page as well as pay the fee of official college transcripts so typically you order them and then if they arrive within a few weeks of the deadline that is fine but make sure that you submit application form on time your resume typically a one pager but it can have a few pages uh outlining your uh most of your accomplishments essay which will be I think you receive Amy please correct me there's this new application process where you will fill out application form and then you will after that receive an email where to submit an essay or a statement of purpose did I get that right yes okay I need to be corrected often so basically uh in essay you will succintly I'm saying a few paragraphs like one to two pages these are supposed to be one to two page long uh you outline what motivates you to go to graduate school specifically to our program what are some areas of interest for your research we do have an understanding that you um you sometimes don't know what all of the areas are and that is fair and you can say that but you probably know something about yourself oh I would like to pursue this type of area that type of area or uh maybe you have some experience in research already you can outline those experiments uh experiences there th those those things are not binding you can change but you these are opportunities for you to tell us something about yourself so we can do um a little bit better job in attempting to match so again choose that as an opportunity to uh present yourself and then you will be asked to enter three names and contacts for recommendation letters make sure again those can arrive uh by the deadline or or shortly after that deadline um we do wait for about week or two to collect all of the uh uh to collect all of the information uh on the University level actually this is a large University so there's a lot of applications but make sure to send reminders to your recommendation letter writers so that they submit those on time sometimes they forget and uh reminders by you are uh highly recommended uh uh we still take a gr test or or gr is still required for our program uh as well as test of English as a foreign language or yeltz I'm not sure what yeltz is uh standing for simply for English uh proficiency either of them is fine okay so uh Labs that I right now know that are actively hiring for spring guard doctors okuno Tang bhof noen De Carlo and Lake however this is something that consistently changes um how do you find out sometimes you send an email sometimes often we don't respond so that is pretty common because bear in mind that there's about 70 plus emails in a typical average inbox of anybody working in our department um so processing all of the emails is a challenge so don't take take that as any sort of negative it's just kind of try again uh sometimes these opportunities at the time that you're send say you send me an email hey do you have any opportunities I might not know whether I have them that very moment I might get a grant that I applied for two months from now okay so take it as a changing landscape so you send out information about yourself and make sure that you apply uh so don't be uh put off if you don't always get a response okay no matter what though um you have to be processed by the graduate admissions committee and recommended for application before any faculty can uh give you an offer so this is how we function as a department so you cannot just email faculty and get accepted that's not how it works okay so I will actually stop here without ex going into more details about the graduate program we can a little bit outline our coures but I would like to open it up for any questions so if you'd like to um unmute yourself and go ahead and ask questions please do so or you can post them in the chat thank you very much for great presentation Professor um I have a quick question currently doing um master of science at the University of Alberta in Edmonton Canada and I was thinking whether um like I've taken I'm an international student here and I want to pursue PhD at uh UT I was thinking whether I will need to retake the language assessment tests because I've taken them all uh my gr has expired I will um renew the gr but as far as the language proficiency is concerned um my degree here in Canada is in eng English will will I have to take the proficiency test again or um it will suffice Amy can you take this one if somebody has a master's in Canada a master's in Canada I don't think you're going to need to have your English proficiency score for that yeah you should be fine yeah if you SE have it from previous time you can surely let us know in the application just that that in addition to Masters should be fine if you have your scoree sheet um go ahead and email that to me in case um anybody has a problem with that you're saying you've already taken the test in the past or with the GRE I'm a little confused on that oh the gr as well or did you because it's it's five years right I was trying to make sure I understood what you said I know you told me your gr I think was expired that you also take toel or iels yes yes i' score sheet if you have score sheet for the TOEFL or I Els go ahead and email that in just so we can see them in case there's any issue we can talk to the main campus graduate program graduate school and make sure they approve that y another option is that when application you can kind of upload miscellaneous documents at the end of your application form so that would be a great place to upload those that's true those are additional documents that you can just want the committee to see you can put it there also good point yeah thank you and just one followup question as well so as a grad student here I'm consistently getting a position of teaching assistant uh like every every term um it's almost guaranteed that I will get a TA position and that's part of the funding that um grad students receive here do you also have such a thing that grad students will get it or it's 50% chance or 20% chance because teaching like I personally like teaching as well that that's why I was asking thank you for that question that's an excellent one to clarify um so the way we tie teaching positions is they're tied to the professor as well so when you're coming in uh you're given an offer say I'm giving you an offer okay uh that is offer for the gra graduate grra graduate research assistant but you will be during your tenure as a graduate student you will be a teaching assistant as well okay so normally for the courses that I teach I also get the associated graduate teaching assistant positions and I basically distribute them in my research group now here and there there are some independent ones and the students apply for the them uh separately but for the most Parts I'd say if you'd like um 80 to 90% of ta positions are basically tied to the professor that is teaching the course and they're basically managing them and distributing them inside of their uh research group and here and there a little bit of outside for instance say I don't have uh student or I need them all on the research projects then I will open it up to other students in the department but so basically if you are made an offer by a professor and assuming that you're in good standing and all that good uh stuff so of course you have to um uphold your part right uh then uh basically 100% you will be funded y yeah thank you very much yeah right um thank you Dr donov for saying if you're offered funding so everyone who applies for our program is not offered funding but if you are offered funding you will be guaranteed funding whether that's through the gr position or ta position thank you you're welcome any other questions and hi good morning um Frederick I have few questions so first I would like to know um how long is um your PhD program like year specific so most of the time it takes four to five years to finish p uh PhD program uh so there's about let me actually move to those so in terms of numbers of hours uh that we take uh if it's Master's it's 24 hour well 22 36 24 to 36 of hours in normally credit hours credit hours normally one course is three credit hours so you can translate uh how many uh courses that is um and then for PhD of do I have a PhD it it's it's down you have to keep going um Dr bomis did you are you aware that there are some rectangular boxes on your presentation at least on my end I don't know if everybody else that so it's blocking some of the information rectangular boxes you know what oh wow is anybody else see those boxes or is it just me are they moving right now yes I I see I see my controls apparently wow are some of the information so my zoom updated this morning my zoom updated this morning and it's doing funny things apparently wow that's that's a new one that's all I I thought it was just on my so those rectangular boxes is like actually let me I'm going to move is it now minimized yes it's smaller okay I still see two of them but that's okay I can see the words but so basically uh my little in the zoom controls the video view as well as the zoom controls they're apparently blocking the screen who knew anyway uh so PhD degree track uh is this a good yes I mean basically the students have to have at least 30 semester uh hours to earn a PhD but there are different ways to approach on how to to get those hours um there's some students who have a direct PhD track where they just only have a bachelor's degree that's that second one and they don't get a master's degree at all or you can have one where you get a master's degree first and then you get your PhD but in order to choose one of those tracks you have to have a supervisor who will agree to sign off on that and of course our graduate advisor will explain the different uh details of that once you're admitted into the program have we answered your questions did that answer the question yes but a minimum of 30 credit hours total now sometimes we will request our students well not sometimes all the times they have to have a certain amount of courses like organized courses courses where you have homework assignments and all that we say you need at least six of those plus then other kind of seminar courses and Labs but 30 credit hours was what you need at least 30 hours in order to earn the degree okay so um I have my master I I'll be having my masters in the US year is it possible for me to transfer some of my credits yes as long as you you didn't use some of those courses for a degree requirement at another school so if you had some extra courses and uh Dr seur our advisor will look at those courses on your transcript and then he'll decide if he will approve them you can uh transfer up to two courses okay all right um and another question I have here is about um the gr um I know that it's required but is there any case whereby you can wave we presently do not wave Gras so in that sense we're consistent all right and if so um are you concerned about the results of the GRE so we are looking at Gres as an additional data point so there is no strict requirement to have this big of a like this number or that number uh we do use G verbal simply to suggest that so for instance if you have less than 153 on the verbal then you're going to take for instance remedial courses in English or writing especially if you're going to going going to be a teaching assistant so we use them as a guideline but they're not necessarily the they're there are strict cut offs and again as as we are evaluating uh the the application we are taking a holistic approach so we are looking at the entire application and different people will have different strong points or uh or not and this is G is just one of those points in numbers does that make sense yeah in that sense this is also the reason so a lot of schools are Ving Gres and one can go and say a lot of things pro or against that test if we are approaching it it's just like we need an additional data point and it's just one of those data points sure and another question is about official transport so I have my bachelor's degree from Russia and um currently it will be difficult to get my transcrip so in that case I have my certificate here is it possible to just use my bachelor's degree certificate instead of the transcript so we will have to do Amy help me out so you will upload whatever you have and then we will have to deal with this with the graduate school on a Case by casee basis there is definitely an understanding that it's not an easy thing to get um an official trans transcript right now um Amy well um when the students apply they again upload what they have but the office of graduate admissions will be uh reviewing your credentials so we can't say if your certificate is going to be approved or not they have to look at and we say they as we call it o they're the main office on campus that handles all the different graduate applications and they have to look at the transcript and decide if that's what they're what we need if it's not you'll receive an email message from them and they will tell you what they're still needing from you so we as the department can't say oh yeah that's the correct transcript that you sent us or the the proper one you have to um clear that with OG which is the office of graduate admissions so go ahead and upload what you have and again if that's not what that office needs that's the main office on campus they will email you and say you're you're still needing to submit this from this school sure okay thank you so we get all of the documents from The Graduate School that has an office that evaluates everything so technically we don't even see some of the applications until they're approved if that makes sense but you definitely you email this is a special case and this obviously needs special handling so you upload what you have and then email graduate school and we'll proceed from there all right thank you you're welcome just make sure you try to upload everything else that you have and that you're sure of by the deadline date um we can work with you as long as you have your application everything submitted by the deadline we can work with you and trying to get in the other documents all right yeah get the application on time and then the rest they a question or a comment in chat um M Dr uh Masters uhu uh so you will get a master's December 12th now this depends on when is your Masters going to be processed like when is the you need a an official graduation document from your master's program so hopefully they will have it I would hope by January 10 to send it in that's going to be cutting it close it's going to be cutting it close spring for spring if if you're want to apply for uh summer or fall that's different but basically when when there is a missing document so we might approve your application based on the current document that you have that you're about to graduate right so I'm guessing that there is some document that you can upload saying yes uh you're graduating um from such and such program and then there's this official transcript that has to come in now I trust and Amy will correct me that basically when you come in and there's a missing official transcript there will be a bar on your on your record so for instance you won't be able to register for courses and that you have to do by the 12th day of class and I am speaking slowly so Amy can stop me and slap me well yeah if if if you don't have that um official transcript submitted to the office of graduate admissions um then you won't be able to register and as an international student that that's a bit challenging from that time period you're saying December 12th and trying to have it done uh before classes start in January and I think they start either January 12th or 13th this year so I'm not saying it's impossible um but it will be challenging to get that done so quickly so maybe the best is to figure out with your school when is it that they're going to give you this document that you can because they have to officially send it to you UT you can't necessarily bring it yourself that's the challenge here did that answer all the questions there I see a few more in the chat I think somebody's asking about the application fee waivers we do not have it for international students yeah we don't wave the uh application fees I have a question so if you say International students are you talking about um students who are outside us or students who are in in the US who are having their masters in the US but are not US citizens either way uh so the only program is for US citizens um and there is a very limited number of you're permanent resident we I think that's okay right Dr Pon right right I will just then walk briefly through the if there's anything in the so one great so if there's anything that I haven't covered that I wanted to cover uh so if you want to see all of the needy gry details on the degree requirements how they happen once you uh enter the program you can find those on our web page uh there's something called graduate student handbook so you can for instance take a look at how a PhD preliminary exam or qualifying exam what is the procedure uh for those uh but I would normally um we worry about those once you actually enter the program so but you would if if you would like to find out uh there is more than enough information online and for anything else we can answer do I have those emails I can project our emails once our email on the first slide I think Chang it I just got to walk uh walk back to those here we go so we can answer questions via email all right yeah if your if my email is covered by a box it's amy. d. utexas.edu so we go the last part let me move the Box oh oh she moved it see it's the it's the zoom controls that are now for some reason blocking things I don't know that's a new thing and I just uploaded Zoom this morning so I will blame it on the most recent update because that's the only thing I can blame it for let me um just quickly add I don't know Dr pom if you discussed any fellowships before I came but we do have fellowships at the cockro school which is our Dean's office um will um have for new students you don't you don't apply for those fellowships we review your admission application and then we try to find some fellowships to help you these fellowships are not intended to cover all of your expenses but to help you um with your expenses so uh you can't apply for that you're just applying for our graduate program and then we will decide uh we will nominate you to the Dean's office for a small fellowship and they can range from about you know 2,000 to possibly $6,000 a year um to help just to have additional help there and if you're an interational student and you don't get offered funding we can still uh allow you to have a tuition waiver that will reduce your tuition rate from the non- Texas rate which will be higher at like 9,660 it'll be reduced to the Texas rate of 5,277 so we have sem help to bring it down just a little bit if you don't get funding for some reason you're trying to self fund or or still find some kind of additional funding so I just want to put that out there in case somebody may be wondering if any fellowships are available and the reason for that is that the sources for fellowships are varied there's a lot of people who actually leave certain amount of money to the university and then that money is available at the beginning of every year to uh for the fellowships and they also have their VES tied to those so for instance they want to fund students in a specific engineering program or students from certain countries or so there's a lot of these different sources and university has to monitor that those wishes are fulfilled so basically that's often uh done from the cochr School of Engineering um so again that's just because those are private donors who decided to give Fellowship to uh you students just a quick question here um do you do you have like a guaranteed funding because for example here we have for PhD students 20 25,000 Canadian is guaranteed no matter what and on top of that um students will receive additional fellowships and teaching assistance do you guys have something like that or no that is short answer to that is that Canada and United States function differently but we don't have that okay yeah no problem I mean if you're offer funding the your supervisor will pay for your tuition that part is guaranteed um but it comes yeah but it comes from various sources um so we don't have as a department we don't have a pool of money that is available to cover graduate students that comes from say Federal sources or tax payment or anything like that uh what comes to the department is uh money for teaching assistantships but that's tied to the number of courses that are taught and it's a slice of a pie as we like to be that varies from year to year that is decided by the university based on the number of students enrolled in our programs so now you you you know much more than you want to know but basically it comes to the department and then Department chair slices that pie further um to different uh different professors teaching different uh courses based on the course enrollment so it's it's it's it's there's nothing guaranteed uh okay budget budget is revised budget is revised on a yearly basis that's I think thank you thank you very much you're welcome any other questions well if there are no further questions thank thank you everybody um you do have our emails if you forgot them well uh they exist on the YouTube web page my favorite joke is that my name is very hard to write down but once you write it down I'm the only one online so my email should be fairly easy to find if you need to but it is M at UT Texas there ago TDU uh but overall we all uh are are con information is available on the utge uh web page so should you have any further questions uh please let us know and if not we're looking to reviewing your graduate application submitted by September 1st try to get it the admission or December 15th for fall admission and that is pretty much Year bye the thank you e