Conjunction junction, what's your function?

So this would be that random blog entry that goes back to my giant to-do list...specifically, starting grad school. My first step was doing some of my own research, where I think I've narrowed my choices down to:

• North Carolina State University
• University of Idaho
• Kansas State

I would be going back for my masters in Structural Engineering and these schools would hopefully allow me to get it done at a reasonably fast pace and for a reasonable amount of $$$$. I went through the question I could think of, but figured there had to be things that woudln't pop up for me. So my next step was to get a guide for distance learning and see if there were any other points that they brought up that I didn't think of.  For the most part, I got it mostly covered, but here's the stuff I didn't think of.

Places to search online:

• http://www.distance-educator.com/
• www.petersons.com/dlearn
• http://www.collegequest.com/
• http://www.geteducated.com/
• www.edsurf.net/edshack

Places to look for $$$ lenders. I'm not sure that I'm going to need this. Our company gives $5k a year. I'm thinking max I would be able to handle 4 courses a year. At the worst that would be about 10k - 5k = 5k for me to pay out of pocket, which I think I can handle. There's also the idea of building credit too.... So I'll have to do some more research and weigh my options. I could also never be able to handle that much coursewise anyways! So here are the places:

• http://www.key.com/
• http://www.estudentloan.com/
• http://www.embark.com/

Along the same lines, I'd like to save moolah buying books - or even just be able to find them. Besides your normal places (amazon, banres&nobles) and the campus store, some places for that might be:

• http://www.bigwords.com/
• http://www.efollet.com/
• http://www.campusbooks.com/

Finally, there were a few more school listed in the book that I'm not sure I had thoroughly looked through. So here's the list of them. Like most schools I've found, I suspect that they will have *some* courses available online, but not a full masters degree available. Anyways, here's that list:

• Penn State 
• Indiana Uni
• UC Berkley
• Uni of Wisconsin
• RIT
• Uni of Washington

Alright, so not a very exciting blog, and more of a reminder list for me, but maybe it could help you too? In the mean time, I've made contact at the rest of my schools. I intended to ask a bunch of questions (working on that list now- will post later) and feel them out, but I think NCSU is my current front runner. We'll see. If anyone has any experiences that they want to share, please jump in and let me know! I'd love to hear it! Plan for now, harass a bunch of people, probably just start by taking one course in the fall before I'm actually matriculated in a program and then decide if it's right for me or not! We'll see :)