Accepted to Two REUs

I found out I got accepted to the Purdue Physics REU on March 24, 2010:

Dear Roger,

In response to your application we're delighted to make you an offer to join our summer 2010 REU program at Purdue. The REU fellowship carries a stipend of $450 per week. Room and board and on-campus Residence Hall are also covered by the program. A travel allowance is available. More details about the program may be found on our website:

http://www.physics.purdue.edu/reu/

Please confirm that you are still considering Purdue as one of the options for summer research by March 26th. Once confirmed, we will contact you with the details of your summer research project. Once you have a chance to discuss the research project with your future adviser we will ask you to formally accept (or reject) this offer.

Sincerely,
Prof. Sergei Savikhin
Department of Physics
Purdue University

I applied for REUs last year, but didn't get accepted to any, so I was pretty stoked about being accepted, especially to a large university like Purdue.

Then, on March 25, 2010, I got a call from Dr. John Noe at the Stony Brook Laser Teaching Center, asking about what I did the previous summer (which I spent at St. Mary's studying quantum walks). After a few days, and phone calls from from Dr. Erlend Graf and Dr. Harold Metcalf,  I found out I also got accepted to the Stony Brook Physics REU.

After that, I had an arduous week of debating between where I wanted to go (with both places constantly switching positions). My primary goal for this summer was to experience as many different aspects of physics as possible so that I have a better idea of what I want to focus on, and this just nudged Purdue over Stony Brook, which I felt offered me more of an opportunity to experience working in an active physics research laboratory.

I would have been excited to have been accepted to an REU at all, let alone to both Purdue and Stony Brook.