<p>I am about to start my third year in a state school (not highly ranked). I want to get my PhD at a top grad school in electrical engineering. I have the opportunity to push to graduate a year early over next summer with a GPA of about 3.75 and pursue my masters degree or wait and graduate the following year with a slightly higher GPA (~3.8). I have done some undergraduate research and plan on taking an independent research class as well as doing a summer REU regardless of which option I take.</p>
<p>Will it improve my chances of getting in to a top PhD program (like MIT or Caltech) if I have a Masters degree or should I focus on taking more undergrad classes?</p>
<p>You have two separate issues here: Early graduation and intermediate MS.</p>
<p>I think the decision to graduate early rests primarily on your research credentials and LOR’s. The difference between a 3.75 and a 3.8 is neglible for this purpose, the real question is whether or not you could use that year doing some real quality research and getting in good with some respected researchers. How much research do you have now, and could you do some solid work with that extra year? Talk to your professors about your aspirations, they may be able to find you something leading to your own original research and publication.</p>
<p>As to the masters degree, it will not help and, depending on the school, may not count for anything. For admissions the degree will only really help if you need to rehabilitate your GPA (you do not) or if your school is so questionable that you have reason to fear the PhD programs will be skeptical (probably not an issue). As far as credit goes, UIUC will accept an outside masters degree fully, MIT will not, and most other schools are somewhere in-between, so you might spend two years getting a masters without shortening your PhD time at all!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply cosmicfish. After looking over some of the websites of the schools I have been looking at, I decided I don’t want to get my masters from my current school. As for graduating early, I don’t think I can benefit from graduating early if I can instead spend the time doing research.</p>
<p>How much undergrad research involvement will I need to be considered a strong PhD candidate? Right now I am involved in an optics/solid state research project in nanotechnology. I eventually want to work in energy systems (I think; not sure what kinds of research subjects are going on). Next year I plan to take a class for credit that involves an independent research project. Also I plan on doing a research project next summer. I don’t know if these projects will result in publications or not. Does that matter?</p>
<p>Also I will finish my second full-time internship at a major defense company. Will this have any weight in the graduate admissions process?</p>
There is no exact answer for this - it is more about the quality (as determined by either LOR’s or publications) than the quantity. Two years of running someone else’s tests is not as good as a semester of your own original research.</p>
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Publications in peer-reviewed journals absolutely matter, but are not exactly required - few will have them as undergrads, even at elite schools. But hopping around between research projects will not help as much as a prolonged stay in one lab. And research done for classes will almost never help - there just is not the depth. Grad programs want depth in your research.</p>
<p>You may decide that getting a Masters at your current university is not a good idea but taking graduate courses, particularly if you are done with your B.S. requirements already, may be a good idea. You will get a good feeling about what it takes to succeed in a graduate program and you will have a leg up on these courses once you take them in graduate school. They might even be transferable if not used for your undergraduate degree. This could be a good way of spending the extra time in you rundergraduate school while you focus on research.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I agree with this. A number of my friends did internships instead of research in undergrad, and still were able to get into great grad schools. If your experience at the defense contractor involved work that demonstrates skills you’ll need for grad school, then it should be fine.</p>
<p>Another option you have is to spend a fall at your current school taking mostly grad classes. Use the summer between junior and senior years as a way of boosting your application.</p>
<p>I plan on taking graduate courses as my technical electives to show that my research interests are in those areas (power electronics). I am mostly interested in being a research engineer in industry (but I don’t mind working in academia). Is this a viable career path? What would my job prospects be immediately after receiving my phd?</p>
If that work comes with an LOR from a PhD at the company that indicates that your internship was spent doing research then you may have a point… but then it is an industrial research program more than a traditional internship, and that is pretty rare. I had substantial work experience when applying to PhD programs, and it never came up while my research did repeatedly. And remember that people get admitted with little or no research all the time… just not to “top” grad schools as the OP is hoping. If you only have internships you can still get into a lot of schools on the strength of your academic performance.</p>
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In engineering this is not only viable, it is the dominant career path. Academic positions are few and highly prized, so most engineering PhD’s go into industry where they join and eventually lead research teams. Your prospects would depend on your speciality but there are tons of opportunities, especially if you go to a top program.</p>
<p>Even an MS from a top university will, at best, not hurt you. More often, it <em>will</em> hurt your profile. Top EE programs prefer straight-from-undergrad applicants. You won’t find that explicitly stated anywhere, but there’s no denying it. Parse through years of applicant profiles/results threads if you don’t believe it. They’ll easily take unpublished undergrads over published MS-holders. Stanford is relatively lenient on this, particularly toward international applicants. The rest of the top-ranked schools are not.</p>
<p>Also, although internships can (very slightly) help, they’re almost always a losing proposition when you consider the opportunity cost. Staying on campus to do research with a professor counts for a lot more. Letters of recommendation are almost everything when it comes to admissions to top programs. Non-PhD letters are next to worthless; between PhDs, professors’ letters are much better than industry researchers’ letters. They’re being read by professors, so no surprise there.</p>
<p>I did not do well in a couple classes last semester (no money and no books). Whats the best course of action to “recover” from a bad semester so that I can show I understand the material? I have the opportunity to take a graduate course on the same topic. Will that help boost my application?</p>
The best course of action is to take a more advanced (preferably but not necessarily graduate-level) course on the same subject and knock it out of the park. Alternately, one of your LOR writers attesting to your prowess in this subject might have a similar effect, but few writers will do so even if prompted and since LOR’s are generally blind you will not ever know that they did.</p>