<p>I’m getting my BS in Mechanical Engineering soon and I plan on working for 1-2 years before I go to Grad school. My main goal is to attend either Stanford or UC Berkeley since I live near the Silicon Valley area of California and I would like to develop my career there. I’m currently attending Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California and my current GPA is a 3.7.</p>
<p>I’m in a dilemma right now where I’m behind by a couple classes. The way I see it, I can either take an extra quarter of school and graduate a quarter late after the Fall to maintain my current GPA (or possibly improve it a bit), or I can squeeze in my remaining classes to graduate on time in the Spring, but I’m sure my GPA will take a bit of a toll.</p>
<p>The question that I’m wondering is: will my 1-2 years of work experience be a big plus for Grad School admission to the point where I shouldn’t worry too much about my undergrad GPA. To give some background info, I only plan on getting a Masters (Still deciding if I should do Thesis or Coursework), I am not really interested in getting a PhD. So far, I have done 3 summer internships in research and I plan on doing a 4th internship working in industry next summer. I even plan on getting my first job after undergrad in a Research & Development facility before I apply to grad school. Basically, I’m just trying to see what are my chances of getting into a top-notch engineering school like Stanford or UC Berkeley for a Masters with the credentials that I'll possibly have when I apply.</p>