I made a thread about this before, but there have been a few changes since then to give a clearer picture.
I am graduating in a week with a BS in Civil Engineering and I have taken courses to focus on Structural Engineering. I have realized I am really interested in the computational analysis/mechanics side of structures and I luckily have taken coursework to back that up, including a graduate level course where computational analysis was basically the entire class.
I have a 3.83 major GPA and a 3.72 cumulative GPA, on the GRE I got a 165 quantitative and a 157 Verbal, I have participated in research for a year, participated in clubs on campus, even being President of one of them, studied abroad, interned and been a TA for a structures course.
I was able to get letters of recommendation from the professor I do research with who is a PhD in Structures, the department head and college adviser of Civil and Environmental Engineering at my school who graduated from Berkeley, and the Senior Structural Engineer at the company I interned with over the summer.
I am applying to pretty top notch graduate schools for an MS with the intent of doing research with a professor that focuses on computational analysis/mechanics. My list includes UC Berkeley, UCLA, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, and U Illinois Urbana Champaign. There are a few others as well, but these are the top ones. At the moment, I think my top choices are Princeton or Columbia because their faculty research seems to align the most with my interests.
I just want to know what my chances are for these schools, given my credentials. I feel like maybe I haven’t done enough. I know someone who is going to Princeton for her PhD and she assured me its not as difficult to get in as it seems, but I am still worried because I have also been receiving job offers. I am worried about rejecting all of my job offers in case I get into one of my dream schools, but then not actually getting in or not getting funded.