EE Grad School

<p>How long does a typical program for a masters in electrical engineering at graduate school take? If going to school full-time, can it be completed within one year? Also is it possible to begin taking classes for an MSEE in the spring semester or do you have to start in the fall?</p>

<p>Depends... MS can take 2.5 years or so. But you can get a M.Eng. degree that will take 1 year (only courses, no research). It really depends on your target schools, RelientK.</p>

<p>I would say it typically takes 18 months to 2 years. If you don't do a thesis you can probably do it in 3 semesters. Possibly a year but it would be extremely busy. If you are available to start in the spring I would see nothing holding you back.</p>

<p>Just to clarify, some schools call their masters degrees without a thesis MS as well (instead of M.eng). You can do a masters without a thesis in a year; typically it's 10 courses over two semesters, which is definitely do-able. I think most do it in 2 semesters actually if you're going to school full-time.</p>

<p>Thanks for the responses. But just to clarify, can highly ranked programs (i.e.: Stanford, Cal Tech, Berkley, USC, UCLA, etc.) be completed in one year if going to school full-time?</p>

<p>Also, do most people in EE go to Grad School straight after undergrad, or they work for a few years and then go to Grad School? Which is better?</p>

<p>Here at USC the MSEE degree is 27 units (9 classes), and full-time for master's students is usually considered 9 units (3 classes), so 3-4 semesters usually does the trick unless you need excessive prerequisites because your undergrad is not in EE or take fewer than 3 classes per semester (which many students do their 1st semester)</p>

<p>They do offer some courses in summer, though you have less of a selection (during the year, they offer dozens of different courses), but I guess it is possible, in theory, to finish in spring-summer-fall (1 full calendar year) though I would consider that an extremely heavy load.</p>

<p>USC does admit MS EE's for spring, I believe.</p>

<p>
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But just to clarify, can highly ranked programs (i.e.: Stanford, Cal Tech, Berkley, USC, UCLA, etc.) be completed in one year if going to school full-time?

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</p>

<p>I would assume that you would include MIT as a highly ranked prorgam. </p>

<p>MIT offers the EECS MEng program that most people are able to complete in one extra year in conjunction with your bachelor's (hence a total of usually 5 years, sometimes even less). Heck, I know one girl who completed 2 bachelor's degrees (in EECS and in Sloan management) as well as the EECS MEng, all in 4.5 years. </p>

<p>The catch is that the MEng program is only open to MIT undergrads.</p>

<p>Quote:
I would assume that you would include MIT as a highly ranked prorgam. </p>

<p>thanks for the response everybody. Sakky, yes MIT is clearly a highly ranked program, I just didn't include it b/c I was looking to stay on the West Coast. I'm really interested in USC in particular.</p>

<p>btw, I know this is way offtopic but how do you quote someone? I can't find the button.</p>

<p>What area of EE are you interested in? I actually just applied to USC's master's in EE through a similar 5-year program like MIT's.</p>

<p>You should check out the list of courses:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/cat2007/schools/engineering/electrical/courses.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/cat2007/schools/engineering/electrical/courses.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>They offer a couple of different MSEE degrees with different specializations, but the plain degree basically requires any 6 courses numbered above 500, and any 3 additional courses numbered above 400 (which are typically used to fulfill any prerequisites missing) Again, 3 classes per semester is typical.</p>