<p>I am looking to apply to various electrical engineering PhD programs around the country. I have a 4.0 GPA and I just participated in a summer research program at Berkeley. I have also had an internship at a local engineering firm. However, I am at a fairly low ranked university, but I should have good letters of rec and at least decent essays.</p>
<p>My current GRE scores are as followed:
Q - 168
V - 156
Writing - 3.5</p>
<p>I am taking the GRE again in October to try to improve verbal and writing. </p>
<p>I have a few questions now.</p>
<p>1) If I take the GRE again and score better in verbal and writing, but my quantitative decreases, should I send my new scores, old scores, or both?
2) what are my chances for a top ten school (Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Cornell)?
3) The lowest ranked school I am planning on applying to Univ Colorado - Boulder. Should I apply to even lower ranked schools to have a safe school?
4) what are some other good universities that are near mountains (Univ of Washington, Boulder ect.) I love hiking, and I live no where near mountains now.
5) are there any ways to get admission rates for graduate school?</p>
<p>1) This is usually set by the programs to which you are applying.</p>
<p>2) No one knows. No one. Not even the admission committees at those schools can really chance you because they have not yet seen the field. Your GPA is outstanding, your research experience is a little weak for top programs. Your LOR’s are likely to be middling - you have little research and your writers likely lack star power. I would say you have a chance, and that you should apply to schools that genuinely interest you and seem like a good match, but I would not bet on getting in.</p>
<p>3) Without knowing what you mean by “fairly low ranked university”, it is hard to say. Apply to schools that are researching what you want to research. Don’t go crazy over rankings.</p>
<p>4) Good universities for what? You don’t go to grad school for electrical engineering, you go for electromagnetics, or antenna design, or communications systems, or whatever else you want to appear repeatedly in the intro to your thesis. Every school has strong areas and weak areas, and you need to know what areas interest you to identify the schools.</p>
<p>5) No. But they are typically pretty low at the top - a simple rule of thumb is that the USNWR department ranking, taken as a percentage, can serve as a rough admission rate for “better” departments. So the number 5 department admits roughly 5% of their applicants, while the number 25 department admits roughly 25%.</p>
<p>Realistically all those top tier grad schools restrict their admissions to the top students (those with both outstanding research and good GPA) from the very best schools in respective countries. So if you are from weak schools, have no project experience, or low GPA, please save some electrons. oh and, the GRE score is the least important.</p>
<p>I would say to not retake the GRE. You already have nearly top GRE Quant, and the other scores are more average, but they are not going to hold you back.</p>
<p>Another factor is how prestigious is your current undergrad university. Because if it is not top 10 - top 20, then even more emphasis needs to be taken on who you get your rec’s from, and how you write you SOP.</p>
<p>The way I see it now, your numbers are good so far.</p>
<p>You hear this over and over again but it really is true in my opinion:</p>
<p>GRE scores only serve to screen out those with too low of scores. So it will screen you out but not get you into a grad program. Some schools also resort to the GRE scores to determine which ACCEPTED student to fund. </p>
<p>Your research interests, your statement of objective, whether or not you found a professor who would love to work with you and be your advisor, GPA, research and work experience, and letters or recommendation are much more important than impressive GRE scores. I don’t mean to be a downer but who cares if you can regurgitate thousands of vocab words or can solve elementary math problems quickly. You ever notice a lot of people bragging about perfect verbal and quantitative scores but then a lame 3.0 or 3.5 on the analytical writing? </p>
<p>I would think it’s more important if someone can write analytically (since you will be doing this in grad school like ALL THE TIME!!!).</p>
<p>One summer of research is too little for top programs. Are you getting a LOR from that supervisor? Because otherwise your letters may be positive, but they won’t be good.</p>
<p>@Duaneread - I had heard that the ranking of your undergraduate institution really didn’t matter much, and that it’s way more important what you do at whatever institution you are at (in terms of research, making connections, etc.)</p>