<p>I'm graduating from college(in the UK) this year in June with a B.Eng(hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and planning to apply to a couple of grad schools in the US but there were a couple of things that I'm a little confused about. First, I'm not very sure about how the grading scales convert so I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and assume that my overall grade would convert to somewhere in the 3.0-3.3 region on the American scale(or so I've been told anyway). I'm particularly interested in applying to a MS program in Electrical Engineering but due to the unavailability of any admission stats for most grad schools, I'm not sure how competitive the environment is, so for the more experienced amongst you, I'd appreciate it if you could suggest a few(plus I have a couple in mind already) decent albeit not ridiculously competitive schools keeping the lower end of that grade range in mind. I haven't taken the GRE yet but I usually tend to do fairly well on tests of that nature(2120/2090/2080 in three SAT attempts).</p>
<p>A few of the schools that I'm interested in are GWU(I know they're not particularly famous for their engineering program but I have a bit of a thing for that school), UMichigan, Michigan State, Northeastern, Iowa State/UColorado(safety schools). If anyone has any experience with admission procedure for these particular grad schools, I'd love to hear any opinions/advice/feedback regarding how competitive the selection process there is. </p>
<p>PS. I'm applying as an international student and would not be applying for any aid/scholarship/funding etc., if that makes any difference.</p>
<p>If there is, University of Colorado-Boulder is definitely not it.</p>
<p>But there are plenty of GradCafe stories of people going 0-for-12 on graduate applications, or sad results reports, “rejected by my safety.”</p>
<p>There are so many more variables and selectivity issues that unless one is an 800/800/ten papers in Nature kind of student, they could get accepted anywhere and rejected everywhere.</p>
<p>There are “safety school”, but that doesn’t mean you cannot get rejected from them. A safety school is one where you believe you all but assured admission, but some people over-estimate themselves, and others just run afoul of bad luck and don’t get admitted. Usually when someone goes 0-12 it is because they over-reached.</p>
<p>To give you an idea of the competitiveness, I got a first class honors in physics and got an offer from UCLA for MS in Electrical Engineering, but have yet to hear from stanford and texas.</p>
<p>If you are considering a terminal Masters and you want to come out to California, I would recommend applying to California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo. It’s not too expensive - out of state tuition is $7936, plus $248 per unit. It adds up, but it’s still cheaper than USC or Stanford. Also, Cal Poly has a reputation for being much more practical than theoretical, which is a quality looked on highly by industry. Plus, the San Luis Obispo area is gorgeous.</p>
<p>One caveat, however, is that Cal Poly does not offer a Ph.D. degree, so if you want to continue toward a Ph.D., you would have to reapply elsewhere. That may be to your advantage, though, as Cal Poly won’t pressure you to do a Ph.D. Also, Cal Poly has a relatively small Masters program, so admissions space is an issue.</p>
<p>They start taking applications for the following Fall in mid-October (the year before), and then they stop taking them in early December. Pay close attention to the dates, and have your personal statement ready, and have three professors lined up to submit letters of recommendation.</p>