<p>I am a student at a state school that is ranked somewhere around #25 in my engineering major. For graduate school, I have the opportunity to do my masters at a college like Illinois or Georgia Tech (I am still deciding). These colleges have much higher ranking programs, (#4 and #6).</p>
<p>Alternatively, I can just stay at my state school for my masters.</p>
<p>My main concern is the fact that I have a fairly average GPA at my school. I am really a quite average student and I never really seem to do my best because I have a really poor attention span and bad work ethic. I mean, I still manage to get through, though. So part of me is a afraid to go to more "top" universities because I think I will just fail.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I stay here at my state school I might really regret passing up on the opportunity.</p>
<p>1) How much harder would a top 5/10 engineering school like Georgia Tech & Illinois be, compared to a state flagship university that I attend, which is ranked around #25? If I am just doing average now, am I totally going to get my butt kicked in grad school? </p>
<p>2) How does grading work in grad-school?
I understand that the average GPA of a grad student is MUCH higher than an undergraduate. However, I don't quite understand whether this is because teachers are much more lenient about giving out high grades, or if the caliber of the students is much higher. Can anyone say a few words about this? I ask because some of these programs will put you on probation if you have <3.0 GPA. And that scares me, because my undergrad GPA has been 3.3 So its not that unlikely, that I will get below 3.0 in a much harder school and I just don't want to get kicked out.</p>
<p>Thanks,
James Madison, Jr.</p>
<p>1) Don’t be surprised if a top-5 program is much harder than your current program. That doesn’t make it unmanagable, but you should be prepared for a rougher ride, and should also expect to scramble - you may find that your undergrad did not quite cover everything they expect you to already know.</p>
<p>2) The teachers are not so much lenient about high grades as they are forgiving about low grades. In many grad programs, B- is about the lowest grade you will see (provided you avoid undergrad classes - they WILL fail you) provided you show up and make a real attempt. At the same time, the caliber of students IS higher and there is more work ethic than you see at the undergrad level, so your fellow classmates really are gunning for that A. As long as you show up and do the work, maintaining a 3.0 should not be too hard.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The difficulty will depend on your program. Some MS programs are basically just a rehash of the BS classes with a little more complexity. In that case, it’s not hard to do well even if your undergrad program wasn’t that good as long as you put in the work. Other programs are very different.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t think it’s fair to say that grad school grading is easier. Remember that in grad school, you’ve cut out the bottom 50% to 75% of students so what you’re left with are better students. That said, a C is usually failing in grad school and requires you to repeat a class (this depends on the program).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Yeah, the above posters pretty much explained grad school grading. Depending on the program, you are allowed ONE course with a “C”. It doesn’t matter if (out of 10 courses) you have 8 courses with A’s. Once you get a 2nd “C”, one of those C’s must be repeated.</p>
<p>Now I know I cannot speak for all engineering graduate programs, but I had to deal with more “scenario based” or “what if?” questions on exams. Also, there were more team assignments.</p>