My son will graduate next December and is applying to Grad school for Environmental Engineering. For now he’s not ready to apply to a Phd program but he may decide to after getting his masters. He wants to do research, preferably not in a university. He is currently in a respected engineering program of a state flagship university. His GPA is about 3.95 with one B in a humanities course. He has a well rounded profile with research, and extracurricular involvement. He is presently looking at the following schools:
Stanford
Berkeley
Michigan
Penn State
Washington
Colorado
UT Austin
He just took his first GRE practice test and scored a 161 quantitative and a 153 verbal. The question is what is the best strategy for admissions. He has kicked around putting high emphasis on GRE study next semester and possibly backing off of his coursework to perhaps get a couple of B’s; putting a lot of emphasis on the Verbal section with intense study of vocabulary and light review of math to hit areas he missed on his practice test or placing heavy focus on really killing the Quantitative section with light review of the Verbal including vocab review. I’m interested in thoughts on strategies that would give him the best shot at admission to at least one of these schools with funding.
Thank you for your thoughts