how does engineering grad school admissions work?

<p>how does grad school admissions work for engineering, if you got your B.S. in physics? what is required to get into top schools like caltech, mit, etc? you need good grades, letters of rec, GRE scores? does doing an REU (summer research program) in physics help alot or is it meaningless?</p>

<p>lol well for schools like MIT, which is the top engineering school in the US I think
Im guessing you will need/want all those things you posted, just do everything you can.</p>

<p>but about how much is each weighted? is having a near 4.0gpa and research good enough? or do I need really good letters of rec as well?</p>

<p>also, for finding jobs in mechanical or aerospace engineering with a masters in engineering, how much will the prestige of the grad school matter?</p>

<p>Here ya go:MIT</a> Graduate Admissions - Requirements</p>

<p>Good letters of recommendation will supersede almost anything else, and everything else you put on your application are just statistics that can vary drastically from one school to the next.</p>

<p>That said, some schools do have unofficial GPA cutoffs (or so I've heard), with MIT's being around a 3.7-3.8 in their Materials Science program (or so say a few professors I've worked for that went there for grad school).</p>

<p>Prestige of grad school probably matters a bit for a MS, but if you get a PhD a lot more weight is placed on the quality of your research.</p>

<p>really? prestige of grad school only barely matters for MS in terms of finding jobs?</p>

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Prestige of grad school probably matters a bit for a MS

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prestige of grad school only barely matters for MS in terms of finding jobs?

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<p>I think RR was comparing whether prestige matters more for MS or PhD jobs. Prestige of grad school can matter somewhat for MS in terms of finding jobs, because of an employer's confidence in your abilities. If you come from a good program that everyone's familiar with, then they'll be a little more trusting of the quality of your engineering education. Can't cruise in on program alone, though. Still have to have some experience, a good resume with lots of marketable points on them (good knowledge of applicable software, some references who'll vouch for you, a decent GPA, required credentials, maybe some other skills that might be applicable), and you have to come across well in an interview and really know your technical stuff in order to get a job with a top firm.</p>

<p>This is for computer science, but a lot is probably applicable to other fields. The author is a prof at CMU (one of the best CS departments in the world) and has been involved with admissions in three top 10 CS or EECS programs.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Eharchol/gradschooltalk.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If your engineering field uses a lot of physics, a strong physics background is probably a plus, but you'll need to show that you know the engineering material at an undergrad level too.</p>

<p>Any research is better than no research, I would say, but research in the field to which you are applying is better than research out of it.</p>

<p>jessiehl, thanks for the link, its really helpful, unless its not true for non-CS fields. also, i'm more interested in considering a masters rather than phd in engineering</p>

<p>Wow, what a detailed, well-thoughtout guide... </p>

<p>Thanks jessiehl!</p>