How hard is it to get into Texas A&M's Engineering Grad School from UC Davis?

Graduate School
1

I’m about to transfer from community college to UC Davis for Electrical Engineering. After that, I’ll apply to Texas A&M’s Engineering Grad School. How hard is it?

I read on their electrical engineering grad school website that even if you studied undergrad at TAMU, you’d still need a 3.6 to be guaranteed admission to their grad school. Sounds scary–UC Davis isn’t as highly ranked for engineering as A&M!

2

By “grad school,” do you mean PhD or MS program?

Is there a “guaranteed admission”? From what I know, in general, there is no such thing, especially based solely on GPA.
Admission to grad school, in particular admission to PhD program, is much more “holistic” than admission to undergrad (which is already holistic).
Please read this: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/apply.html
It’s for UC Berkeley. But Texas A&M, or any other reputable school, shouldn’t be much different.

3

Master’s. Not interested in PhD.

And here’s the link to Texas A&M’s “Automatic Admission (i.e. guarantee) to the ECE Graduate Program:”

https://engineering.tamu.edu/electrical/academics/degrees/graduate/automatic-admission-to-the-graduate-program

Does grad school admissions look at participation in sports, clubs, etc. then? The word “hollistic” makes it sound like it.

4

I’m an engineering PhD student at TAMU so here is my take.

For the masters program admission, focus heavily on keeping a high GPA (>3.5 and optimally >3.6) in undergrad and try to maximize your score on the GRE (especially Quant score near 165 or greater).

Graduate school admissions can be holistic in that you may have research experience or engineering club participation that show your commitment to the field. In my opinion, it wouldn’t hurt at all to try and get involved with a professor in your undergrad program that does research that you find interesting. Internship experience can also be a positive. I would say internships would be looked at a bit more for Masters applications, but it did help in my PhD application.

This leads to a second question: Do you want to get a masters of engineering or masters of science? For a masters of science (thesis required), any research experience you gain in undergrad may very well give you a competitive edge in admissions.