<p>I graduated from Georgia Tech undergraduate last year and applied to Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, UIUC, and Georgia Tech. </p>
<p>I believed I had a legitimate shot at Stanford and Berkeley beside my GPA (since GPA is really gimped in Georgia Tech) </p>
<p>560 Verbal / 780 Quantitative / 4.0 Writing
GPA: 3.4 (This is high honor from Georgia Tech) </p>
<p>Got acceptance letter from UIUC, CMU, Georgia Tech master program but my dream schools are Stanford and Berkeley. I wonder if my recommendation letters were bad or graduate school admission just see GPA digits..... </p>
<p>anyway I would like to know is I know CMU is great in computer science area but does that great education in computer science area reflects on electrical engineer study not just computer engineer area? my concentration that I am going for is Telecommunication and RF engineer (more heavily on RF wireless communication side). </p>
<p>I don't know much about UIUC but I know by ranking, Electrical Engineer is higher in UIUC than Georgia Tech. I will go visit UIUC this month to see if this school is for me but I would like to know from someone who goes to UIUC regarding EE master program.</p>
<p>Also has anyone changed master program from one school to another while in master program? I am considering to retake my GRE and get my verbal above 600 to increase my chance of getting into other schools.</p>
<p>I know you might want to get a different experience, but Georgia Tech is superb for EE. It’s consistently ranked in the top 10. If you don’t mind staying there for another year or two, and save the hassle of relocating and adapting to a different environment, it’s a good choice. UIUC is also excellent.</p>
<p>Stanford and Berkeley are VERY competitive for EE, to the point where it’s always somewhat of a crapshoot. I’ve known one person from my graduating class (Berkeley 2009) who was admitted to Stanford, and one who was admitted to Berkeley’s Ph.D. program. They’re both members of Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi (top 1/3 of grad class), and each has at least two years of research experience. But then again, plenty of my peers who weren’t admitted to Stan/Berk/MIT also have comparable qualifications.</p>
<p>As for the 560 verbal score, I wouldn’t dwell on that. It’s still well above average, and considering how engineers generally have limited exposure to literature-based classes during their college careers, graduate schools know that it’s not realistic to expect 600s-800s from them. Most EE grad schools don’t care too much about your Verbal score, unless you’re a native English speaker and you score significantly below par, like 300-400. Retaking the GRE is quite costly, so make sure that doing so actually benefits you before taking the plunge. (If you know of any engineering school that specifically requires 600+ V, please let me know and I’ll stand corrected. Currently, I don’t know of any.)</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you would want to transfer between master’s programs, considering the prohibitive costs and possible difficulties in transferring course credit. In fact, some of Berkeley’s Ph.D. programs refuse to accept master’s-level coursework from “lesser universities” (per Berkeley’s own academic arrogance), so students who enroll have to redo 1-2 years of study. Isn’t this ridiculous?</p>