Should I transfer or stay considering grad school??

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Hello, pardon my English please (I belong in ESL)</p>

<p>I serve currently as a undergrad freshman in UIUC ECE, have finished my first semester with a 4.0, and have done a bit of observing around the school to slowly capture my research opportunities.</p>

<p>Also, I have recently thought through my future plans (getting to grad school as my closest/ long term goal), and it left me with two firm options</p>

<li>stay, keep my year gpas and activities visible, and enjoy until grad school</li>
<li>transfer to top private schools (those which rank 1~20) with the same major after my second year, and start preparing the same way I would have done it in 1.</li>
</ol>

<p>I deduced option 2 after I went through some of the threads here noting that specialized rankings carry less importance compared to the overall school prestige (FOR UNDERGRAD).
Also, I believe that UIUC values in state students highly, despite the large population of those out of state in the engineering school (feeling a disadvantage in earning internships or connections with the actual field here.), and that may be the reason why I’m curious about what private schools have.</p>

<p>Well I do want to finalize academic career with the best engineering grad school for pursuing ECE (MIT), and I want to question that which of the two cases will lead me to a higher chance in getting up there?</p>

<p>Thank you in advance.</p>

2

<p>UIUC is a very well respected university, and seeing as how its ECE is ranked #3 in USNWR... you can't get much better. IMHO, your chances of going to grad school at MIT aren't going to improve by going elsewhere (unless you potentially transfer to MIT and become well known with a prof there). I'd stay at UIUC if you enjoy it there, keep up the excellent grades and get good GRE scores when the time comes, and find a research op. there as an undergrad for the time being.</p>