<p>Hey guys, </p>
<p>Second year UCSD chemical engineering major. My freshmen year was a little rough (like a lot of people's i think) and my GPA fell below a 3.0 winter quarter, leaving me at a cumulative 2.8. </p>
<p>One thing that I like about chemical engineering is the parts that involve process design and problem solving. I heard from friends that some schools like Stanford and Carnegie Melon offer join graduate programs in things like Management Science or computer science as well as something called "design school". Supposedly, according to the NYtimes this "dschool" is becoming a very popular entry route for tangential majors like engineers to enter marketing and product design, which I think sounds really cool. </p>
<p>Stanford would be my top choice because of the location (I'm a Bay Area native) and the fact that it's a business-product-oriented graduate program in the heart of the silicon valley is very appealing.</p>
<p>What are these schools looking for in candidates? A high GPA, of course (I feel like I have another 4 years of college to work on that), but should I be finding internships in engineering, or business? Do they like laboratory work? I know one girl (my dad's coworker's daughter) who graduated from Berkeley in education and was a teacher for 2 years before attending Stanford's design school program and ended up in a peninsula start up that was bought out by Facebook, so clearly there's no linear way to do this. </p>
<p>Thanks for your help :)</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>John</p>