<p>I'm currently an undergraduate student at GMU where i'll be starting my senior year this fall. I'm majoring in information technology and thinking about applying to UVA next year for the systems engineering graduate ME program. I don't have any engineering experience from the information technology major at mason, and my gpa is currently around 3.0 which i hope to raise in my two remaining semesters. I've been working full time while attending mason at a government contracted help desk for two years providing application support to government employees. I'm just wondering what my chances are of being accepted into the UVA systems engineering graduate program. Does anyone here have a similar background as me who got accepted and can shed some light? Is it a hard program? What type of work is expected from students? What type of subjects do you have to excel in? And lastly, because i won't have an undergraduate engineering degree, will i have to take many prerequisites?</p>
<p>Thanks for any insight you can provide.</p>
<p>As much as I respect working your way through school, a 3.0 in IT from a mediocre school is probably not going to cut it.</p>
<p>would it help if i minor in systems engineering at mason, or maybe even change my major to systems engineering? IT doesn’t interest me anymore. it seems to be more focused on the management side which is not something i’m looking for.</p>
<p>Sure- that couldn’t hurt. The most important things are bringing your GPA up as much as possible and killing the math part of the GRE.</p>
<p>Definitely work on bringing up your GPA – that’s going to be very important. The Systems department has a huge emphasis on math, so before graduating you’ll need to have taken coursework in calculus, statistics, and linear algebra. You’d probably also need some computer programming work, which is probably covered in the IT curriculum.</p>
<p>I’m an undergrad, but I can answer some of your questions. The graduate program is hard (as I said, extremely math intensive), and you’ll be expected to work in both lecture-style classes as well as in research.</p>
<p>thanks for your response. i thought systems engineering was the least math intensive of the engineering degrees. is that true?</p>
<p>It’s the most math intensive of the UVa engineering degrees</p>
<p>wow, so would i have better luck with computer engineering or something else. math isn’t my best subject. i can do well in it, just can’t retain most of it.</p>