To those of you who have a MS (or Ph.D)

<p>What was your graduating GPA when you received you Bachelors degree?
What schools did you get accepted to?</p>

<p>Just wondering because I have a 3.4 CUM GPA (3.7 MAJOR GPA) and I am about to graduate with a BSEE, looking to apply to schools with an acceptance rate of 30% (not sure if the acceptance rate posted is solely undergraduate).</p>

<p>Schools I am looking to apply to:
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
San Diego State
UC Irvine
UC San Diego</p>

<p>any one have any experience with these schools?
and is it true they only look at your last two years?
and do they look at your major gpa also, or only your cum gpa?</p>

<p>thank you, i appreciate the help.</p>

<p>LOL…I had like a 2.5</p>

<p>If I would have applied to grad school right out of undergrad, the schools probably would have had me arrested for making them review my application.</p>

<p>So after working 8 years and talking with other fellow engineers, they told me the “sneak in the back door method for graduate school”.</p>

<p>1) Obtain experience. 8+ years is ideal.</p>

<p>2) Research graduate programs. Look for programs where the school says “applicants with below the minimum GPA may be admitted on a provisional basis, etc” (usually the Top-10 schools won’t do this)</p>

<p>3) Enroll in graduate courses of your hopeful selected program as a non-degree graduate student. You will need about 3 course before applying.</p>

<p>4) ACE THOSE COURSES. If you have to, choose “graduate versions” of courses you have already taken as an undergrad or have real engineering experience in. The GRE is supposed to measure if you can do graduate work. Well, 9 credits of graduate engineering courses with A’s will pretty much prove that.</p>

<p>5) Apply to graduate school</p>

<p>Let’s say you are trying to get into a 30-credit M.S./M.Eng program and you aced 3 courses (9 credits). Well, you have aced about 1/3 of the program. Not many schools ranked after #10 are going to deny you admission…especially if your employer is footing that bill. Remember, colleges are businesses.</p>

<p>Now to answer your question. A 3.4 with a 3.7 in the major will get you admitted somewhere…and I KNOW it will be automatic if you have some actual experience.</p>

<p>Disclaimer: Not recommend for M.S.+Thesis or PhD programs</p>

<p>hahaha that is a pretty sneaky idea you got there.
do summer internships count as work experience or are they looking for something longer?</p>

<p>I would think that internships count as work experience. I had a work-study job on campus doing light database work for my campus’ College of Medicine. My first employer out of college (Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, PA) counted it as actual experience which helped get hired.</p>

<p>I had around your same stats graduating from UIUC and got into a handful top 10 and top 15 programs in aerospace and mechanical engineering.</p>

<p>Don’t people have to take the GRE to get into graduate school anymore? </p>

<p>My GRE scores were probably what got me in to grad school. My undergrad GPA was only 3.18, but my GREs were pretty high. I’d also worked four years before starting grad school.</p>

<p>You may or may not get into one of the schools you mentioned, but there are bound to be some CSU and private colleges that you’d be accepted into.</p>

<p>GRE is used but is one of the less important factors. Bad GREs can keep you out but not usually get you in.</p>

<p>I think that acceptance standards for grad school were a lot looser than they are today so the experiences of those of use with grad degrees from the 80s and 90s may not be that useful.</p>