top 50 engineering program as undergrad...options?

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi, I am currently a sophomore at Northeastern U in Mech Eng. So far I maintained a 3.94 GPA (knocks on wood). I was wondering what kind of engineering/mba grad schools this would set me up for in the future as my only concern is about the ranking of my program. It's no MIT, Cornell or Caltech, etc. and as far as I understand getting into grad school from those schools is much easier even with a not so stellar GPA. So do the admissions officers pay a lot attention to the ranking of the undergrad programs and restrict students coming from lower ranking schools?</p>

2

<p>if you want to do engineering research (MS or PhD), take advantage of being in Boston and get a research position at a good engineering lab at Northeastern, one of the medical schools (lots of engineering opportunities), MIT, etc. Especially in the summers, there are lots of opportunities.</p>

<p>Your GPA matters but for a research track degree, the research experience matters more. I'm guessing for business school your GPA is more important. Yours seems stellar enough to get into a lot of places.</p>

3

<p>Northeastern has a fine engineering program. There are a fair number of Northeastern grads who went to MIT for their PHD: To name a few: Dick Egan (EMC co-founder), Albert Sacco (Astronaut), Robert Shillman (Cogenx founder). </p>

<p><a href="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/PS/sacco.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/PS/sacco.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.cognex.com/corporate/biographies.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cognex.com/corporate/biographies.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2003/LIR.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2003&passListType=Person&uniqueId=O2YL&datatype=Person%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2003/LIR.jhtml?passListId=10&passYear=2003&passListType=Person&uniqueId=O2YL&datatype=Person&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So don't worry so much about the rankings. Just keep your grades up, do well on the GRE, and get some good research experience.</p>