<p>I was accepted to the electrical engineering graduate programs at UCLA and UC Irvine (actually also at UC Riverside).</p>
<p>My ultimate goal is to get a Ph.D. so that I can be a college teacher/professor. However, if I end up with MS, I can still live with it as an engineer. </p>
<p>UCLA told me to get a MS before I can be enrolled into their Ph.D. program.
UCLA does not offer me a scholarship.</p>
<p>UC Irvine told me that I was accepted to their Ph.D. program.
UC Irvine can't tell me about scholarship since they require me to decide if I'm accepting the admission offer or not. Scholarship issue will be discussed only after my acceptance. </p>
<p>I have money to attend UCLA only for two years if I like to go, but I like to have some money left just in case that I could transfer to UCLA ph.D. program. However, getting into UCLA ph.D. program would be very hard.</p>
<p>If I decide on UC Irvine, I would have more chance to get scholarships and I don't need to apply for the Ph.D program since I'm already in. </p>
<p>Does anybody have any idea, which would be the better choice?</p>
<p>There is another forum in CC that is for grad programs. We mostly have undergrads talking in here, so I don't know if we can help much. If you don't mind me asking, can you give me a boiled down strategy (or requirement) to get into a decent grad school in EE? At the moment, I have a goal to get a MS or Ph.D in EE; I'll stop where I believe it is best.</p>
<p>Thanks for the CC forum info. Yes, I found that this site was mainly for undergrads, but I hope that there were some graudate people who went through similar situations. </p>
<p>Your question on the stategy to get into a decent grad school in EE is a bit difficult to answer, but let me try. </p>
<p>According to my experience, you would need good GPA. I had 3.92 and I heard that average GPA for good schools is 3.80, which is still fairly high. The school which you attended counts as well. I attended to a decent college, but wasn't top notch. I came from USD (University of San Diego). Join the undergraduate research program, which has good reputations (research supported by ASEE or something). I couldn't join the research program since most of them (almost all) required permanent residency or citizenship (I'm a foreign student). It is very important to stand out from the crowd, so publish something if you ever get a chance. Fortunately, my senior design project was a company project and went very well. It helped me write SOP. SOP is very important, so take more than a month to write it. Keep good relationships with professors since you need to ask them to write you good recommendations. GRE is often a biggest factor for scholarship, which I was never good at. GRE will be greatly changed from October (?) of this year, so you might need to get used to the new GRE style.<br>
GRE Quantative should be more than 750/760. Verbal would not matter too much (you can get to a decent college with 410 or above). However, high scores on Q and V are needed to go to school like Berkeley or Stanford. You can't mess up anything to get in those schools and you do need something which make you stand out from the crowd. Being excellent isn't good enough for them. Being exceptional is essential. </p>
<p>Also, try to apply to about 20 schools, I'm serious. I applied to 9 schools and accepted only to 4 of them. Top 20 schools also depends on luck as well as your talent since it's super competitive . Top 50 schools are within reach. </p>
<p>Wow! Great info - thanks alot. I've been too discouraged by college admission to look up what I need to make it into grad school. This is really helpful information, thanks a lot!</p>