USC Civil eng undergrad, Low GPA (medical issue), what are my chances for grad school?

<p>I am graduating from, University of Southern California, with a Major in Civil Eng (Environmental), and Minor in Construction Management with a GPA of 2.74. I transferred from a community college, so when considering both cumulative GPAs = 3.15.</p>

<p>I have had a medical emergency during my second year in USC. I was diagnosed with a serious condition and had to get emergency surgery right after my Fall Semester. As a result my GPA suffered that year because I had a very stressful semester dealing with a debilitating and serious condition before and after surgery. Unfortunately my perspective changed and I just could not recover even after 2 years; going through my medical condition I decided I just wanted to work after college, and forget about grad school. I maintained a GPA of about 2.7 after my surgery.</p>

<p>I've always wanted to work on renewable energy, and after discovering engineering majors in USC and other universities that focus on that subject, I decided I wanted to pursue a graduate school in that field. I am planning on applying (for spring & Fall 2015) to a MSc program (without research) in renewable energy engineering (each university has it's own name for the program) in:</p>

<p>USC
Stanford
U of Michigan
UI Urbana Champaign
Imperil College London
and many other Eng schools in the US.</p>

<p>So my question is, do I stand a chance?
Will they look into my gpa from both USC and community college?
Does my medical excuse compensate for a low GPA?
And considering that I'm not applying to a typical eng grad program -civil, mech, or elec etc...- that probably does not have that may competition.</p>