What prestige of grad schools should I be applying to?

Graduate School
1

For starters my academic career has been ‘interesting’ to say the least. I started off college fresh out of high school and did horrible. I attempted a physics major and ended up leaving with a GPA of 2.0 after about four years. From there I joined the United States Navy where I excelled in my rate, learned great organizational skills, became extremely disciplined, and learned to systematically accomplish my goals.

I did a couple of courses in the Navy and finished my contract in August of 2014 where I enrolled in a University with a new physics program. I graduated May of 2015 with a B.Sc.in Physics and I feel I did quite well. In the 41 credits I took here, with the vast majority being upper level and major requirement courses, I obtained a 3.926 out of 4.0 GPA and 3.9 major GPA. Now, even though I did well this past year, this only boosted my cumulative GPA to around a 2.85.

So I am curious to what an admissions officer will look at. Obviously my overall academic career GPA does not cut the minimum requirement of a vast selection of graduate schools, but if they would consider for instance my last 5 years of education then my GPA would be substantially higher, at about a 3.8.

I will be taking my GRE general tomorrow and have been scoring in the range of 160V/164Q. So if I can maintain that I feel my GRE scores will be decent.

Finally, I really want to pursue a masters in electrical engineering, but will be applying to both engineering and physics programs. I know I probably have a harder time maybe in getting into an engineering program, but in my final year I can speak a little to having engineering experience through the design and construction of two of my final research projects. I’m also a engineering hobbyist as well were I have constructed various things such as a CO2 laser out of PVC, glass tubing, an old neon light transformer, and a vacuum pump.

Any suggestions/inputs on my outlook or any recommendations on schools? I plan to take a gap year in preparation of my grad school applications and would like to get into a program either next spring or fall of 2016.

2

With that kind of GRE score and your last years of college being so strong, you should have good prospects in any program, particularly if you are planning to go for a M.S. and have your own funding from the GI bill. The most selective programs may ding you for the overall GPA but there are plenty of good programs in physics which will take you in a flash. You probably have only a bit of research experience from your undergraduate program so see if you can get some more research experience over your gap year.

In general, apply to a couple of highly selective programs if you really want to but I personally would stick to some of the smaller programs that will have few enough applications to be able to look through yours in detail. You say you want to get into Mechanical Engineering and that will likely require you to add some remedial coursework. Your best bet might be to stick with physics and get involved in some more applied projects and take elective courses in engineering.

3

You’re probably going to want to apply for a range of schools. Like @xraymancs says, some programs won’t care about your GPA from your first attempt at college - especially since it seems like that GPA might have been earned about 5 years ago.

Also, I’m not sure what you are planning on doing with the master’s, but you should probably decide whether an MS in physics is going to get you to your career goals, if your original goal was an MS in electrical engineering would.