What should I do?

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I want to go to grad school for aerospace engineering. I just graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a bachelors in astrophysics and a double minor in chemistry and mathematics. I got a GPA of 3.04. Freshman summer i worked at USC doing research. I has a job in the physics lab working with a lot of instruments (mainly ee though). For that summer i studied abroad in Korea. Next summer I interned at university of Maryland physics department and i worked on my thjunior and senior year.</p>

<p>At first i was thinking medicine then software and now i finally realized i want to do aerospace engineering. I'm going to take the gre next week. I'm currently trying to find a job but most companies want an aerospace or mechanical engineer. I don't exactly know what to do. I'm going to continue to try to find a job, but in case i don't, I want to know what are the chances of getting into UCI or UCSD or USC or any of the top 25 schools.</p>

<p>Thank you</p>

2

<p>I think you haven’t received any responses yet because it’s unclear what you are looking for.</p>

<p>Nobody can give you your chances, because graduate admissions are holistic and not only based on numbers. Besides that, we don’t have intimate knowledge of your competition at the top 25 schools, even if some of us may be familiar with the general makeup of the pool.</p>

<p>I think that you likely need a master’s in engineering to be an aerospace engineer (either aerospace or mechanical, likely) so you should pursue that MS. Apply widely to programs that are a good fit to you - so perhaps not just top 25 schools but a mid-ranked program as well because of your GPA - which isn’t enough on it’s own to keep you out, I think, but is a bit low for very competitive programs.</p>