synewcomer

Hi everyone, I am a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Hong Kong and I am now apply to graduate schools 2013 fall. I would like to apply to research groups in the area of microfluidics and energy-related. However, I heard that some schools admit graduate students only when the students successfully get contact with professors in advance, and in other schools, even if the professor agrees to give me the offer, the result still depend on the decision from the admission committee. The schools I wanna apply to: 1. Harvard 2. UCBerkeley 3. MIT 4. Stanford 5. UIUC 6. Michigan 7. Purdue 8. UCLA 9. Cornell 10. U Penn 11. Northwestern The question is, which schools above are professor-dominated and I have to get contact with them before I formally apply to the school? Thank you so much for reading this.