I would suggest throwing in UCSD as it's really strong EE school, and especially a top circuits school.
"Competitive Institutions: We compete for students with peer institutions that have STRONG circuits research groups such as UCLA, UCB, UT-Austin, UW, Columbia, and Georgia-Tech (among others)"
http://hsic.ucsd.edu/Admissions.html
For your top choices, I would try to include some of these schools as they are recognized as the best EE and circuits schools. Cornell is great, but each school has different strong points. If you are interested in getting into a top school, I would apply to up to 6, then chose 2-3 schools with higher acceptance rates (something like University of Arizona - a school that is well recognized for strong research, but won't be as hard to get into as the schools mentioned above). The key to the back-up schools is picking ones that are still strong in their field, but not impossible to get into. On the other hand, Duke and Dartmouth are not strong EE schools, but will still be difficult to get into (hence I would suggest rethinking them).