was1984

You are confusing the masters level degree of M.Eng. with the 'doctoral' level degree of N.Eng. or E.Eng. Those are like the M.Eng. equivalent of a PhD. Not all M.S. degrees are created equal, either. Some M.S. Degress are coursework only at some schools, with an optional thesis requirement.

The way to offset your low GPA is with LOTS of research experience. You also need to get your GRE verbal score up some. 440 is low enough that people will take notice. I'm assuming you are applying for Fall 2012, since the application deadline for most of the schools you listed has already passed. If this is the case, I would suggest finding a position in someone's lab until then if you want to go to graduate school.

Stanford definitely takes the cake on this one. From the repeated emails from the department about not emailing them to ask whether materials had been received, to the horrible navigation on the application, to the 2 official and 1 scanned (thus THREE) transcripts required, I find myself wondering what they are spending that $125 fee on. On a brighter note, my favorite application has been the University of Washington's application. The fee is reasonable, the website is intuitive and friendly, and they -only- require scanned transcripts unless you are admitted. I thought that was very humane of them, and I wonder why more schools aren't that way.

Is it going to hurt me at all to skip optional diversity statements?

In general you would just list the courses that were actually biology courses, but with a double major that complicates things. I would suggest emailing the grad admissions coordinator and asking him/her. They are generally nice people and they have nothing to do with whether you get accepted or not, so don't worry about bothering them.

I feel like you have to halfway complete applications in order to submit your recommendations so that they can get that part done. It drives me crazy.

So I emailed a professor a couple of weeks ago to ask him about his research. I'm doing research on a very similar topic, and I haven't seen any papers from his group, so I emailed him to ask if his group was indeed working in the area, and asked if he could point me toward any papers. He responded the next morning pretty early, and suggested we talk on the phone, but I can't see to get in touch with him since them. I emailed him back that same day with my phone number and availability, but got no response. I then emailed him a week later and got an out of office auto-reply saying he would be out of office until last Saturday. I just emailed him again, and I got another out of office auto-reply saying he is out again this week. At this point I really don't want to email him again, but I don't really know what to do. I'm worried that if I can't get in contact with him he will remember me when he sees my application and think I wasn't interested in speaking with him on the phone, and I'm also worried about losing out on this excellent opportunity. Any suggestions?

I think it really depends on what area of EE you want to go into. You have a good background for some areas, and a pretty weak one for other areas. If you are interested in electromagnetics or optics, you're probably in good shape. Conversely, some other areas have layers of abstraction that you probably aren't that familiar with, I would guess.

You are more likely to be wanted by any of those other profs, but you aren't going to be as highly desired by the one guy. It's a bit of a gamble, but it makes sense in a lot of cases.

Anyone willing to take a look at my SoP? I'm willing to trade!

This question is really frustrating to me. I understand that it's really just a diversity statement, and I'm not diverse in the way that it's currently politically correct to be diverse, so I wish I could just ignore it. That said, I'm planning to discuss how my family brought me up understanding how important education is. I'll talk about how my mom teaches at a Title I (economically disadvantaged) school and how my dad valued his own education so much that he worked full time to pay for it while he attended. I'm also going to mention some of the financial hardships I had in school that caused me to have to work for a large portion of my degree. Beyond this, I don't really know what to say about it. My research topics aren't exactly relevant to improving education for minorities, so I can't go anywhere near that.

I haven't had any trouble having a social life. The thing that will make your dating life harder, at least if you are male, is your lack of a good job and lack of money. That's not -that- hard to overcome though.

? VLSI design is IC design. There isn't some cut and dried division between architects and VLSI designers, either. Knowledge of both is useful in both areas. If you only want a masters degree, your best bet is probably digital VLSI design if you want to work in this field. I definitely suggest that you talk to an advisor at your university and try to get the lay of the land a little better before going to graduate school.

I'm not a CS guy, so I can't help you, but I think you should provide more information for anyone to help you out. You've just provided a list of universities and some stats. What you need to consider to shorten your list is what areas of CS you are interested in, and which schools have professors that work in those areas.

This is kind of along the lines of what I was thinking. The purpose of asking for the last 2 years GPA is to gain insight into the student's recent academic performance, I'm assuming, so this seems appropriate.

It's a simple question, but I'm asking a bunch of future grad students, so I'm sure the answer will certainly not be!

I'll look at it. Definitely include names of professors you are interested in working with and why you think they would be a good fit. Why would someone be offended that you are a better fit with someone else? Think of your application like you are applying to a research group, not applying to a university. A good fit is what will get you into a department, so you want to make this fit as clear as possible in your SOP.

I'd say your chances are actually really good because you have reasonable expectations. I'd suggest applying to 6 or 7 schools in that range. You should get into at least one of them. Another option, if it's something you could do locally, is to do an 'executive' M.S. degree. A lot of schools offer this and admissions standards are fairly relaxed, since they make the universities tons of money. Usually your employer pays for at least a large portion of it, which is important because the tuition will be comparable to a private school even at a public school.

I don't know why they have these rankings. I've seen several of them too. I would assume that just about everybody would say Fellowship, Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant, and then Tuition only.

Are you interested in a terminal masters degree? And how do you define 'good'? I got into an M.S. program at a top 50ish school and now I'm applying to PhD programs with a GPA similar to yours (from a top 10 school), mostly due to 1 bad semester right before the end of my undergraduate. My GRE scores were also similar (790Q, 640V). Now I'm applying to top PhD programs (after having a 4.0 in grad school) and my advisor thinks I have a really good shot.

I'll take a look at it.

Thanks...this is kind of what I was thinking.

Why not just sign up to take the GRE sometime next month?

I'll see if I can explain. Circuit design, as I said, is a field where much of general research is pretty well understood. Most analog design researchers find a niche area to focus on, like communications or biomedical circuits, where the circuits have specific requirements. In either case, you are doing much the same thing, but your applications are different. As someone who has focused on biomedical circuits, I don't actually know that much about communications circuits beyond what I've learned in coursework, so I don't really have any ideas to address current problems in that area. On the other hand, they are still doing basically the same thing that I'm doing, but with a different application. Does that make sense?

I'm applying to a bunch of PhD programs in integrated circuit design, and while many of them have advisors where my project idea would be very appropriate, some of them have circuit design programs that are focused in different areas. I'd be excited and willing to work in either type of group, but my primary research focus thus far has been in one particular area, so that's naturally where my ideas for improvement are. Circuit design is an extremely well understood field, so new ideas are almost always very application focused. My question is how to approach this in my statement of purpose. I understand that it's a very good idea to include a example of a project idea that I've had, and I've done that, but it would be a completely inappropriate project with some of the potential advisors I've selected.