ISEngineer

Honestly retake the GRE. Your profil is great but your GRE could hurt you. Your GPA would be sufficient to try it for Cal, Stanford, etc as well.

I think it is worth applying to the other schools as well as I believe their job placement would be better. GRE is fine, GPA as well, I would focus more on leadership rec letters. You don't apply for a phd but for a professional mangement program. Research does not make your app any stronger. Your SOP should state clearly why you need manangent skills for your future career (consulting, banking are typical careers of MEM candidates)

I can recommend you going to LinkedIn. I you go to detailed search you can look for candidates with your background and search if any of those ended up in petroleum engineering for grad school! I guess this should be the most reliable database.

Berkeley offers concurrent enrollment classes through Berkeley extension. Everyone can enroll and you attend the same classes as all Berkeley students and get the same grading. It's even cheaper than the normal course fees for Berkeley students so that might be a very good option. Berkeley grad classes are very easy on grading in comparison to their undergrad classes, so you should def consider grad classes (200 and above in the course list) if you wanna boost your gpa. If you start taking classes you might also get involved in research projects. Cal is a research powerhouse, so there a plenty of possibilities. A 3.0 GPA is a bit on the lower site so far but as your ultimate goal is a phd there a chances to still get into a top program. Professors value research experience in their field more than anything else, so this is what you should focus on. Work experience might help for a business phd but is not required for most other PhDs. If I were you I would take some Berkeley extension claseses in the field you want to do your phd to show your academic excellence and get involved in as much research as possible. After two years of research you should be a very strong candidate. Don't waste your money on a masters if your goal is a phd.

If you prevent him you even make it appear more interesting.I have the feeling parents become too often helicopter parents nowadays. And as soon as the kids go to college, they do all the forbidden things at once and end up in the hospital.

Can't you contact potential advisors in the same school but in other departments and transfer smoothly over. I actually saw one PhD transferring from Operations Research to Computer Science as his interest changed. I mean especially in academics you must be passionate about your topic so I would say professors understand that. They rather have a very famous and strong scientist they know in a neighbors department than having an average performer in their own rows.

that font is not very readable :-)

Don't worry too much about that GPA, I saw more than one here at grad cafe with your GPA getting in in pretty decent places. You should do well on your GRE though. 25k for a masters sounds pretty tough, even in state schools. Funding is almost non existent. I was next to other schools accepted last year to the University of Washington and I know from that, that they offer Research Assistantships to Master applicants as well. I didn't attend finally so I cannot say too much about it and I have no idea if they offer anything in your field but I wanted to mentiion that funding sometimes exists :-)

In my opinion the only thing which really matters to the immigration officers is immigration. I guess it is more likely that they see not enough binding to your country. One case could be that you move to the States, marry, and then your parents can move as well (which I saw actually quite often during my times in the US). I know this is probably not the case in your situation but they deal with overall statistics. I would go to an specialized lawyer and seek advice they know probably better what your chances are for reapplying. As far as I know you will have to go to the same embassy so as long as your circumstances don't change you won't get a visa. Another idea is to write your school and ask for help.

I would say Germany is top notch in Engineering and equal to any US top school. I wouldn't say the same for business, but if you look at the top engineering firms in the world, you rather find them in Germany than in the US: BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, Siemens, Airbus, etc. Again, it would be different for computer science, nobody beats the US there currently. Shanghai ranking and QS focus on research. German universities publish often still in German, which means they have great output, but the English speaking countries don't benefit from it and the rankings don't value it. You also should consider that education in Germany is free, whereas you would have to pay quite a lot of money in the US. Americans don't usually do graduate degrees in engineering. You will mainly find international students who have to pay full tuition and who are the cash cows for their undergraduate education. Acceptance rate is quite high (even Stanford has around 30% in comparison to 10% in undergrad). But if you want to work in the US a graduate degree from a US institution is a good choice. But you should also consider that the job perspectives in Germany are brilliant, whereas the US economy currently really struggles.

And giving you some advise concerning your PhD. I would go with UCLA, I am sure the program will be challenging and the professors will support you enough to do great research. You applied there, so at one point of your life, you must have actually thought that you might wanna go there. The problem is that wishes and directions in life often change as soon as you start a new segment of your life. You will never know, if it is actually the right thing until you do it and you will sometimes start loving something you never thought before you will ever love. You can not plan ahead too much, and it is good that life have unexpected things to discover. If it is really not the right thing, you will have figured that out after one year and you always could change the program. It sounds the better option to me than doing nothing than reapplying for one year.

I agree with the last poster, USC is not in the nicest area. You won"t enjoy the location at all. But UCLA is next to Bel Air, what better region could you expect. Anyhow the car thing is kinda true, you will enjoy the city much more if you have one, whereas you don't really need one in other West Coast cities like San Francisco/Berkeley, San Diego or Seattle.

LSE all the way. Your network will be much stronger.

I guess the most important thing you have to figure out, whether or not you can work in Finland or the European Union after you get a degree (Visa process etc.). I am from Europe, and I have to say, I did not hear of that school either. I agree with KodeSeeker, USC is a very fine institution and gives you high class private school education and lots of research opportunity. I guess just a few schools in Europe will be able to compete with USC or be better (Cambridge, Oxford, Polytechnique, ParisTech, TU Munich, Imperial College, UCL). I you want to go to Scandinavia and have good job possibilities I would recommend KTH.

Does it make a financial difference, which school you attend? Is one program shorter/longer than the other? What are your job prospects? A few more information would be needed to give a recommendation. What I would say already, is that Cornell will just have an advantage when you work outside Canada. Normally the top national universities are always equal to the top international universities within the country. This changes as soon as you plan an international career.