Regarding UIUC , CMU EE program

[gtgblows]

I graduated from Georgia Tech undergraduate last year and applied to Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, UIUC, and Georgia Tech.

I believed I had a legitimate shot at Stanford and Berkeley beside my GPA (since GPA is really gimped in Georgia Tech)

560 Verbal / 780 Quantitative / 4.0 Writing

Overall GPA: 3.4 (This is high honor from Georgia Tech)

Major GPA: 3.6

Got acceptance letter from UIUC, CMU, Georgia Tech master program but my dream schools are Stanford and Berkeley. I wonder if my recommendation letters / SOP were bad or graduate school admission just see GPA digits.....

Anyway, what I would like to know is that I know CMU is great in computer science area but does that great education in CS reflects on electrical engineer not just computer engineer program? Concentration that I am going for are Telecommunication and RF engineer (Heavily on RF wireless communication side).

I don't know much about UIUC but I know by ranking, Electrical Engineer is higher in UIUC than Georgia Tech. I will go visit UIUC this month to see if this school is for me but I would like to know from someone who goes to UIUC EE program.

Also, anyone changed his/her master program from one school to another while in master program? I am considering to retake my GRE and get my verbal above 600 to increase my chance of getting into other schools.

[cash money vagrant]

I am a senior in ECE at UIUC. The program itself is highly respected in academic and industrial circles. Students here end up with jobs with companies such as Qualcomm, Google and Microsoft (which all recruit extensively here) and getting into graduate programs at Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, etc.

Although I am not a grad student here, I have done undergraduate research. The graduate students in ECE here are very bright and hail from the best ECE programs around the world.

I would say ECE at UIUC gets a good reputation because (1) it is rigorous and (2) students for the most part have good interaction with faculty, be it in classes or research. I should note, however, that my scope is limited to the communications/signal processing area.