Which programs to apply to (Engineering, control sys)

[xddot]

Just found these forums and really glad I did. I'm applying for Fall 09 admission to programs having something to do with control systems. And there's my problem at the moment -- I'm having a hard time figuring out *exactly* what area of research in a fairly broad field will be the best fit for me. On the advice of "Graduate Admissions Essays" by Asher, I'm trying to whittle down my list to six: 2 'reach' schools, 2 'maybe hopefully' schools, and 2 'safety' schools. But without really narrowing in on something more specific than 'control systems', it's difficult to differentiate between, say, MIT and Stanford. (Both of those would be a 'reach for me BTW ?

So here are schools that I have on my list, some with departments/programs indicated. At this point I'm just looking for any advice at all. I feel like a bit of an outsider now -- I got my bachelor's almost 10 years ago now, and while my career has been in a related domain, I don't have a lot of contact with the academic crowd..

The division of Reach/Maybe/Safety here reflects purely my own perception at the moment--so any thoughts people have on that would help too.

Reach schools:

MIT - Aero/Astro - Navigation & Control Systems

Stanford - Aero

Berkeley - ME or EECS

Caltech - CDS

Maybe schools:

UMich - Aero/EECS/Mech

CMU - Robotics Institute

Georgia Tech - Aero/EECS

WashU - ME

Harvard - ME

Safety Schools:

U of Toronto - UTIAS/ME/EE

McGill - ECE/ME

Waterloo - ECE/Mech/Systems

If you've read this far, additional data dump in case it helps: I'm Canadian (if you didn't guess), my UG doesn't provide GPA marks but from what I've been able to pull together on the net it looks like mine would be about a 3.7 equivalent. GRE scores (from last month): 800 Quant, 700 Verbal (AW results pending but I think they'll be in the 5-6 range).

[rising_star]

I would be picking based on faculty and research labs more than anything else. Let that guide you.