Grad School?

[PSUGrad11]

I'm graduating this December at Penn State in Electrical Engineering and I'm considering graduate school for next fall of 2012. My gpa is a 3.59. I have not taken my GREs, but I will be taking them soon. I expect to score in the high 700s for quantitative, around the 600 range for verbal and aiming for a 4 or 5 in the writing section. I'm a US citizen. I will have 3 summer long internships after this summer and another 7 month co-op for work experience all with fortune 500 companies. I don't really have much research experience, but I am in the midst of obtaining some experience my last semester under a professor. My LORs will most likely be from two previous employers and a professor. I'm thinking about the following schools for a MS degree. I'm not interested in a PhD. So my question is, do you think it is worthwhile to obtain a MS degree if you don't plan on getting a PhD? And what are my chances of getting admitted to the following schools? Should I shoot lower, higher or is this about the right range based on my predicted stats?

MS EE

USC

UCLA

UCSD

UCSB

WashU

Ohio St

Michigan

Penn St

Duke

[HassE]

On 5/14/2011 at 5:58 PM, PSUGrad11 said:

I'm graduating this December at Penn State in Electrical Engineering and I'm considering graduate school for next fall of 2012. My gpa is a 3.59. I have not taken my GREs, but I will be taking them soon. I expect to score in the high 700s for quantitative, around the 600 range for verbal and aiming for a 4 or 5 in the writing section. I'm a US citizen. I will have 3 summer long internships after this summer and another 7 month co-op for work experience all with fortune 500 companies. I don't really have much research experience, but I am in the midst of obtaining some experience my last semester under a professor. My LORs will most likely be from two previous employers and a professor. I'm thinking about the following schools for a MS degree. I'm not interested in a PhD. So my question is, do you think it is worthwhile to obtain a MS degree if you don't plan on getting a PhD? And what are my chances of getting admitted to the following schools? Should I shoot lower, higher or is this about the right range based on my predicted stats?

MS EE

USC

UCLA

UCSD

UCSB

WashU

Ohio St

Michigan

Penn St

Duke

according to one of my professions, a MS degree will get you 50% higher salary compared to just a BS degree, so yes i fully recommend getting the MS degree as soon as possible.

And im about 99% positive you will get into all of the schools mentioned, just most likely no funding. Thats the problem. If your just going for an MSEE degree and don't care about funding, you can EASILY shoot higher, Stanford, Berkeley, Gtech, MIT MIGHT be a reach, but it might be worth it for you to apply.

Now if your looking for funding, thats another story.

[PSUGrad11]

according to one of my professions, a MS degree will get you 50% higher salary compared to just a BS degree, so yes i fully recommend getting the MS degree as soon as possible.

And im about 99% positive you will get into all of the schools mentioned, just most likely no funding. Thats the problem. If your just going for an MSEE degree and don't care about funding, you can EASILY shoot higher, Stanford, Berkeley, Gtech, MIT MIGHT be a reach, but it might be worth it for you to apply.

Now if your looking for funding, thats another story.

Thank you for your response. My first immediate thoughts were that I have a high probability of getting into these schools, but as you said I figured my application most likely would not receive any awards. If you think I would most likely not get funding, should I try to get a full time employment first to try to pay for it or try to take out some loans and offset the cost later on? Or do you think I should I apply to a lower ranked school to try to get funding? For example, I actually live in NJ so should I consider Rutgers due to in state tuition and better chance of funding or go for a school for a higher reputation name and try to figure out a way to pay for it? I really have no source of income after graduation and I don't expect my parents to support me after undergraduate education.

[p4lm0r3]

Where you go depends a lot on what your goals are. If you wanted to go into academia(need a PhD) or research than I think going to a big name school is important. If that is not your goal then from what I have heard, it does not matter quite as much where you go. Just go to a place that has a strong degree program, but not necessarily tops.

** I am also an undergrad, so this is more regurgitated information than personal experience.

[wifey99999999]

Thank you for your response. My first immediate thoughts were that I have a high probability of getting into these schools, but as you said I figured my application most likely would not receive any awards. If you think I would most likely not get funding, should I try to get a full time employment first to try to pay for it or try to take out some loans and offset the cost later on? Or do you think I should I apply to a lower ranked school to try to get funding? For example, I actually live in NJ so should I consider Rutgers due to in state tuition and better chance of funding or go for a school for a higher reputation name and try to figure out a way to pay for it? I really have no source of income after graduation and I don't expect my parents to support me after undergraduate education.

I agree with what Hasseye said. You probably would get admitted into some of the better schools (with no funding as most money is allocated to PhD students). For masters application, if you have high GPA, good LOR (doesn't have to great unless you apply for PhD), great GRE scores, you should be able to get into most top programs.

But if funding is problem, I'd suggest you to work for a big company first as most big companies offer 100% tuition reimbursement for their employees, but you would have to do the degree part time and work full time.

[renegade]

WashU has an excellent engineering program with some real strengths in areas such as biomedical engineering. They are very well ranked, especially in the NRC rankings.

[PSUGrad11]

On 6/21/2011 at 4:31 PM, renegade said:

WashU has an excellent engineering program with some real strengths in areas such as biomedical engineering. They are very well ranked, especially in the NRC rankings.

I was wondering how much a school's name matters when receiving a masters? I'm debating whether doing a degree part time while working full time if the company offer tuition reimbursement is worth the stress. I just feel that it will be very difficult to balance academics outside a full time technical job. This also limits your options in only attending local school to your employment location. I'm really interested in control systems and I want to get a higher level education. As stated previously, I have no real motivation to obtain a PhD so that reduces my chances significantly to receive any funding for a masters. I still want to apply to my dream schools, but how can I even attend if there is no funding?