Electrical Engineering vs. Materials Engineering

[Tcmgrad]

I recently finished my Engineering undergraduate from a Canadian University in an interdisciplinary program that encompassed topics in Electrical Engineering and Materials Engineering. I have a 3.7 GPA on the American scale and I haven't written my GRE's yet but on average the practice tests show a Ver:157, Quant:159 and I'm hoping to improve it to Ver:158, Quant:162+ in the next two weeks before the test. 

 

I plan to apply to Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, U Texas-Austin, Cornell and maybe Stanford (skeptical of my chances of getting in) in the states but I can't seem to decide whether I want to apply for Materials or Electrical Engineering programs. My undergrad had a bit of both but most of my research experience is mostly in Materials ( two 4 month research co-ops). But I am a lot more interested in pursuing graduate school in Electrical Engineering, particularly in VLSI, IC design or Nanoelectronic devices design/fabrication.  I have take EE courses in these areas (except IC design) and my capstone project was related to micro-fabrication of solar cells which falls under both EE as well as Materials Eng. I also have industry level co-op experience with PCB validation which falls under EE but is not really research related. All of this half-assing was basically because I was  keen on Materials Engineering early on, but after seeing the job market this year, I feel Ill be much better off with an EE masters. 

 

So far, I have 4 professors/bosses willing to provide me with a recommendation letter, two of which are in the materials/chemical industry, and the other two who are in EE (they specialize in VLSI and Device fab which is what I want to do). I am confident that my Materials related references will be more personalized, while the EE ones are most likely to be more generic ( professors from classes I had good grades in.. but I havent had much personal interaction with them). 

 

Do you think I should apply to Materials Engineering which I have a better portfolio for or EE which Im more interested in? Also,  I am not really familiar with acceptance numbers to most of these universities and cant seem to find them. Do you guys have an idea of whether I am roughly in the ballpark for being accepted into these universities or should I be aiming lower? Sorry, I know this is very confusing and thats why I've been debating this in my head for a couple of month now. 

Edited October 21, 2014 by Tcmgrad