EE and GRE Math subject test

[kpo]

Hi,

I am an engineering student from France, and I am willing to do a PhD in Electrical Engineering starting in fall 2010. I am interested in 'applied mathematics' fields like signal processing, machine learning/statistics, optimization, etc... Because these fields have a strong mathematical component I thought I'd take the GRE math subject test (even though I know EE departments don't ask for it). I took it in April and I scored in the 83 percentile. Although the score is not very bad, I am actually not really satisfied with my score, and I think I can do better (bad circumstances made it that I could not work a lot before, and I have also screwed up a bit during the exam).

So do you think I should try to take the exam again in October? I think if I work a bit harder I might get something close to 90%... or is it not very important for EE applications?

I would appreciate if you could give me your opinion on that.

Schools I am applying for are Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, and University of Michigan.

Thank you,

[twocosmicfish]

I would not bother. I have yet to see a single EE department that accepted the Math GRE, so it would just be a line in your "other accomplishments" or SOP. Besides, an 83% competing against actual math majors is pretty good, so it should wow them about as much as you need.