Profile - MS in EE from International Student

[GCO_grad]

Hi, 

I study Electrical Engineering at a top 10 university in Latin America and will graduate in the Spring of 2018. I'll apply for the graduate programs starting on the Fall of 2018, therefore I still have, roughly, 1.5 years to improve my profile. My ultimate goal is to enter a PhD program in EE for Communications/Information Theory at a top university in the US, but since I'm an international student, I'm thinking on applying for a MS first in the US or Canada and then for the PhD program. My profile is:

- GPA: 4.84/5.00 (highest in my class).

- TOEFL: scored 110 without studying, so I think I can score around 114 on my next try.

- GRE: no score yet, but I hope to get a high score.

- Research experience: 1 year on image processing (no publications, but presented the results inside my university department at a graduate-level workshop)

                                      Ongoing research on smart grid communications (1 first author conference publication so far, but I expect at least 1 more conference publication in the future). This research project is going to last one more year and part of it will be done at a TU in Germany (1 month internship next winter).

                                      Will write a bachelor's thesis on my final year, which may result in publications too.

- Other experience: I've been a teaching assistant for 5 different courses, so far, and now I'm a teaching assistant for a communications course and will start developing new study materials with the professor, such as simulations, etc.

                                I've done an exchange program in Singapore. I took 2 courses during the summer at NTU (Nanyang Technological University) and did well on them.

 

How's my profile? To which MS/PhD programs should I apply? Is it too unrealistic to aim for Stanford MSEE, University of Toronto masters, Georgia Tech masters, Harvard PhD, Princeton PhD, MIT PhD, CMU MS, etc.? What can I do to improve my profile?

                                

[The Dark knight]

Why take the TOEFL again? 110 is good for any university. TOEFL score is just to show the university that you can speak, write, read, and comprehend English lectures, conversations, and passages. Beyond that TOEFL score is useless. Do not take TOEFL again. Concentrate on the GRE and score in the 90th percentile on both sections of the test.