Posting on behalf of My SO because He needs advice from knowledgeable people...
My SO had great luck in the past month. He applied to the Spring semester in 2011 at a top 10 engineering school and was accepted for a one year MSME program.
However, he also has interests in Robotics or even product development/design. He's been thinking that he'd like to apply to other schools as well that are not ME, since he already has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Robotics. His gpa was a 3.1, not too stellar, but test scores were excellent, excluding verbal--800Q, 670V, 3.5 AW. He also went to the same institution during undergrad, so his graduate professors are the same ones who wrote his recommendations. However, he has some black marks on his record--he hasn't been able to find a job since graduating in 2007 and just started working as an engineer for a small company in the past few months. He wants to go to school so that he can get back into the job network and find something in his area of study, hopefully at a much larger company. Due to anxiety issues/stress he never did an internship or any research in undergrad, except for traditional robotics or engineering projects as part of classwork.
Long story short--my advice was that he talk to some of his former professors who wrote him recs--ask them:
a.) If they think it would be possible for him to do a combined degree?
b.) If they think his professional interests might be better suited for another program?
or contact the dept and ask
c.) If he can defer his acceptance to a later date?
allowing him to apply to other schools that have start dates for programs in the Fall.
This is probably a weird and rambling post, but if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd like to hear it. I think his stats are good, then again I'm not an engineer. I also want to know if my advice is out of the ballpark--I know that it's important he makes these types of decisions for himself but I wish I could be a better anchor in his uncertainty.
However, he also has interests in Robotics or even product development/design. He's been thinking that he'd like to apply to other schools as well that are not ME, since he already has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Robotics. His gpa was a 3.1, not too stellar, but test scores were excellent, excluding verbal--800Q, 670V, 3.5 AW. He also went to the same institution during undergrad, so his graduate professors are the same ones who wrote his recommendations. However, he has some black marks on his record--he hasn't been able to find a job since graduating in 2007 and just started working as an engineer for a small company in the past few months. He wants to go to school so that he can get back into the job network and find something in his area of study, hopefully at a much larger company. Due to anxiety issues/stress he never did an internship or any research in undergrad, except for traditional robotics or engineering projects as part of classwork.
Long story short--my advice was that he talk to some of his former professors who wrote him recs--ask them:
a.) If they think it would be possible for him to do a combined degree?
b.) If they think his professional interests might be better suited for another program?
or contact the dept and ask
c.) If he can defer his acceptance to a later date?
allowing him to apply to other schools that have start dates for programs in the Fall.
This is probably a weird and rambling post, but if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd like to hear it. I think his stats are good, then again I'm not an engineer. I also want to know if my advice is out of the ballpark--I know that it's important he makes these types of decisions for himself but I wish I could be a better anchor in his uncertainty.