How to get in MIT/Stanford/Berkeley Engineering?

GShine_1989
Sun, 11 Jul 2010 01:29:58 +0000

What engineering field? Your numerical stats are higher than those of typical admits (less so for EE and CS, which are more competitive). If this is for a terminal MS, check if the department at MIT/Stanford/UCB has such a program. If it doesn’t (i.e. everyone is admitted with the expectation of going on to PhD), then don’t mention that you intend to leave after an MS because that’s a ticket to rejection. While such programs don’t explicitly bar terminal MS students, they’re really only interested in admitting those that are going to be performing research for the university for years.

The weight of an MBA prof letter will depend on whether you’ll be applying for terminal MS or not. PhD-track admissions value letters of recommendation from professors you’ve done research with above everything else by a large margin. You would not be competitive for them without at least one such letter. Terminal MS admissions are more amenable to non-engineering, non-professor, and non-research letters. Academic assessments are more valuable than character assessments, so limit letters from industry as much as possible unless you worked in R&D.