<p>I just graduated from Northwestern and will do an MSE PhD at MIT next year. I spent a summer at MIT, a professor on the MSE admissions board said that GRE is a checkbox, a bar you must pass. This bar is 800 (basically no exceptions) on the math, and at least 500 on the verbal, ideally 600. UG-GPA should be about 3.7-3.9 as well. </p>
<p>I know that Northwestern’s average graduate admissions GPA was 3.6, with similar GRE scores. </p>
<p>I had friends get into Cornell with ~3.7s, UCSB with 3.5s, Caltech with 3.6, UCLA with ~3.2. </p>
<p>FYI I had a ~3.6 UG-GPA, 3.8 MSE GPA, 800 Math, 630 Verbal, 4.0 Writing.
I also had 4 publications (all first author, 1 JACS, 1 PRL, not all submitted), three conference presentations, and several research awards. I’m pretty sure I had a super low GPA, and the only thing that saved me was my prolific research.</p>