Thread: Fall 2013 | MS| ECE [Embedded] | G.R.E 302| TOEFL 80|BTECH - VTU(KARNATAKA)

Well! Even I'm from VTU. Your academics are really low dont think I'm discouraging you. You can show that you are capable for graduate studies through your GRE , presentations or publications. you have decent GRE, beter retake TOEFL. If you want to make your profile looks very good then do some publications and I would advice you to retake GRE also and try to get around 315 or 320 that will really make you profile look lot richer than what it is now. Here is my honest assesment of univ's for your profile.

UTD- Ambitious
SUNY Buffalo- Ambitious
IIT Chicago- Moderate
NYU Poly- moderate
Syracuse - Ambitious
Texas Arlington - moderate
San jose- safe
univ of cincinatti - ambitious
stevens - safe
NJIT - moderate

Good luck!!!

University of Texas-Dallas - mod/amb
University of Texas-Arlington - mod/safe
Case Western Reserve University - mod
Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey amb
TAMU - really?
Drexel University - amb
New Jersey Institute of Tecnology - amb/mod
University of Houston - amb
SUNY Binghamton - mod
San Jose State University - needs min 312 in GRE
NYU Polytechnic - amb
Syracuse University - amb
University Of Cincinnati - amb
CSU Fresno - mod
CSU Los Angeles - amb
University of Pittsburgh - amb
IIT Chicago amb/mod
Stevens Institute of Technology - mod
Rochester Institute of Technology - amb
SUNY Buffalo - amb

In your case the academic bg is too poor, right from 10th to your undergrads, so even if you score 10-15 more after retaking GRE, it will hardly matter. Do you know most of the colleges have rigid undergrad GPA requirement?

Thanks arunvl for your feedback,I guess a big blow is my acads ..so still want to try and sorry I forgot to mention the work ex,I don't know how much it would help on my profile

Hi pHacidic thanks for your reply,so you mean to say that even a retake of GRE won't help?,I am sorry I forgot to mention my work ex ,so please reevaluate my profile ...thanks

Experience would really help specifically if you hv a related experience it would add value to your profile. share your work experience.

Well getting to your first question,

lets take an example of a college that demands foll.

1.GRE - compulsory - no min. score requirement
2. GPA - min. 3.2/4.0
3. TOEFL - min 80 in iBT

Now, i am not sure what is your GPA, but your TOEFL is on the boundary line, which is safe.
The funda here is that even if you score 340/340 in GRE, its useless if your GPA turns out to be 2.5

There are colleges that specify in their website that there are no strict requirements, then you may apply assuming that other factors might compensate for your acads, but trust me most of the reputed colleges are a little bit stringent when it comes to min GPA requirements.

No hard feelings i am just trying to explain you the scenario, so apply only to colleges where there is no such strict requirement.


As far as your second question is concerned having a 10 year exp in Healthcare sector hardly supports a graduate application for Wireless communication. So i can't comment until i know your proper work experience.

Hello Arunvl & pHacidic the work ex comprises of : Working with the design team for the hardware/software development,wrote drivers for various Microcontrollers(8,16,32 bit),Linux kernel programming,worked on a RTOS project,experience in I2C,SPI,RS232/422,Developed frontend in VC++ and VB.

..and the work ex that I have is about Embedded systems.I have 1yr non-IT workex but that I am not considering as part of my resume and hence I am taking into account that is applicable for MS.

Also I would like to clarify the GPA part,this isn't followed in my University - VTU,but I am unsure about the conversion logic and hence how this would be taken since different schools have different ways of implementing the GPA.In my case if I take the most general formula for GPA then it would be (58*4)/100 = 2.32/4.00.Is this how the universities would calculate or any other method

I referred Grade (education) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and on a scale of 10 mine would be 6-5.1(C+)- good.If this is mapped to 4.0 scaled definitely it would be as per the above formula.

So a GPA of 2.32/4.00 is of no good I do understand but any other means to overcome this ?? Are there any colleges in the list which are good and yet may not be that stringent on the matter of GPA?....Thanks for your feedback

You told some non-IT work experience you are not going to consider in resume. Whether it is related to the course you are applying or not, work exp ll always be helpful for your graduate studies in sm or the other way pls do mention it in resume or in SOP or in both.
Lets cm to point about retaking GRE I would honsetly advice you to do that. Take your time and score well this will really help. This time there is an option in GRE that you can report any test score you would like so that univ's will nt cm 2 knw hw mny attempts you hv taken. There are many good univ's which considers GRE more than academics.
My conclusion is forget about your GPA you cant do anything about ur GPA now, the oly thing you can do is making your profile look richer with your good GRE, resume, SOP (include wrk experience) etc..
Good luck dude!!!