Hello everyone, I am currently a third year EE-engg student from India.
Haven't taken GRE yet
Here are some of my credentials till today :
1) University: Decent (not from IITs)
2) Academics : Distinction in all sems till today (so probably a very good acad) I don't know how gpa is calculated, maybe better than 3.5 / 4.0 atleast ..
3)Teaching experience - participated in IEEE student awareness programme.
4)Maybe doing an intership this semester.
No projects done yet, but curriculum requires to 2 major projects in remaining course... so will surely have 2 projects under my belt..

Now the worries ...
1) what are the branches of specialization one can take for MS program in EE ?
(i am interested in a lot of things, unfortunately .. DSP, VLSI, embedded etc .. not sure what the prospects and actual work environment for a carrier in these specialized fields.. pls tell if any more fields available (i forgot to mention .. wireless technologies) )
2) I have spent a considerable time in learning programming, CS stuff. Am passionately interested in programming etc .. Have stong logical resoning skills..
Was thinking about shifting to CS for doing MS, but have heard from friends that branch change is considerably difficult for MS (getting into top univ. is very difficult)
3) I want to get into the top universities and i believe i can get a gre score > 1450 atleast.. (i am being a bit too confident..)

Could anyone tell me which univ are top ranked for EE and overall ..
which ranking is more important.. if anyone knows which univ is especially good for a certain course please let me know ...

The top univ I know about are --
1) stanford
2) MIT
3) Berkeley
4) UMich
5) UIUC
6) Perdue
7) Princeton
8) UT- Austin

Don't know about other universities , also only heard about the above univ from friends, how do you actually do a research on these univs ?

Sorry about asking so many questions but i need to make up my mind on the course i wish to pursue, also i need to be aiming at the right univ. to have any chance of getting there ..
Basically it would help me select the right project and work in that direction..
Also how important is internship as compared to acad+gre ??
Would it be wise to compromise on acad+gre for internship ?