EE4life

Go ahead and apply to top 10 institutions with a few backups. Your GRE quant is very good compared to other domestic applicants. Since you went to an accredited US college 20 additional points on the GRE quant won't make much of a difference for you (Note: Internationals obsess on those few extra points to get an edge over fellow internationals. Not worth it for domestic applicants). Focus more on compiling an excellent well-rounded application. I think your credentials make you very competitive for top institutions.

No! Not with that verbal score. 200 is the minimum possible score and a 280 makes you seem illiterate in English (reading and writing) to admissions commitee.

Go to ASU. It has a much better rep than UMASS in VLSI. Also, the local industry connections are much better, e.g. Texas Instruments, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon. Research funding is more abundant there too. Disregard the USNEWS rankings of ASU. It is considered an excellent school for EE by many. UMASS is a good school for engineering but not as highly regarded as ASU.

Hi William, Don't listen to the people in this forum. THEY ARE ALL INTERNATIONAL APPLICANTS. The admission standards for these people are much higher because they are all competing with other international applicants and not domestic students. I'm a Ph.D. candidate at a top school (electrical engineering) and one of my faculty thesis commitee members, who also serves on the admission committee, told me that schools are generally aware that certain countries, like India, have students that do nothing but study for the GRE months at a time. As a consequence schools generally expect their scores to be much higher than domestic applicants that do not obsess over the GRE and on average only take it once with about 2 weeks prep. I am assuming from your name , William Benn, that your are a U.S.A. domestic applicant. Again do not take advice about admission criteria from international applicants. Their admissions process is seperate from domestic students. In short, admission commitees have quotas for international admits and treat them seperate from domestic admits. That being said, you do not have to get 750+ to get into a top 10 school but generally anything less than 700 is a sore spot on your application. In your case I would retake the GRE but DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT obsess about scoring 750+ or a perfect 800. In reality schools don't care about GRE for domestic applicants. Case in point, MIT EE doesn't even ask for GRE scores. What does that tell you? It's all about research experience, publications,etc.. P.S. and to all you international applicants please ask if the person you are giving advice to is domestic or international. Many of you are misinformed about admission criteria/process for domestic versus international