Which canadian university for low cgpa?

Can a student with a low CGPA in the range of 6.7 to 7.2 in electronics and instrumentation even dream of getting into a good university in the US for an MS in power electronics or signal processing?

• If yes then how should one go about building an appropriate profile for getting into Rice univ,UCB,UCLA and others? Background:BITS PILANI student 2nd year with a cgpa of 7 and atmost i think i can take it to 7.2 and i have managed to get a SOP related to power elctronics.

• Answer:

  To get a good MS admit, you first need to know how you get an admit. The admission committees take the following factors into account: 1) Academics - CGPA, courses taken, grade in courses relevant to your desired major 2) GRE Score - Generally a score >320 is good enough for most universities, although a higher score never hurts anyone. So keep your target as 340, it is achievable. Further, do not take your AWA lightly. Try to get 4+ out of 6 in that. 3) Statement of Purpose - The members of admission committee do not know you, and your Statement of Purpose is the only way you can have them know about your research interests and passion. Now you will get a lot of advice on how to go about writing it, but I suggest you read these three answers: I can't explain it better than that! 3) Projects - When going for Master's, it is a given that you will be involved in research. And if you have read the links I gave above, you need legitimate material to write in your Statement. The work you do in your project that you have gotten in Power Electronics will definitely help you. Talk to your guide about further scope in the project, and work on it. If you get good results, submit it in a conference or a paper presentation event. That will give you exposure to other people working in the same field, and you will get more ideas. Try to do atleast 2-3 projects in the fields of your interest by the time you apply for MS. They maybe under faculty, or independent. 4) Recommendation - Most universities ask for 3 letters of recommendation from your faculty during application. Keep good relations with the professors. It is generally seen that more personally a professor knows you, the better recos you get from them. Your project guides can give you good recos as you will be working under them for about 6 months, so work diligently on your projects. You can also ask for reco from the professor who is teaching Power Electronics/Digital Signal Processing as those are the fields you want to go ahead with. Make sure your grade is good in their courses though, so that they can truthfully mention that you are among top 5% students in the batch! You can get a reco from your PS guides too, if you work well and build a rapport with them. Being a TA/PA in a course will also get you a good reco, highlighting your interest and knowledge and teaching ability for the topic. So even if your CGPA is a bit low, the other points, if brilliant, will offset it. However, I would like to mention another point here. The universities that you have listed here, UCLA, UCB, etc are places where people with very amazing profiles find it difficult to get an admit. I suggest that you go through websites of various universities, and find out places where there is good research opportunity in the field of your interest. There are a lot of very good universities apart from these as well, and you might be surprised at how good they actually are. Do a thorough research before you apply. Talk to your seniors who have been to any of these universities for feedback and to decide. I will tell you another way too. When you go through websites of these universities, and you find a professor whose work interests you, send him a mail telling him about your interests and discussing his work. Two things might happen: You may get to work on a good project with him, something that will boost your profile a great deal. You may get a summer internship with him, further boost to your profile. So you should start doing that now to get an intern after your 3rd year! It may increase your chances to get admitted to that university, as people on admission committees are professors. So either this professor maybe on the committee, or he may mention your name to a colleague of his who is on the committee (kind of internal recommendation) or you can get a letter of reco from him, and seeing a letter from their colleague, the admission committee may consider your application more seriously. That's almost everything I can think of right now. All the best man :) Thanks for the A2A.