Looking for grad schools

[bobsmith1492]

I'm starting to look into grad school. I'm going to be graduating about a year from now (Aug. '07) with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from a state school.

From what I've heard so far, I need to look for schools that are doing research in areas I'm interested in. I'm looking at high-tier schools (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, U of M) mainly because they're the first places that come to mind, but sure I really just need to find the place that's the "right fit."

Anyway, I'm interested in power electronics, especially audio amplfiers and power supplies/converters, but I'm not too particularly set on one topic as of now.

If anyone has ideas of places to look at and why (particular research or professors/researchers you know), please let me know or point me to a good resource.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Woot, just took the GREs... see last post.

Current list of schools: MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, UofM(ichigan), Purdue, and UofColorado

 

[krotchy]

If your into Power Electronics, look into the University of Colorado. Two professors there (Dragan Maksimovic and Robert Erikson) literally wrote the book on power electronics. They ave both designed a few of the common switching converters you see (Boost Squared), and are leading the way into research into Resonant and Soft Switching techniques.

Their textbook, Fundamentals of Power Electronics is used as a field guide by alot of engineers out in the real world. I took Intro to Power Theory and it was a really in depth class. I tried Resonant and Soft Switching Techniques and it wasnt my taste, but it was a very in depth class. Most of the notes for the class were hand written or based off of journal publications, since the field is so new.

 

[Special K]

I go to U of M as an EE grad student, although my area is VLSI. If you have any specific questions, feel free to post them or pm me.

 

[djhuber82]

I'm an EE grad at UCLA. The big names here are in RF and analog IC design. I don't know any good power programs off the top of my head, but I would advise you to search the last couple years of ISSCC and JSSCC for Class D amps, DC-DC converters, etc to see what schools are publishing work in that area.

 

[asearchforreason]

Well like you said, it is very important to look at what research progams different schools have to offer. I started looking at the US News list schools and eventually realized that half of the schools on there have no electromagnetics program whatsoever. I don't know much about power electronics, so I can't help with specific schools. I am in EM at Ohio State for the time being so I can try to answer any questions you might have.

 

[Jaepheth]

I think we have a good EE department here at Texas A&M

 

[darthsidious]

I'm an undergrad at MIT, so my opinion might not necessarily be accurate.

From what I know, if you're interested in power electronics, there's really only one professor at MIT who's fully dedicated to power electronics reaserch, and his area of expertise is high frequency switching converters. But he's really good, and a great teacher to boot (I've taken a grad level power electronics class under him)

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: asearchforreason
Well like you said, it is very important to look at what research progams different schools have to offer. I started looking at the US News list schools and eventually realized that half of the schools on there have no electromagnetics program whatsoever. I don't know much about power electronics, so I can't help with specific schools. I am in EM at Ohio State for the time being so I can try to answer any questions you might have.

Not many universities have pure EM programs. They are usually part of the general antennas, microwave, or whatever research program requires the application of EM. Exceptions that come to mind are MIT and UIUC. At UIUC, we have a computational electromagnetics center which I am working in. MIT's program I believe is a throwback from when it was heading up the radar research from the second world war.

UIUC has a power engineering program. If you are going to consider Michigan you should definitely look at Illinois as well. Personally I would put Illinois ahead of Michigan, and of course I am thoroughly unbiased in that regard. Georgia Tech I believe has the largest EE graduate department in the country so they would be worth looking at too.

 

[asearchforreason]

Well I may be coming to UIUC for my PhD in Fall 2007 so I might run into you. There are a few other schools with comprehensive EM programs, Ohio State and Michigan come to mind. It seems like most of the California schools are only doing plasmas and other "sexy" applications these days.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: asearchforreason
Well I may be coming to UIUC for my PhD in Fall 2007 so I might run into you. There are a few other schools with comprehensive EM programs, Ohio State and Michigan come to mind. It seems like most of the California schools are only doing plasmas and other "sexy" applications these days.

Yeah, I was kinda surprised that Stanford did not seem to have a dedicated EM group in my initial lookover of their program. I'm not too sure what is up at Michigan, but I do know that one of our profs went up there, Professor Michielssen. He did his graduate work at UIUC and stayed on as a prof. UIUC has a lot of history with EM as it was a major (and I guess still is) antenna research center. The log periodic antenna that is your classic rooftop TV antenna was developed here for example. So there is still active research with antennas and computational electromagnetics. My group under Professor Chew is doing method of moments code for the large part. Another, under Professor Jin, I think mainly does FEM. Professor Schutt-Aine I think does CEM work with integrated circuits, for applications in layout programs like Cadence. So most of the computational work is centered around Maxwellian electromagnetics. There are other profs that are doing optics that would rely more on the quantum electromagnetic model but I have no idea what they are doing specifically.

 

[wwswimming]

i have an undergrad engineering degree from Stanford. my experience there was that, it's the people you meet & learn from that make a difference. maybe i've had the chance to watch about 10 really gifted physicist/artist/engineers, during about 25 years in Silicon Valley. 2 of them went to Stanford. i mention art because one of the guys was in the art school but was a better engineer than a lot of the engineers.

in high school, i applied to U. of Colorado as a last thought. if i had to do it again, i think i might choose U. of Co., yep, for the skiing.

as a grad, i guess though, having fun is not the goal.

i think it helps to meet the profs & find some profs that are super-patient in areas that you're interested in, patient for answering your 8 million questions that is.

one other consideration is - infrastructure. at Stanford, brin & page used up 1/2 of the school's bandwidth when they were developing Google. at no charge, except for paying their tuition.

so, a school that has lots of machine shops, internet bandwidth, vacuum facilities, semiconductor facilities, toxic waste handling facilities - high-tech infrastructure - well, that's something to look for.

 

[Farmer]

Don't forget Cal Tech.

As for bandwidth, there simply is no competing with MIT.

 

[Fox5]

What's U of M? UMass or UMich?
Oh, do grad schools have a foreign language requirement to get accepted?

 

[bobsmith1492]

University of Michigan (from everything I hear it's a good grad school).

Why is bandwidth so important?? I mean, I go to a big, but relatively little-know state school (Grand Valley), and the internet is plenty fast for anything I do; I'm not into downloading or anything, and I don't see how I would need it in grad school.

One thing I've heard several times now is to get to know/know about some of the professors in your area of interest. How might I go about that, seeing as I can't exactly travel to Massachusetts or Colorada or California any time soon?

Krotchy: Do you know how long these professors have been around and if they're still active in research or if they're old geezers now, ready to retire?

darthsidious: Do you know any grad students at MIT? Do they seem to like the program there or have any specific complaints about it? What is that professors's name, and do you happen to know if he might be looking for people to help in his research over the next few years?

 

[Fox5]

Sounds to me like the bandwidth is important if you're doing a project that involves networks, or if you want to beta test it online or something. If you want to do E&M, I don't think the networks (at least internet) will be that important.

 

[soccerballtux]

Georgia Tech FTW.

 

[Rumpltzer]

I would suggest looking for a professor rather than simply looking for a school. That is, look through the last two or three years of relevant IEEE journals and conference proceedings and see who's publishing out of the universities.

 

[imported_Lucent]

 

[Farmer]

I agree with Rumpltzer: the professors go over your app, and if you are admitted, you will be working under that professor more or less.

 

[bobsmith1492]

That's what I keep hearing. The problem is, how can I get to know a professor at a school several hundred miles away?

I'm looking through some abstracts, but there are so many projects, professors, and schools, I don't really know where to start...

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
That's what I keep hearing. The problem is, how can I get to know a professor at a school several hundred miles away?

I'm looking through some abstracts, but there are so many projects, professors, and schools, I don't really know where to start...

You could always e-mail them to get an idea of the research they do and other information. My group had in two prospects for the day a month or two back. My advisor talked with them, showed them around, and let them sit in on a presentation of a paper to the group. After I had sent in my app to the school, my advisor asked to meet with me (he contacted me after seeing that I marked down EM as an area of interest). We talked, sounded like something I was interested in, and he gave me an offer of funding and at that point I was in. The whole process seemed somewhat informal to me as I pretty much secured funding, admission, and research after that conversation, but I would imagine that most professors would do some sort of preliminary interviews, at least with the students that they are interested in offering funding for. In the end though, you'll probably want to arrange to go out to the campus for a day or two.

Hell, at least ask your current undergrad advisor. They should have some preliminary ideas of where to apply for if you give them some research areas (or should know where to find out where you should look at).

 

[wwswimming]

P.S. i forgot. i worked for a few places that develop radar systems, including the
high voltage power supplies that go with them. power supplies are even more
interesting when the parts that need to be heat-sunk are sitting 10 thousand
volts away from ground !

if you're willing to go to a
school in the SF Bay Area (Santa Clara U. or Stanford are close to this one place),
then PM me, i'll tell you the names of some former co-workers. good chance they'll
pay for your education. when i was there we had one guy who was studying
e'magnetics at Stanford.

 

[Parkre]

Avoid University of Mo-Rolla. Absolutely horrible school. I am a ME with one easy semester to go there.

 

[reaz]

I am looking to get into grad school myself. I have a BS in Elec Engr from UT Austin. I am into VLSI and Computer Architecture. I wouldn't recommend UT Austin for power. However, I've heard from a few contemporaries that University of Colorado at Boulder has good faculty and research in the power area. You might want to look into that.

One advice I can give and other grad students or postgrads will agree is that you definitely want to look at the professor and research first and then the rank of the university. The rank of the university factors research money so that helps but usually it's the professor and the quality of his research that matters when applying to grad schools.

 

[darthsidious]

Sorry for the late reply

I know a couple of EE grad students at MIT + all my TA's who were EE grad students. For the most part, they're pretty happy. If you do come here though, be prepared to put in A LOT of work, especially for grad school. As far as the Power Electronics Prof goes, he's pretty well liked by his students, and his classes get great reviews. If you wanted to contact him, look up stuff about him and his reaserch, and shoot him an email. His personal webpage is : http://lees.mit.edu/lees/dperreault/index.htm .

Good luck