Admission Requirements

The minimum requirements for admission to the graduate degree programs in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering are as follows:

• A bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in electrical engineering or computer engineering,
• An overall GPA of at least 3.25,
• GRE scores within the last four years from the general GRE exam. Guideline minimal GRE percentile scores are 70 percentile verbal, 90 percentile quantitative, and 50 percentile analytical or writing. GRE scores for students who are graduates from NCSU may be waived.
• Three strong recommendations from persons able to comment on the applicant’s qualifications for graduate study.
• All international applicants must submit TOEFL scores. The TOEFL must have been taken within two years of our receipt of the application. On the paper-based test, a minimum score of 575 is required for admission. Only one of the three subsections of the TOEFL may have a score below 50. No subsection scores may be below 45. Requirements for the computer-based test are an overall score of 220 with at least 17 on two of the three sections and no section score of less than 13. This requirement also applies to US citizens whose principal language of instruction has not been English (for example, most applicants from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).
• For GRE/TOEFL, use institution code 5496 and department code 1203.

Students who do not have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in electrical engineering or computer engineering must satisfy the completion of the following courses or the equivalent:

• Applicants for the M. S. and PhD programs in electrical engineering must have completed electrical engineering courses equivalent to ECE 206, ECE 212, ECE 220, ECE 301 (Signals and systems), ECE 302, ECE 303 and ECE 305 or ECE 403.
• Applicants for the M. S. and PhD programs in computer engineering must have completed computer engineering courses equivalent to ECE 206, ECE 212, ECE 220, ECE 301 (signals and systems), ECE 302, CSC 226 and CSC 316.
• Applicants for all of the M. S. and PhD programs in Electrical and Computer Engineering must have also completed the following courses or equivalent courses:
  • Three semesters of calculus
  • One semester of probability/ statistics
  • Two semesters of physics and one semester of chemistry.
• Applicants for all of the M. S. and PhD programs in Computer Network Engineering must have also completed the following additional courses or equivalent:(also see Computer Networking homepage):
  • Two semesters of an object-oriented language
  • Data structures
  • One semester of computer organization
  • One semester of signals and systems or discrete mathematics