Master of Engineering (M. Eng.) Degree Program
Why Should I Obtain a Master of Engineering at Berkeley?
Increasingly a Master's degree is considered an essential beginning for a long-term career in Electrical Engineer and in Computer Science. At minimum, a Master's allows a deeper technical specialization, giving you both a head start in your chosen career as well as a long-term advantage as you find it easier to track new developments and change direction in your career as opportunities arise. You will find many universities, including some very fine ones, who offer a purely technical Master's degree option. However, none of them is comparable to Berkeley's Master of Engineering, which goes beyond the technical specialization and offers you courses in engineering leadership and a team-oriented capstone project experience that allows you to practice, under careful mentorship and guidance, the technical and non-technical skills that you learn in the classroom.
Our Masters of Engineering gives you the opportunity to take our world-class graduate courses on scientific and technical topics, organized by technical concentrations that match your interest. However, the reality is that success in an engineering career requires skills that transcend the scientific and technical. In a modern engineering development organization, you almost always have to accomplish goals through teamwork, and you have to be able to communicate your ideas and influence people (colleagues, investors, customers) through effective oral and written communication. Even as you tackle difficult technical challenges, you have to consider the match between your ideas and the needs of eventual users, how your choices give your organization competitive advantage, and how to protect your investments with intellectual property. Increasingly you have to develop an idea in a multi-disciplinary environment, consider complex systems issues as well as detailed technical issues, and position yourself in an ecosystem of suppliers, outsourcing resources, and complementary products and strategic relationships. Our Masters of Engineering curriculum has anticipated all this, and prepares you in advance for these real-world challenges that you will encounter, including both classroom study and project experience in the practice of these skills.
Our Masters of Engineering degree is full-time, and takes one academic year (Fall and Spring, but not Summer) to complete. You join a cross-disciplinary cohort including students from four Departments in the College of Engineering. Classes are kept small to encourage interaction with your student cohort, your professors and your industry collaborators. These networks are reinforced through career advising and placement, access to alumni and industry connections and other services. All classes are taught on the Berkeley campus by top Berkeley Engineering faculty. Upon completion, you earn the Master of Engineering degree in EECS, reflecting an integrated understanding of technology, practice, and leadership.
Finally, need we mention that this is Berkeley, one of the top EECS and Engineering programs in the world? You will gain exposure to a world-class faculty, as well as an unparalleled student body within EECS and other engineering disciplines. Consider joining us for an academic year, and partake in the academic experience of a lifetime. With a relatively modest investment of time and money, you will be better prepared for a satisfying and lasting career in engineering design, development, and management.
Areas of Concentration
When you apply, you will be asked to specify the Masters of Engineering in Electrical Engineering or the Masters of Engineering in Computer Science as well as your desired area of concentration. Since the program only began in Fall 2010, we do not yet offer concentrations in all areas of EECS, but we are adding new concentrations every year. We currently have three concentrations (those that were offered in the 2010-11 academic year) and are adding one additional concentration for the 2011-12 academic year, "Signal Processing and Communications."
Electrical Engineering:
Physical Electronics: Prepares you for engineering careers in industries needing an understanding of state-of-the-art devices and design techniques used in today’s most advanced integrated circuits.
Robotics and Embedded Software: Prepares you for engineering careers in industries applying robotics and embedded software to markets for manufacturing, automation, process control, automotive, aerospace, medical instruments, entertainment and other fields.
Signal Processing and Communications: Prepares you for engineering careers in industries applying signal processing or communications. Markets include wireless communication, computer networking, entertainment, video processing, biomedical, etc. Applicants to this area should choose Signal Processing and Communications as their area of study.
Computer Science:
Visual Computing and Computer Graphics: Prepares you for engineering careers in industries applying advanced computer graphics, computer-aided design, and human-computer interaction methods to markets for education and training, entertainment, commerce, design and manufacturing, electronic journalism and similar fields.
Robotics and Embedded Software: Prepares you for engineering careers in industries applying robotics and embedded software to markets for manufacturing, automation, process control, automotive, aerospace, medical instruments, entertainment and other fields.
Curriculum
There are three distinct elements to our Master of Engineering curriculum. Overall you require 24 semester units divided into these three areas:
Technical Graduate Courses
You will take four graduate courses in your chosen technology concentration. Each concentration includes a specific list of courses, giving you some options. You can petition to deviate from this list to accommodating special needs, special interests, or taking into account your prior academic work or work experience. Please consult our Schedule of Classes to find our more about the M.Eng.courses. Our catalog includes an extensive list of graduate courses.
Leadership Courses
You will take two courses, one in the Fall and one in the Spring, on engineering leadership. These courses fill out your technical education with many non-technical topics of importance to engineering developers and managers, such as intellectual property, communications, teamwork and project planning, and general business concerns like competition, accounting, human resources, organizational development, and so forth. These courses employ the same case study method used in many of the top business schools.
Capstone Project
A unique and important feature of the Berkeley Masters of Engineering is the capstone project experience. You will join a team of three to five students and pursue a specific problem or opportunity that can be addressed by technology. In the project you not only pursue the technology challenges, but you also gain direct experience in applying the skills you learn in your leadership courses. Throughout the project you are closely guided and mentored by faculty from both the technical and leadership sides, and at the end of the project you gain valuable experience in oral and written communication of your outcomes.
Further Information
Our page for current students offers more details on what to expect as a student in our next EECS Masters of Engineering cohort.
The Master of Engineering across the College of Engineering, including management of the leadership courses
and the capstone project, can be found at the Fung Institute.
Information about applying for admission to the EECS Masters of Engineering
can be found at our graduate admissions page.
Contact Us
E-mail: GradAdmissions@eecs.berkeley.edu
Phone: (510) 642-3068
fax: 510-642-7644
Graduate Admissions Homepage: www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Gradadm
Google Chat: Due to the high volume of emails and phone calls, we are unable to respond to all inquiries. Please join us for our Google Chat sessions Monday, Wednesday and Friday (November 9th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 28th, 30th, December 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 19th) from 8:15 to 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. Our Google Account name is csa.eecs.ucb@gmail.com. Please invite us to chat and initiate a session with if you wish to ask us a question.
To the M.Eng Application Process
Back to the EECS Graduate Admissions Homepage
Questions? Please contact The EECS Graduate Admissions Office
revised 11/14/11