Graduate Admissions FAQ

This page offers answers to the questions we receive most often from applicants for graduate study in mechanical and industrial engineering. Applicants most often want to know about financial assistance. If you have questions in this area, please visit our Financial Aid and Funding page.

Note: If you receive a notification that your application is incomplete because of a missing Program Questionnaire, you may ignore this notice. The Program Questionnaire is no longer required.

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The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering cannot answer that question for each individual student. You will not fully know the result until you hear a decision from UIC’s Graduate College. However, here are some general guidelines for admissions standards for applicants with degrees in engineering:

For MS programs: We admit most applicants with a “UIC-equivalent” GPA of 3.00 or above. The UIC-equivalent GPA is calculated by the university admissions office. Because our MS programs are coursework-based, we are generally not limited in the number we can admit.

For PhD programs: We accept a much smaller number of students. Our admitted PhD students often have a higher undergraduate GPA, 3.5 or above, but the primary admissions consideration is whether an applicant would be a good fit with a research lab in our department. The number of open positions in our labs dictates the number of PhD students we can accept each year.

For international applicants: The English proficiency requirements also are key. These are explained in detail here.

The graduate admissions process is handled by the UIC Graduate College and by the university’s Office of Admissions and Records rather than by the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

As a result, the Graduate College is likely to be your best source for direct answers to your admissions-related questions.

We recommend you start with the Graduate College’s graduate admissions FAQ page. If your question is not answered here, you may want to reach out to the appropriate office within the Graduate College.

Please note that there may be a delay of four to six weeks between the date when applicants receive the MIE department’s provisional acceptance letter and the date when they receive an official determination from the Graduate College.

The GRE is not required.

We will admit students with marginal TOEFL or IELTS scores—up to two points off on a subscore—on a limited basis. If you are in this situation and you are admitted, you must retake and pass the exam within the first semester of the program. The requirement to retake the exam cannot be waived, though we will usually grant an extension through the end of the first year for any student who requests it.

Yes. In fact, all documentation must be submitted online. We no longer accept letters or other materials by mail.

The department does not require any documents in addition to those submitted directly through the Graduate College admissions website.

All documents must be submitted electronically.

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We explain all of UIC’s financial assistance options for graduate students on our Financial Aid and Funding page. You are likely to find the information you need there.

Please see the Graduate College’s funding overview page for full details.

The best path to teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and tuition-and-fee waivers is a nomination from a professor who wants to support you while you conduct research. (This is why almost all assistantships and tuition-and-fee waivers are held by PhD students rather than MS students.)

Therefore, the best way to get an assistantship is to find a professor who would like you to join his or her research group.

Please note that if you are pursuing a coursework-only MS degree, your academic advisor is not expected to help you to obtain financial aid or other forms of funding.

Unfortunately, this is not a question that the department office or the Graduate College can answer. Your chances are determined based on the selections made by our faculty members about whom they would like to sponsor as graduate students and work with in their labs.

You can visit our Labs page to get a sense of the research taking place in our department and the Research Areas page to determine which faculty members are likely to be aligned with your personal research interests.