Hi,Hao!
Here is the high level profile evaluation.
What makes you stand out:
You've demonstrated consistent career progression ever since you enrolled in college!That's fabulous! You started as an intern help-out but initially you get the chance to getting in field work! Your experience in both work and scholarship tells me that you
are a hard worker and set your mind on a goal and always achieve it. You are dependable, loyal, and reliable.
You have the intelligence to succeed as a xxx engineer!
A focus in xxx is cool and fits in well with your profile. Highlight this and use it to your advantage.
Why did you choose that specialty in the first place? That is some hook we need to work in your personal statement.
Initial red flags:
What is your GPA? I know some guys from xxx who sufferred from the low gpa.
Your GRE: It is not very very exciting to see your GRE score. But we don't have to
elaborate on that during your application process. You are very practice-oriented and know what you want. Your English skills may get improved further step by step, but you love being an engineer.
And you got to have some stories to tell,and we would work on that!
Why are you the best: What makes you stand out? What initiated your interest in structure engineering? What makes YOU special?
How can you prove that you are the BEST one for master study? What you want to do after the master?
We need to think about this and answer it in the personal statement and your reference letters!
Overall, we have to be really careful about crafting your "Why school" question in the Personal Statment.
UIUC is the best one in this area with some very good professors and practitioners in this area such as Doctor xxxx and Doctor xxx,
and should be your target!
For other choices, UCSD is good in this focus too. For your bottom schools, maybe Delaware is not a very good choice! I also love penn state,
which has a very vivid program on structuring especially in bridge stuff.
For career prospect, it is now not very good in USA,at least not as good as before, but for some regions such as Texas, Georgia and the like, there are kind of opportunities!
Anyway, I think you need to work your story and experience into a logic and
organic package. Have a nice day!