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I was also a CS major / math minor at a tiny LAC.. I had a worse GPA than you, no publication record (but 2 research summers), and pretty unknown recommenders. I was accepted by Wisc, GA Tech, CU Boulder .. all PhD I was rejected by MIT, Brown, Illinois I definitely think you're aiming too low. I don't think you'd make it to a T4 (unless you pub at a well-known conference), but you have a chance at most T20 schools, maybe aside from those smaller departments that get a disproportionately large number of applicants (i.e, the Ivies and Caltech). If there's anything that will hold you back it's a lack of focus in your SoP. If you just write "I want to study algorithms for AI" nobody will really understand what you're trying to say because it's very vague, whereas if you say something like Machine Learning, Data Mining, Computer Vision or Control Theory then people will know exactly what you're talking about, and you can target the right professors. (Also, AI as a term/field is kind of out of fashion in the US, in favor of branches like Machine Learning or HCI) Also, "graph theory" is a very vague (unless you're in pure math). Computer Scientists are more likely to understand you if you frame it more-- examples include high performance graph analysis, graph clustering for machine learning / spectral graph theory, games on graphs, ...

So just some issues worth considering: Cloud computing seems to be geared towards data parallelism. It seems to excel in the same areas that frameworks like MapReduce excel in: more or less embarrassingly parallel tasks. When it comes to task parallelism, you have the problem that you often can't predict how parallel a given machine is, and you haven't tuned for that machine. Load balancing: if you have a code that executes in phases with dependencies, and some nodes become arbitrarily busy due to other users, things will start to stall. (Solution: schedulers, either before execution, or during execution (i.e, work stealing, which has many ideal asymptotic properties)). Collective communications: many HPC codes use MPI collectives such as all-to-all. These propagate information over the entire network, and are only really efficient on certain topologies with certain locality guarantees. It would be up to the cloud vendor to specify MPI primitives and node scheduling rules to optimize for this, and that would be a very difficult undertaking on its own. Just as a simple example, consider a parallel algorithm that expects nodes to communicate with their neighbors over and over (i.e, Cannon's Algorithm for matrix multiplication). Unless the cloud guaranteed you a set of nodes that were all connected to each other with a homogeneous topology, this algorithm would stress the network with congestion way out of proportion with what it would need on a simple grid cluster.

Your CoL in NY will be very high. Although NYU is considered a better school, Colorado may actually be a better fit for HCI, and you'd have lower costs (and mountains!) For AI I think Colorado only has 2-3 people, but I do know that Correll does some cool stuff.

I'm curious about what role you believe HPC will play in the cloud (being limited by communication costs), if that's what you mean by 'hpc/cloud' I work in HPC, and the schools that are most active / have the most faculty in the area seem to be UIUC, Berkeley, GT, UT-K, and then to various degrees UCSD,Rice(PL),UTA,Minnesota, Don't know nearly as much about clouds but I know UW, Berkeley are good, UIUC is probably good, and GT has stuff going on.

You're interested in parallel computing and PL? Sarkar at Rice is one of the best in that area. On your list Purdue is probably the only other contender-- I know that the HPC-type people at Wisconsin (i.e Livny, Miller) are no longer doing anything particularly exciting (outside from Wisconsin's amazing architecture group). UMass and Northwestern I don't hear much about.

Admission this year is more selective than previous years due to a couple of factors

I had a housing offer that fell through -- Looking for a place to stay near campus for up to 400$ It's pretty urgent Send me a PM if you know anything or are looking for a roommate & we can chat!

Yeah, email. It would be weird to have a site like that since it's such a close relationship, and some profs only have a number of grad students in the single digits over their whole career

I'll be joining as a CompSci PhD student -- 23/m

Overall: Applied to six schools (MIT / UIUC / UW-Madison / GA Tech / Brown / CU-Boulder) Accepted by three (UW-Madison / GA Tech / CU-Boulder) Rejected by MIT/UIUC/Brown My decision is Wisconsin vs. GT ... Wisconsin isn't guaranteeing funding, but I may get an outside (epic) ra-ship... if I do, I'm leaning towards there, simply because I'm scared of Atlanta. Wish I applied to more places arghh

Was anyone else admitted to Wisconsin's PhD program without guaranteed funding? I can't attend without tuition+TA or RA, and it seems like you have to accept before you can apply for the Epic RA-ship. Is anyone aware of other ways to cover tuition + stipend (besides a fellowship)? If you get a TA-ship, do they cover your tuition as well?

Thanks! Apps are in... I added GATech, subtracted Cornell + Bezerkeley I'll update once I know where I'm in

I would stick with either a thank you card or something home-made and meaningful.. Nothing of value unless you're very close and know it would be appropriate + appreciated. (i.e, I wouldn't get scotch unless you know they love scotch and/or have been out drinking with them, and don't show up with red label).

If they gave you an average rec, you have an average chance of getting in. If they say you're one of the best students they've had, you have an excellent chance. Simply getting a recommendation isn't enough information, since letters of rec range from standard to glowing, but a glowing rec certainly holds more weight coming from the department itself, since the professors play the major role in admissions. Talk to the prof.

Stats: Small, well-rated but little-known Liberal Arts College. Math/CS double major. GPA: 3.55, cum-laude Math/CS GPA: 3.75/3.7 Research: 1 REU in high-performance computing, 1 summer at MIT in the same research area, produced a poster for a conference. One excellent rec, two positive recs GRE: 770Q/620V/??? GRECS: don't know yet but 93% on practice exam Should have a well-crafted SOP with a clear direction, applying to fellowships. My professors don't have much advice to give me because they live a fairly sheltered LAC lifestyle. I have no idea if I should be aiming for top-10 schools, because every CV I check has 3.9+ GPA's Is this is a reasonable list, or do I risk getting no-offered? My GPA worries me. Are there any schools with good high-performance/parallel/algorithms departments I should check out before I finalize my list? MIT Berkeley Illinois Cornell Brown Wisconsin JHU Colorado