Help Reqd: PhD CS profile evaluation

[hvardhan1000]

I want to do PhD in Parallel Computing.

I m currently doing MTech (IT) from International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (or IIIT-Bangalore) with current CG as 3.3/4.0 (without scale conversion).

My BTech (IT) was from NMIMS University, Mumbai (3.2/4.0).

I am yet to take GRE and TOEFL.

I am doing a part-time research internship at Siemens Corporate Research (which will later be full time) as a part of my curriculum

in the area of parallel computing. The total duration of this is approx 1 year.

+ 2 years of work ex (at least), before applying for PhD.

I am yet to publish any papers.

-> GATE 2010 percentile of 98.75 in CS.

-> Siemens Corporate Research and Technology conferring scholarship for my studies at IIIT-Bangalore.

-> An independent project on chess using C# .NET

-> BTech project related to network topology discovery using SNMP.

-> Rozgaar.com - a job portal in ASP .NET

-> MTech group project on CDS - Column Data Store. This was a simulation of DBMS in C .

-> Study project on a polynomial time algorithm for solving the graph isomorphism problem.

-> Android project on displaying of large images in low-memory phones with zooming and panning features

-> Simulation of Molecular Dynamics on GPGPU using CUDA

-> Brainbench certified in C++ Fundamentals with 3.43/5.00

-> 3rd prize in an inter-collegiate C++ programming contest at NMIMS-MPSTME.

-> Did a UG internship at Tata Tele Services Ltd. It was regarding network fault database retrieval software.

-> 1st position at a district level chess championship (U-19) in district Raigad, Maharashtra.

-> Topped my high school (in 12th standard) in computer science CBSE board exam with 96%.

-> Current MTech CG = 3.3/4.0

Ambi: UCLA, UMich AnnArbor , Gatech, Northwestern,Utah

Mod: Purdue,PennState,OhioStateUniv,Colorado-Boulder

Safe: NCSU, Texas A&M

Could you tell me the universities which are my worth ? Is the stratification given above correct? If not, can you re-form the list above?

[OH YEAH]

I can't give you useful feedback without knowing: are your recommenders well known, and what do they think of you?

Your long list of qualifications is filled with stuff adcoms won't care about. Don't waste space talking about your non-research internships and jobs, nobody cares about your test scores or chess qualifications, and *please* don't write about how you tried to find a polynomial-time algorithm for graph isomorphism. You didn't actually get a result, and while that is not necessarily bad, people might be kind of inclined to laugh when they hear about what problem you tried to tackle... perhaps after that line you should write "studied how to prove P != NP"

[hvardhan1000]

Okay..so it goes like this:

One of my recommenders has known me for 1 year and I will be doing more research under him in the area of graph theory (MVCP); another would be from a Lead Research Engineer from Siemens under whom I have started my research internship in the area of parallel computing. I think both are good. I am not sure about the third one yet.

Hope you now have a better understanding.

Sorry for the extra details sir, but considering my other significant credentials mentioned above, can you tell me which univs are my worth?

[dodobird]

I need help as well. I am a master student at ETH Zurich and this fall I would like to do a PhD in one of the top ten universities... I have finished my BSc in Europe(Serbia) in not so famous university with GPA 9.4 / 10 and have received many scholarships from the state, based on that score. Now I am at ETH, having GPA around 5/6. ETH has the most strange scale and this GPA can't be translated to any other scale... there are so many rules involved in this scale...

This summer I have done cs research and I think that my professors and me are going to publish some paper very soon. Also I have another paper in preparation but I am not sure if those papers are going to be published till the application deadline. Beside these two papers, I will take my master thesis project starting from the 01-September. I will work on that for 6 months and I will certainly try to publish some part of it... but of course that's again the future... Also, I can get 2 recommendation letters from quite famous professors from ETH(one is the main founder of the group) and one from a recent PhD graduate.

Preferable universities are : Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard...

I would not go for a less famous group of universities as ETH is also in top 11 in the world according to this list:

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2011/subject-rankings/engineering/computer-science

Also I was thinking to skip applying for this year and to apply the next one. In the meantime I could do 2 more different research projects in one year and increase my chances to get in this schools...

Can you give me some suggestions what should I do? Should I try this year as well?