There are several reasons;
0. Money does matter for my case, w/o funding I won't go. Some programs such as PSU very very rarely offer aids for international students at the first year.
1. Stipend from some universities such as Berekely, Columbia, Stanford, USC is not enough to cover living cost. I will bring my wife here
2. I have analyzed past admission postings since 2003.
And I found that applying for Stanford, Berekely, USC, Princeton, MIT ORC would be waste of money, even if I could somehow support my family
Those were collected from many websites including here, chinese sites, korean, indian, etc...
3. Some programs such as GaTech are very strict in GRE AW. I verified it by asking them (coordinator/prof.) directly.
There were some exceptional applicants, but those all have many papers and had connections to professors in the program they applied for.
4. Austin, Rutgers, VT, UW require me to submit TOEFL, I didn't want to retake it.
5. I don't stick to programs overall reputation only.
NW, UF are top in optimization research / NCSU, TAMU are good overall / UWisc, UPitt, ISU, UA are great in their specialties / UB has a big guy
/ UTD - PhD in Biz, no doubt, it's great / TTU, USF, OSU, FSU are safeties for funding
I feel like those schools are enough, but I forgot to apply for UNC... too sad hahaha....
Thanks, I hope to get aids from NCSU. Its great program in manufacturing/Ergonomics specialty.
FSU-FAMU engineering program is 70%~80% of FSU and 20~30% of FAMU. Most of students in the IE program are enrolled in FSU.
They're are collaborating, but their admission and degree system are separated.