explorer-c

It is really important that your recommender is known by people at your target university. If you haven't worked with one yet, find one. For PhD at top schools I would argue that having at least 1 well known recommender is practically a requirement (based on my own experience as well as a few other friends'). Without a rec letter from a well known professor, your chances drop significantly.

I'm in Computer Vision and my opinion is that they're about equal in reputation so you probably should choose based on fit or even location!

No. That is not a representative set. For one, it doesn't include Shree Nayar, arguably the most famous vision guy in Columbia. Anyway, if you have heavy interest in computer vision, then there is no contest, Columbia is much better. If you're leaning more towards ML, then Princeton is better. Just so you know, last year I was deciding between Columbia, Princeton and a bunch of other places. But since I have a pretty specific interest in computer vision, I ended up not going to either of those places, but Columbia was on my shortlist.

UMD is at least as good as UCSD in computer vision. IMO it's not a good idea to delay your PhD just to shoot for the top 4 because of 2 things: 1) it was a crapshot before and it'll be a crapshot then; 2) UMD is already a very good school in computer vision. Larry Davis is a professor in UMD and he's a pretty big name in computer vision. Steve Seitz is a famous computer vision professor in UW and he is a graduate of UMD. I honestly think if you're already in a top 20 school, you have all the resources needed to succeed. So no need to be too narrowly focused on getting into the top 4.

I think that's an overly optimistic estimate. In most top schools, the average PhD completion time for CS (for all students, both with and without masters) is around 6 years.

How was your visit weekend? One of the guys here told me if you got a yes from your POI, then you'll almost certainly get in.

If your score is already decent enough, then no. If your score is absolutely terrible then retaking and getting a good GRE score will prevent your application from being tossed straight away but won't necessarily help you get in. Also, the higher the school rank, the lesser they care about GRE. People can probably give you better answer if you specify the kind of schools that you're applying to as well as the rest of your profile. If they don't know your undergrad school, then yes it will help if you get a good score for the subject test. But like I said previously, the higher the school rank, the lesser they care about GRE.

Any employer worth a salt will understand the general ranking for a specific program. Don't worry about it. If you're planning to stay in the CS field, then the answer is no. And also, Princeton is not more prestigious than Berkeley in CS. Having said that, your advisor and your research quality will play a big role in landing your first job placement. So in my opinion if you're deciding between top 10 schools, choose one that has the best research opportunity in your subfield.

There are plenty of awesome professors here. But since he's talking about HCI, most probably he was referring to Gregory Abowd. A really famous and overall great guy.

How can you you use that to your advantage? The answer is simple. Ask him how. He surely knows better about this process than the average applicants here.

Last year I received the results for both around February. My suggestion is don't do that. They are already busy as it is, so I'd say wait until at least mid march. You still have until mid April to decide anyway.

Don't fret over it too much guys. There's basically nothing you can do now. Just enjoy the moment! Last year I got most of the decisions in mid-end February.

They all offered but I couldn't take up on the offer because I'm an international and it was too much hassle for me to get a visa and plan the trip in a rather short notice (They only gave me around 2-3 weeks preparation time for the visit).

Like I said before, all offered to reimburse plane fare and gave accommodation.

I see. Most of the places schedule campus visit in batch so they could organize a "visit weekend" more efficiently. So I think you'll still have to wait until February. If you're talking about UNC, my friend said the same thing applied for them too even though they do rolling admission.