d_rose

A question to students that applied to Theory. What are your more detailed interests and profiles? Mine: 1 paper in preparation, 1 summer internship in Microsoft Research, 1.5 year of research experience during master's degree in CS, GPA 3.8/4.0, 3 LORs from profs with whom I have worked with, specified interests with a great fit with faculty, saying too broadly, it is approximation algorithms, TOEFL 85 (hoping for a possibility to retake)

I am an international student and I have high chances to being admitted by these universities. I am wondering which one would be a better fit for me. I do not want to decide on this matter only based on rankings (even though I currently incline to it). My research interests are in theory, to be more specific in approximation algorithms for graph problems and polynomial algorithms for planar graphs. I have closely gone through the research made by the faculty and have done a list of pluses/minuses (I will not paste it here to not suggest anything). I would like to hear some opinion other than mine, what do you think about these universities? What are advantages or disadvantages of those? What do you think about research groups in theory there, what about the places to live? Thanks!