Hi all,
I am applying for PhD admissions, Fall 2010 and would greatly appreciate if you could kindly evaluate my chances of getting an admit in any of the following universities:
1) MIT EECS/Media Lab
2) Berkeley
3) CMU
4) Cornell
5) UIUC
6) Stanford
7) University of Washington
My profile:
1) GRE General: 1370 (780Q+590V), AW:4
2) TOEFL: 108(R:30, L:30, S:24, W:24)
3) GRE CS: 820 (86%)
4) Grad GPA: 6.5/8.0 (M.E., Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India)
5) Undergrad GPA: 71% (B.E., NSIT/DCE, University of Delhi, one of top colleges in India)
Scholastic honors:
1) All India Rank 3 - GATE CS (for admission to graduate schools in India)
2) One of the 6 students selected to the prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India (as a research scholar).
3) World Semifinalist (top finisher from India) Microsoft Imagine Cup (Algorithms)
4) Earned maximum number of course credits in the entire batch of Computer Science,
IISc, 2007-09. I completed 50 credits (13 courses) against the stipulated requirement of
40 credits (generally, 10 courses)
5) Selected for "The 2010 Winter School on Machine Learning and Computer Vision" being organized by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and Microsoft Research (MSR) in Jan. 2010.
6) Selected as the Employee of the Year at Vedasoft Solutions Pvt. Ltd., 2006-07 (A start-up, worked there for an year as a research and design engineer because it suited my area of interest).
7) All India Ranks: 234 in CEE-2002 (NSIT/DCE, University of Delhi), 169 in CET-2002
(CET, Chandigarh), 358 in CEET-2002 (NIT, Kurukshetra), and 1748 in AIEEE-2002
(for undergraduate admissions in engineering colleges across India).
2 Publications in International Conference, Journal:
1) IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE's flagship conference in automation)
2) A journal paper in IJDMMM (not very well known)
Other 4-5 papers under review/ in process.
Other Info:
1) Currently working as a researcher at Indian School of Business (top 15 B-School in the world)
2) Reco (All Profs.): 1 from HOD of my department, other 2 IEEE Fellows (I expect at least 2 of these recos to be particularly strong).
3) Job offer/recommendation from: Cisco/Google
Areas of Interest: Game Theory, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Computer Vision.
I know my GPA and GRE Scores are hopeless to say the least, but the places I come from (IISc/University of Delhi) are really top-class institutes and I hope the admissions committee would bear that in mind. Do I really stand a chance, or are these places far beyond my reach.
I would be greatly obliged if those who have made it to some of these places could share their opinion. Thanks a lot!
