krok

CMU's new MS in CS is NOT a research program. It is course-based only. Applicants to the PhD program in CS would not get bumped to this as this is NOT a PhD track MS program. Carnegie Mellon does not have an MS in CS that is research focused and leads to the PhD program. This MS is solely for those people that want to take some random classes in CS (there is no specific curriculum) and walk away with the CMU CS brand on a degree certificate. It is NOT considered to be the same quality as the PhD program. You don't even need a bachelor's in CS to apply for this program and if you are lacking in some skills you can take bridge courses (it says this on their website). On-campus this program is generally seen to be a money-maker for the CS dept. Some faculty have even expressed concerns on the quality of this particular program (and dilution of the brand). Generally speaking the more specialized programs at CMU have the reputation for which CMU is known (MS Robotics, HCI, Software Engineering, Information Networking, Security, etc). I guess it realy just depends on your goals though and what you want.

I worked with the federal govt years ago placing international students in top STEM (Science, tech, engineering, math) grad programs around the country. The rate of return is pretty good for the top programs (if you manage to get some funding) though you definitely want to look at ones that are professional track, and very few of those offer funding. I know for instance that the INI at Carnegie Mellon has excellent placement stats and they offer partial funding (up to 50%). They are an engineering/CS program that has a partial business curriculum in their programs. You might want to look at them. The Associate Director of the department is French (Nicolas Christin) and I am sure if you emailed him he would be willing to give you some advice. I don't know what area of CE you like, but it seems these programs do mostly networking, security, mobility and software engineering.

It depends. If you are US citizen but did not grow up or do any education in the US then most schools will require you to take it and if they don't they probably are not as competitive as Berkeley. That's probably what Berkeley means. There are a lot of people in the world with US citizenship who haven't really spent any significant time in the US (because their parents were international students or working here when they were born and then the family moved back to the home country while the child was still young). If that's your situation you'll need the TOEFL. If you did grow up in the US (and English is your native language) and you simply chose to get your undergrad degree abroad then they should not require the TOEFL.

MSIN program at CMU has top placement stats (though I think their admission reqs say C/C++, not Java).

INI Carnegie Mellon gives partial funding to students in their MS in Information Networking. There are a couple threads on here about that program.

Take a look at these programs at CMU. They are in the School of Engineering but you can choose research or professional track and you don't have to choose the track until after your first year (by then you should know). If you decide to not do a PhD their job placement stats are incredible and if you decide you've got access to all of the research faculty in CS/ECE there. They have students who go onto PhD's in ECE or CS every year (though most don't, not because they can't but because they don't want to). It might be the answer to your situation.

This is a little late but try the MISM program at the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon. It is the number 1 ISM program according to US News. It is more business-oriented than technical, though CMU does have other programs in IT management that are more technical.

Forgot to add the ETIM program at CMU as well might be of interest. There are a lot of interdisciplinary programs at CMU.

Try theInformation Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon. They are technology/business programs, but they do require you to have an undergrad degree in technology. The curriculum of each of their programs has engineering/CS/IT as well as business/management/econ. As far as I know they take business classes from the School of Business and IT classes from Computer Science/Electrical & Computer Engineering departments.

If you are applying to Stanford you should try Carnegie Mellon as well. They have one of the largest research labs in security in the US (CyLab) and CERT is housed at CMU as well. Also Adrian Perrig, one of the most cited researchers in the world for security is at Carnegie Mellon. Plus they have one of the top-ranked PhD's in CS, though it's really hard to get into. Not sure about Cornell. Never heard of them for security.

For energy/environmental policy I think the school of engineering has the focus on those areas at CMU in their engineering and public policy degree and their new energy master's degree. I don't really know how much of that is involved with Heinz, but in general CMU is pretty interdisciplinary so my guess is engineering and Heinz work closely together on that degree (faculty, research etc) and many professors at CMU have dual appointments in various schools/depts. However, those programs may be more for engineers and not liberal arts majors. I know their energy degree requires some kind of science background, but not specifically engineering. I don't know anything about the DC track program, unfortunately. They did not have it when I went to Heinz (10 years ago). I was already working full time while going to school part-time and my interests were in international policy. I really didn't look at domestic policy, public administration jobs, so I had a harder time finding a job since my education was not in international policy. I did eventually get a job with the US government in international educational work but it was my work experience and my Heinz degree that got me that. overall their career services are not that great for part-time students. I think full-time students have a much easier time finding a job.

I'd say getting an MS in CS in the US with good grades and lots of good research as the reco above states is what you'd need to have a shot at CMU's PhD program. Foreign MS degrees don't really hold much weight in admissions to decent STEM PhD programs in the US because all of them will make you complete coursework to get an MS from them before moving onto doctoral candidacy. I've seen people with foreign MS degrees getting the same admissions offers as people with only BS degrees. I think you can get into a decent PhD if you follow the above reco but I don't think all of that coupled with the deficiencies in your UG are going to make you as competitive as all of the other CMU PhD applicants. Good Luck!

As someone else said beef up your CS fundamentals, that is take those classes before you graduate in data structures/algorithms, computer architecture, etc and get some C/C++ coding classes as Java, C#, PhP, MySQL, etc are not the hardcore coding languages that the top-ranked CS programs expect to see. Unfortunately MIS is really a soft technical degree and people who get those degrees in undergrad don't really fare well in the admissions/review process for MSCS programs unless they've beefed up their hard technical skills by taking other, harder, more technical classes. If your 3.23 at your small liberal arts school was in liberal arts classes it may not have as much weight. For these technical programs they don't really care if you got a C or B in history, french, etc but if you got your lower grades in math and technical classes you are going to have a problem. So you really need to beef up your undergrad classes and take several hard core CS classes and get good grades in them and get a decent Q score in the GRE. You probably should shoot for 70-90 percentile because you are already starting with deficiencies in your app and the top tier programs will expect near perfect Q scores since most people applying will have them. I think it's going to be hard for you to get into either of these programs not necessarily because of your GPA but because your undergrad program is on the soft side and that coupled with the lower GPA will make your application less competitive.

I am just going to be frank. It will be impossible to get into a top-ranked MS CS program without any undergrad work in CS (like at least a minor). It just won't happen. As someone else mentioned you have to have undergrad classes in DS and algorithms, programming classes and a few others at a minimum. Even people with a BS in CS don't get into top-ranked MS CS programs because their undergrad curriculum or the classes they took in their CS programs were just not hard enough, etc (not all undergrad CS programs are created equal) so it's going to be impossible for someone with no undergrad work in CS to get into an MS CS program. It just won't happen unless you do a year or 2 of specialized CS courses and even then I wouldn't shoot for a top-ranked program.

FYI: CS does not operate out of CIT. CIT (Carnegie Institute of Technology) is the official name for Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering. CS operates out of the School of Computer Science. So ECE and CS are in two separate schools at CMU therefore CS classes are not as accessible to ECE students, though I am sure it's manageable. It's probably SCS students get first preference/access to CS classes.

Here is something to keep in mind too, admissions are not just based on your application package but your demographic info as well, especially for engineering/CS programs. When admissions decisions are made the admissions committees are looking for the best applications, but also the most diverse class because it makes for a better learning-environment, better PR, better marketing, better everything. So if you have 20 applicants from India, 20 from China, and 5 from the US as an example and they have 15 spots to fill and 5 US applicants are all good but not extraordinary, they will likely get in. However only the top 5 extraordinary applicants from India and China will get in even if 10 of the applicants from India are better then 3 or 4 of the applicants from the US who were admitted. You catch my drift. Furthermore throw gender into this mix and you see what I mean. Programs will never admit someone who is not good enough to make it through the program, but they will admit someone from an underrepresented demographic in the applicant pool who may be slightly weaker than a few others in an overrepresented demographic group. Typically in graduate CS/engineering programs women, europeans, latin/south americans, US citizens are considered underrepresented groups. Just the way it goes and all schools do it. Don't kid yourself in thinking that Stanford takes only the most extraordinary of applicants regardless of gender or country of origin.

For policy and technology/engineering Carnegie Mellon is a very good school. They have a department in engineering and public policy in the school of engineering and their policy school (Heinz) does a lot of technology policy as well. The university as a whole combines a lot of areas into one. Very interdisciplinary culture there.

You won't get into CMU CS with your undergrad background, even with a good GRE score. Right now they have the number 1 ranked PhD in CS. You just won't get in unless you do an MS somewhere else and do extremely well in your MS program including lots of good research, then you might have a shot at the CMU PhD.

Oh I forgot to add extra curricular activities don't count for anything in a graduate school application. It is only undergrad programs that like to see that. Grad programs don't care. Relevant, good work experience should help though.

Yonghao, It's going to depend on your whole application package. Admissions rarely come down to a single GRE score or GPA (unless either of those are low than you'll surely be in the reject pile). You'll need strong GRE scores, strong recommendation letters and you'll need to be able to demonstrate strong programming skills in C/C++. Having an A- average in your technical classes is good. The not so great scores in your non-technical classes may not be a big deal if all of the other relevant pieces of your application package are strong. Nanyang is a good school for technical majors so if you did well in the tech classes you took this should be a plus in your favor. With this program though the coding skills and C/C++ are very important as are the required undergrad pre-reqs they list on their application requirements page.

I heard CMU Portugal program will kill you also, but it is because the Portuguese education system is completely different and the students are not used to taking 3 classes a semester with tons of work, which is the standard for US grad programs. They are used to taking 7-9 classes a semester with little work and a huge final exam period in which they get like a month of nothing to do but study for their final. US programs are nothing like that. It's a big difference if you are not used to it. I have heard faculty from Portugal who teach in the CMU programs say this (I'm an alumn of CMU Heinz).

Actually the CS classes at CMU are part of the INI program. The INI is an interdisciplinary program not an MS in CS program. The INI program curriculum consists of faculty and classes from the CS, ECE, business and policy schools of Carnegie Mellon. The CS program at CMU is one of the best in the world so naturally they have a very high applicant pool and they choose only outstanding individuals who show promise for PhD work since yes they want MS students who can go on to the PhD. However INI students sit in the same classes with these MS CS students. In terms of the INI since it is not strictly a MS CS program they don't get as many applications. It's strictly a numbers thing however if you look at their admission requirements it seems you need to be pretty damn good to get in, since they are doing many of the same classes as CS/ECE majors. They are a professional graduate program and they specialize in security, networking and mobility with business and policy thrown in, though according to their placement stats INI students have gone on to PhD's, though I don't think it is the norm. As to security, they undoubtably have one of the best security graduate programs since US-CERT has a research lab on CMU's campus and CERT also teaches the INI's computer forensics courses. Also Carnegie Mellon CyLab is the largest security research lab in the US and the INI, CERT and CyLab all work together. Given that INI works with all of these different departments and labs on campus it's pretty safe to assume that INI students have lots of opportunities but I guess it really depends on what you are looking for. If an MS in CS is your thing because you want a PhD one day, the INI might not be the way to go. If you are looking at an MS in Security I don't think you can find a place better than the INI. They have a lot of good info on their website.

Heinz is a very strong domestic/economic policy program. Very quantitatively focused in terms of policy analysis. I graduated from Heinz a while back. If you want international policy, they really are not the school for it. They have some classes in it, but their faculty expertise is domestic/economic policy and their are other schools that do focus on international policy. I myself mostly wanted international policy and was sadly disappointed by the offerings at the time, though I went to Heinz for other reasons. They did give me a very strong foundation in public administration/management/business type skills that I did not have and some Tepper courses are cross-listed with Heinz, such as Advanced Negotiation (however I was told Linda Babcock left and went to Harvard so not sure if they still offer that course). They have since increased their course offerings in international policy, but it's definitely not their strength or the focus of their programs.