geh_cs

Thanks everyone for your responses. I should be able to narrow down what programs I will be applying to. @herring - Thanks for the suggestion. I am still a bit uncertain exactly what I want to study but I will find something a bit more specific.

1) My first paper is still in process of being published though I am not sure what journals my professor was looking at. I am the first author on the paper. My professor provided the initial idea but I did all the research for it independently and built a lot on that initial idea. For my research project, I will be writing the paper late fall semester, early spring semester so that will not be finished by the time I fill out applications. I will definitely be presenting that project at the Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing which I believe is a pretty strong conference for the field. 2) My recomenders are not well known. They are about 5 years out of graduate school. 3) However, my recomenders know me very well and would probably give a solid letter about my research and PhD potential. I wouldn't say I am the strongest student but I am probably up there. I have showed more initiative than the other students and I am more independent in my research. 4) I read somewhere not to flaunt statistics on the SoP that they can read on your transcript so I don't plan on doing that. 5) I was unaware those institutions were so weak. I saw them on the top 100 list of US news and figured they were some what respectable. Their websites wouldn't necessarily indicate that their program was week either (unless they have very few professors). I would like to do research in algorithm design for AI or graph theory but not really sure exactly. After graduation I would be happy with a professor position or doing research for a company/government.

I am currently looking at grad schools to earn a PhD and I am having trouble determining what schools I would easily qualify for. I am a CS major at a small liberal arts college with a very small computer science department. However, I have had research experience with a professor and wrote an academic paper (in process of being published). I am currently working at a summer research job and will be conducting a research project for a year and a half which I will be writing a paper, presenting at a conference and presenting/defending my work at my college. My GPA statistics are a 3.7 overall, 3.95 in computer science and 3.95 in math (minor). I have yet to take the GRE but I tend to do poorly on standardized verbal testing in general. I am considering studying AI or theory. The schools I am looking at are any of the schools in the University of California system, Tufts, UMass - Amherst, WPI, University of Maryland - College Park and Baltimore County, University of Chicago, and UI - Chicago. If any graduate students who were in the same situation has any input or anyone who might have an idea, I would greatly appreciate it. I couldn't seem to find anything online that would help.