TextMiner

I am a prospective Computer Science PhD student joining RPI beginning from Fall 2012. I had 2 publications when i did my Masters, but for the past 2 years i could not get papers published in Top conferences in my field (Machine Learning) in spite of getting favorable reviews which could have been submitted in lower ranked conferences. But i am hopeful for getting a publication in August which can help my publication record. My main point is, i wish to switch to Cornell so that i can work with the best in the field. How difficult it would be to work with the Professors there since i have my courses and credits to complete here ? I know that commuting say 2 times a week to Ithaca would be a logistical nightmare, but is it advisable at all ? Any suggestion in this regard would be highly useful to me.

Hey, first off, thanx a lot for responding. Appreciate that. Let me take each of your points. It seems a valid point ; Of course, my SOP may not explicitly highlight Information Extraction, but i will bring it out in the course of explaining my research. I will broadly put my interests in Machine Learning. Do you think its a fair point ? There are a number of good papers churned out from not only the top 20, but even among the top 35 (am going by the US News & Reports rankings, which may be biased to an extent). We could take it offline where we can discuss on this. Some very interesting points raised ; The professor whom i am doing my assistantship under, informed me about a downbeat situation in the US regarding funding when she was there for KDD. So yes, funding is definitely a concerning factor for me. I understand that the funding is Professor-specific more than being Department specific. Do you think in that case it would be wise to contact the professor of the so called lower ranked university in advance ?

I am currently a Research Assistant at IIT Bombay working in the field of Information Extraction / Machine Learning. I finished my Masters in Technology from IIT Bombay in 2010 and have a couple of publications(not as a first author though) in a Tier-2 International conference in a slightly different field. Having applied in the top 9 schools during previous Fall app. process, i was severely demotivated by the rejects received from EVERY ONE of them ; (It is possible that my publications were not in a reputed conference ; Also a very famous recommender whom i approached might not have had a favorable opinion of me reflecting in my rejection ; Again a speculation). Since the fall application for 2011, i have done an Internship in a reputed Search Org. The work that will result out of this is currently being shaped for submitting to PAKDD or SIGMOD. Also currently i am undertaking a Research assistantship under a leading authority in Information Extraction in IIT Bombay. For the Fall 2012 season, i am expanding my applications (an intelligent selection of max. 10) in the top 25 colleges. My main interest is in the general area of Machine Learning with a focus on Extraction problems especially large-scale extraction. Can someone please let me know my chances for a PhD in the top 25 as mentioned ? Any addendum to the information i requested is perfectly fine, for example, why UC Irvine is a good college to apply though it might be out of the top 30 etc. Thanx in Advance.