jjsakurai

You'll probably be applying to a department like the CS department. If you're an absolute top student, then you'll get in no matter your research interests. If you're an very good (but not absolute top) candidate, then your admission will depend quite a bit on your background and your interests, whether the profs interested in you have money to fund you, etc. In that case, while you'll officially be applying to the department, in many ways your admission will depend on your interests/background/lab you want to work in, etc. So bottom line - if you want to do say Theory at Princeton, then if you're a top candidate, you'll be admitted. If you're not a top candidate and your interest is in theory, then you'll be competing with other theory applicants to Princeton so it will be as tough as CS admission at MIT/Berkeley/Stanford/CMU There are exceptions - for instance for U. of Melbourne (Australia) you apply to work on a specific project with a specific mentor. I think things are similar at some European universities. US/Canada don't officially have such a system but sometimes a prof might want you for a specific project which would amount to the same thing. The advantage with the US/Canada system is that you've a lot of freedom in terms of choosing an advisor and working on what a project you want to work on.

I personally just have a simple laptop but then I don't play games either. If you're into games, I highly highly recommend a Gaming Desktop + [Ethernet (not wifi) if you're into online gaming] over a gaming laptop.

You could also talk to a few people who would be good judges of the potential - like profs in the area at your current/future school.

Be aware that admission into CS at CMU or theory at Princeton is going to be as hard as admission into MIT/Stanford/Berkeley.

My advice is to try for an MS at a good university. You should also check out places in Canada and the UK for an MS. Unfortunately, you'll likely have to pay as a funded MS is not that common. Another possibility is to go for an MS at one of the IITs (IIT Kanpur and Bombay are the best for CS) and then for a PhD in the US but admission into an IIT is going to be tough.

US News Rankings have a strong correlation with the the prestige of the department. Chances for a faculty job are mostly going to depend on the work you do and the reputation of your advisor. What a higher ranked school can provide is more (and sometimes more well known) faculty members to collaborate with among other things. If your interests change, a higher ranked department is more likely to have someone else you wanna work with. The department prestige also has an effect but that is well captured by the US News rankings. If you're at a North American undergraduate and are looking for a faculty job in North America, then you might wanna talk to faculty members at your department to figure out what they're looking for in a faculty candidate. Another thing you could do is look at the past record of students at the aforementioned universities getting faculty jobs. That will give you a lower bound on the number of faculty job offers received by students at the three schools.

They are all good but in terms of overall reputation UT Austin > UCSD > Yale. Hard to say more without knowing what area interests you.

It's possible that this student previously knew the prof from a conference or something...

Easiest way would be to talk to a prof at either university who is willing to fund you. Then you won't have to go through the whole app process. I know someone who switched to UDub CS mid-year via that route. Barring that, your chances really depend on a lot of factors - what kind of students are applying, whether a prof in the area you're looking to work in has funding, etc. Can you get a rec from someone at CMU? That could help your prospects. You should also check out Berkeley and UDub CS. Both are excellent programs in big cities.

UIUC. It's not like UCLA is anywhere near the Silicon Valley. Plus, tech companies will want to recruit at UIUC vs UCLA. And as previously mentioned, living in Urbana-Champaign is dirt cheap. PhD prospects are also better coming from UIUC.

In theory, Princeton is a top school, better than CMU and Stanford. So brand-name wise Princeton is better in CS Theory than those two. Same goes for Cornell.

Waterloo is pretty well-connected to the industry. As to how it will compare to UBC or UW-Madison, I don't know. If you want to work with in the US after graduation, then that would be much easier if you study in the US as you get 12 month work permit for after graduation which is extendable by 17 months if your job is in STEM. (It's much much easier though to work in Canada after attending a Canadian university as you getting a permanent work permit is much easier. If you want to go for a PhD after a couple of years though, that may not be too important.).

Shouldn't be too hard as long as you did research during your academic years so you have atleast 2-3 academic recommendations. Make sure your profs write their recs when you graduate rather than when you apply for a PhD. I've also seen some students apply for atleast one PhD program even if they intend to pursue a PhD much later so the profs don't procrastinate in writing letters. In fields like Systems, industrial experience could be pretty valuable too. I've not seen anyone get accepted into a PhD without academic recommendations - atleast not at the top 20 schools. It's well regarded. Dunno how popular it is with the recruiters. You should check how the alumni faired and talk to current students to get an idea.

I guess you could email profs there whose research areas you're interested in to see if one of them would be willing to fund you. There isn't a high chance but no harm in asking.

If you do a great Master's at UC Irvine, you should stand a pretty good chance at top universities for a PhD. They've quite a few good people there.

The M.Tech GPA should help things quite a bit. However getting admission into a good US/Canadian PhD program is going to be extremely hard if not impossible IMO given your background unless you've published quite a few papers in top international conferences in your field. The Masters programs are generally MUCH easier to get into (though you have to pay) which is why I recommended going that route. Also, I meant getting admission into the Masters at UBC, not the PhD program. Things might be different at say the universities not in the top 50-60 but I really don't have an idea regarding that. PS - I'm not sure how well known ISIcal is internationally. If it (and the professor you'r working under) is reasonably well-known then things might be very different.

I'd recommend getting a Masters from a good US/Canadian university first. I know someone from WBUT who got into CMU but he did a Masters at University of British Columbia first. Your HS marks will not matter. Your B.Tech marks seem a bit low - ideally you want to have a very high rank at the very least. Also published papers - while they help, they don't count for a whole lot unless they're really good and have been published at top conferences. Basically, I really think the ideal path for you is Masters at good US/Canadian University first.

Many different viewpoints - see this http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d/ Quite a few profs I've talked to tell me that ranking does matter quite a bit - certainly profs from areas different than yours (so those not familiar with your work) are going to look at you more favorably if you're from a place like Berkeley. Same goes for the industry. On the other hand, if there's a group of people you really want to work with at GTech, that that could be the ideal place for you. Do take into account the fact that your interests might change and depending on the areas you're interested in, Berkeley or GTech might be better.

You really can't go wrong with either one. I'd say that Berkeley does have a slight edge especially since the trio of Jordan, Russell and Wainwright seem to collaborate quite a bit. So if you're student with any one of them, you have a good chance to work with the other two. Also there are a ridiculous number of profs at top universities I've seen who've done their postdoc with Jordan/Russell/Wainwright before getting their professorship so if you're looking towards the academia, that is something to consider. Another thing you should make sure about is what are the chances of getting one of those three as your advisor at Berkeley vs. getting a great advisor (Jaakola, Willsky, Freeman, etc.) at MIT.

Berkeley CS has a LOT of industrial connections and has traditionally been a powerhouse in computer systems. It has people like David Patterson, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica, etc. who are leaders in the field. It's also in the Bay Area if startups is something you're very interested in. MIT CS is also a powerhouse, though less so in my opinion than Berkeley but I don't think the difference is that big. I'd say between the two of those, decide on the basis of what profs you're interested in (and how likely you think they're to take you on as a student) and on how much you like the department. Make sure there are several profs in the department doing research you're interested in (so you don't end up regretting your choice if say the one prof you're interested in leaves). Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Stanford EE except that it is a very good program.

Pretty sure it depends from advisor to advisor. If a course relates to your area of research, then your advisor may want you to take it.

8 courses for PhD is pretty common. MIT is even lower - I think you only have to take 4 courses.

If you want to do game theory/machine learning/vision stuff, then switching should not be too hard (especially for the former). Your probability and stats background will help you out A LOT - a lot of people in applied math directly go for a PhD in CS. Programming experience is not really important unless you want to focus on programming in your MS (One of my friends in a top CS PhD program didn't even know how to program when he started his PhD). Even doing CS theory should not be too big of a leap as long as you're good at Math. If you want to go on for a PhD later, then you will want to do some research while doing your MS and if you're doing something like game theory, it should be easy to get a head start. Also U. of Penn has a pretty decent CS program. Since that's your alma mater, have you enquired how easy it would be for you to do a Masters there itself? A lot of schools have a 5th year Masters program and some schools even let students who've graduated pursue a 5th year Masters later. Also - talk to profs in your former department. They should have some idea of what would be the appropriate path or atleast should be able to point you to the right person.

Those rankings have U. of Cambridge > Berkeley and Harvard, UCLA, Oxford and Caltech > CMU. Not very incredible, IMO.

Both are excellent schools. I'd put Toronto quite a bit above UMass though, especially for Theory and AI - though UMass is very good in AI too.