Stanford MSCS Advice

[Aphirox]

I am a 2nd year student at UC Berkeley who will graduate in 3 years (currently 3.77 gpa cs major). I have worked at Stanford since junior year in highschool at a Neuroscience laboratory, where I have developed a very good relationship with the professor. I have worked on different models using machine learning that analyze post doc's microscopy images. One of the papers which I am coauthor in is published in Cell Journal and I am working with 3 other post doc to publish another paper this year that includes my deep learning segmentation model. The professor has already gave me good praise and said he would write a very good recommendation for me. However, I am slightly worried that the Professor is in the biology department and not a computer scientist.

I want to maximize my chances, so I am asking for what I should do next in the coming 11 months. I know Stanford requires 3 recommendation letters and I currently only have 1. I plan to pursue research at UC Berkeley this semester but that will only lead me to have 1 more recommendation letter (its a rush because of the 3 year graduation). I have accepted an internship at Amazon this summer and I was wondering if its a good idea if the manager wrote me a recommendation letter? I have not yet taken the GRE (I plan to this semester).

I want to study Artificial Intelligence and I know how competitive this field is, especially at a university like Stanford, so I know its a long shot, but I appreciate any advice to increase my chances. I will probably raise my gpa to around 3.85 (due to easier classes) by the time I apply if that help.

Next year, I will only apply to Stanford MSCS program (if I don't get in, I'll work and apply next year). I know this may sound dumb to some, but Stanford has always been my dream (for various reasons besides just brand name) and if I get a masters, I want it to be from there.

[philipjames11]

For what it's worth I also interned at Amazon, however I avoided a recommendation from my manager as I did not work on a related field to my PhD applications. I would only recommend a recommendation from someone at Amazon if you do related research/something in your field of interest that you can almost directly relate to what you would like to do in graduate school. At the end of the day it's up to you, but I believe for PhD applications it is generally better to get recommendations from professors.