Evaluate my chances for MS Computer Science in Top US Univ

[vivek_goswami]

Please have a look at my profile and post your views regarding the following questions which I have.

Ok! So, I am applying only for Masters degree MS in Computer Science and I would be pursuing the same if I get a call from some reputed (top 15) univs.

So here is my profile:

Undergraduate: DAIICT ( a 2-tier univ in India), GPA - 9.7 /10 OR 3.88/4, 2nd rank in a class of 240 students ( I am senior undergraduate right now!).

Research Experience : At two research labs, I did two research intensive summer internships ( TIFR and PRL).

Projects: One major project in association with a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley ( my role : undergrad researcher and developer)

Publications : 1 journal publication, 4 conference publications ( all international)

Recommendations : One from a senior prof at my institute, one from a senior prof at TIFR and also from a senior engineer at PRL.

GRE Score : Quant; 800 Verbal 490 = 1290 (i think this might create problems for me ).

Please comment about my chances for getting into following univs (as well as how much funding) and also suggest some other good univ. where I can get admission :

Stanford

UC Berkeley

UIUC ( i just want to be there please, its my dream)

Georgia Tech / Purdue ( I am not sure)

Univ of Toronto Canada

I think I am missing many good univ pls suggest, also I am not sure about CMU and Cornell, I am not considering them as a option due to high tuition fee . Pls help me !

[newms]

Is there a particular reason why you are applying for the MS rather than the PhD? If you want to do research, apply for the PhD (except for Toronto which recommends you get the research based MS first). There is guaranteed funding at all those schools for PhD students (and for the MS students at Toronto). You look like you would have a strong profile and would have better chances than most at all those places, but you haven't said what your interests are - you should know what area(s) you're interested in to determine which schools would be a good fit for you.

[vivek_goswami]

Is there a particular reason why you are applying for the MS rather than the PhD? If you want to do research, apply for the PhD (except for Toronto which recommends you get the research based MS first). There is guaranteed funding at all those schools for PhD students (and for the MS students at Toronto). You look like you would have a strong profile and would have better chances than most at all those places, but you haven't said what your interests are - you should know what area(s) you're interested in to determine which schools would be a good fit for you.

I think I am not ready for a 5-7 year commitment like PhD, also there are few family related issues which bind me to come back in next three years to India . Yeah my interests basically revolves around the area of Software Engineering and particularly in Software Reliability Engineering and Malware Analysis.

Thanks for your suggestions. Can you tell me about my chances for MS at above places or suggest some other univs. Thanks a lot.

[newms]

I think you will have a pretty good shot at these schools. Keep in mind though, that some of these schools typically accept around 5% of applicants, so by 'pretty good' I mean something higher than 5% - maybe 10 -20%. It's very hard to say because these schools get so many applicants. If you look at the results on this forum from last year for those schools you'll see that many more people got rejected than accepted - there was something like 1 acceptance and 15 rejections reported on here for Toronto MS last year.

[vivek_goswami]

others pls evaluate my profile....and help me in finalizing the selection of univ for application...thanks a lot

[ASDen]

to my knowledge, where you published makes real difference

i.e. if you publish where professors from your target unis. regularly publish, it's much in you favor from a conference with nothing special but the IEEE tag for example (in other words the word international alone isn't helpful esp. when it comes to top schools)

[vivek_goswami]

to my knowledge, where you published makes real difference

i.e. if you publish where professors from your target unis. regularly publish, it's much in you favor from a conference with nothing special but the IEEE tag for example (in other words the word international alone isn't helpful esp. when it comes to top schools)

Hi ASDen,

I agree with your comment. My research profile is as follows:

Research Experience : I did two summer research internship at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahemdabad and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay. These were very productive and I got publications out of these internship. These internship dealt with Software Reliability Engineering and Malware analysis. I also worked on UC Berkeley ICTD project for about one and half year as Undergrad researcher and developer and we got paper out of this to be published in ICTD 2010 (Tier 1 conference).

Publications :

1 journal publication

4 International conference publications ( one student Paper (Tier 2 conference - ISSRE) on Software Reliability Engineering , one on Malware Analysis(Tier 2 Conference ) , one Tier I conference (ICTD) , and one in international conference ( Tier III) )

Responsibilities: Invited Reviewer - Software Quality Journal, Springer , Teaching Assistant for Intro to Programming course at DAIICT.