Profile Evaluation

[medivh]

Hi dear members. I am in need of urgent profile evaluation and recommendations to improve my chances.

I am applying for PhD. to US universities. I am working on computer architecture so sometimes this area is placed under CS and sometimes ECE.

Here is my profile.

CS UG GPA: 3.18 (CS Courses GPA:3.38)

CS MS GPA: 3.88

TOEFL: 108 (R:28 L:30 S:26 W:24)

GRE: 1110 (Q:780 V:330 AW:4)

Publications: 1 Poster at international conference and a short paper. (will submit a paper to a well known conference but will get results in February)

Research: 3rd rank during undergraduate studies at national CPU development competition. Have been working as RA at my university on several topics (Also working as TA). Have been to INRIA as a visiting researcher and did collaborative work.

Work Exp.: Worked as software developer / intern at two companies for 7 months.

LOR: One from my own advisor (expect it to be good), one from the professor I have worked with in France (Well known person and expect him to write good things), third from probably a professor who knows me from classes from which I get good grades.

Can you please tell me about my chances to get acceptance from following universities.

1- Carnegie Mellon University (have met a professor during a conference and he wanted me remind him after application)

2- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

3- University Texas-Austin

4- Cornell

5- Georgia Tech

6- University of California San-Diego

7- Ohio State University

8- Penn. State University (my advisor's university. can recommend to his own advisor.)

9- University of Utah

10-Rochester

11-Northeastern

12-Syracuse

I am aware of that most of these universities are hard to get acceptance. But please write something even if there is no chance.

[newms]

Well I would say that your best shot would be at Penn State as long as your advisor's advisor has space for new students. As you know, CMU, UIUC, Texas, Cornell and Georgia Tech are top 10 schools and are very competitive, so your chances there, while pretty good because of your research and publications, will still be hard to predict, because of the vast number of applications these schools get. UCSD is a top 20 school and you should have good chances there. The other schools are outside the top 20 and you should have very good chances at those places as long as they have space for new students in your area. Overall it seems that you will have a strong application and if you applied to all those schools then I would guess that you should get into most of them. Just make sure that you have a strong and focused SoP. The one thing that I'm concerned about in your application is that third LOR - letters that only say you did well in class don't count for much at PhD programs. Best of luck!

Edited October 21, 2010 by newms

[medivh]

Well I would say that your best shot would be at Penn State as long as your advisor's advisor has space for new students. As you know, CMU, UIUC, Texas, Cornell and Georgia Tech are top 10 schools and are very competitive, so your chances there, while pretty good because of your research and publications, will still be hard to predict, because of the vast number of applications these schools get. UCSD is a top 20 school and you should have good chances there. The other schools are outside the top 20 and you should have very good chances at those places as long as they have space for new students in your area. Overall it seems that you will have a strong application and if you applied to all those schools then I would guess that you should get into most of them. Just make sure that you have a strong and focused SoP. The one thing that I'm concerned about in your application is that third LOR - letters that only say you did well in class don't count for much at PhD programs. Best of luck!

Thank you so much for your answer. I am aware that top 10 even 20 is not easy to get acceptance. I have tried to select universities with big computer architecture groups. So that there will be more professors which might want to work with me.

But unfortunately there is not so many safe universities with good computer architecture research groups. In most of them there is just one or two.

About third LOR: For one of the courses I took (Aspect Oriented Development) we had a project and at the end of the course we wrote a paper and did presentation about our work at a local conference run in our university. Professor was always giving positive comments about our work since we did something different from other groups. Instead of just doing some implementation we have compared different approaches to re-factor legacy code and showed how Aspect Oriented approach can be beneficial. I can ask him to write LOR and maybe he can mention this work. But I am not sure. I also got an A from that course but the problem is that the course is not related to my research area.

I am worried about my GRE Verbal score. I am not good at memorizing words and I do have lots of work to do (TA, RA etc.) I hope that I wont get rejection by some automated system or removed by some excel macro.

[newms]

Thank you so much for your answer. I am aware that top 10 even 20 is not easy to get acceptance. I have tried to select universities with big computer architecture groups. So that there will be more professors which might want to work with me.

But unfortunately there is not so many safe universities with good computer architecture research groups. In most of them there is just one or two.

About third LOR: For one of the courses I took (Aspect Oriented Development) we had a project and at the end of the course we wrote a paper and did presentation about our work at a local conference run in our university. Professor was always giving positive comments about our work since we did something different from other groups. Instead of just doing some implementation we have compared different approaches to re-factor legacy code and showed how Aspect Oriented approach can be beneficial. I can ask him to write LOR and maybe he can mention this work. But I am not sure. I also got an A from that course but the problem is that the course is not related to my research area.

I am worried about my GRE Verbal score. I am not good at memorizing words and I do have lots of work to do (TA, RA etc.) I hope that I wont get rejection by some automated system or removed by some excel macro.

Yes your GRE Verbal is on the low side, but most, if not all, top 10 schools do not really consider GRE. Also for those schools that look at the GRE, the quant score is what they look at for Computer Science. They will have your SoP and your TOEFL score to show that you have a good enough command of the English language. Just make sure you have a good SoP and you should be ok.

[medivh]

Yes your GRE Verbal is on the low side, but most, if not all, top 10 schools do not really consider GRE. Also for those schools that look at the GRE, the quant score is what they look at for Computer Science. They will have your SoP and your TOEFL score to show that you have a good enough command of the English language. Just make sure you have a good SoP and you should be ok.

As you have mentioned SoP for several times can you list what should be included in SoP or direct me to some place where I can find some examples to get the idea.

[newms]

As you have mentioned SoP for several times can you list what should be included in SoP or direct me to some place where I can find some examples to get the idea.

Here are a couple Computer Science related links for writing an SoP that can help you.

http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/

http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/sop.shtml