Please help me find the "range" of schools I should apply to

[crashandburn]

Hi!

I graduated from a B.Tech. in Engineering Physics course from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2007:

GPA: 2.8/4 (there are 3 semesters, semesters 2nd,3rd and 4th during which I did really badly rest have a semester specific GPA of >= 3/4)

Research work:

• Internship in defense research and development organization's optics lab in adaptive optics, did good work in numerical methods and algorithms. My supervisor was a mid-level research scientist who is one of my recomenders
• one year undergraduate project: mostly physics related (study of surface plasmon resonance in nano-particles) but I did numerical analysis and simulation work by my own initiative. My supervisor was a professor who is comfortable with writing a strong recommendation for me.
  
  • working as a software engineer and work with Expert systems, and Domain Specific Languages and their editors. My boss is somewhat known in his field and is also one of my recommenders.
  • learned theory of neural networks and implemented a java class library for neural networks by myself, learned theory of compilers and wrote parsers/lexers/translators by myself (these assertions will hopefully be verified in the letters of recommendation)

GRE scores: quantitative: 800, verbal: 640

TOEFL score: 103

Why do I have a low GPA?: I feel like an idiot for this but for a period of ~1.5 years I wanted to be a professional musician, (it did kind of work and I play with local bands in my city (mostly to pass my time on weekends and earn some extra cash)) and I spent most of time trying to accomplish that.

I realize that this is a very unconventional background for a CS Ph.D. Do I stand a chance? And if I do, which schools should I apply to?

Edited October 28, 2010 by crashandburn

[OH YEAH]

What classes have you taken in CS? What do you want to do research in?

My guess would be > 20, as you don't seem to have much CS background and you have a low GPA.