Please evaluate my profile

[yamamotomiechan]

Hi I applied to 9 universities as a candidate for M.S and Ph.D in USA. Application deadline has already gone, but I am worried about my application.

I would like somebody to evaluate my profile and want to hear some opinion about my possibility to get into the universities I applied.

I am a Japanese and graduated from the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at a university in Japan this year which is a good university, but not top ranked university.

I am interested in Machine Learning. My graduation thesis is about creating a computer language and this thesis is selected in ICIS2010.

GPA: 3.73/4

TOEFL ibt:86

GRE: Q:790, V:310, AQ:3.5

Research Experience: a poster paper with Peer Review,Proceedings of the 9th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science(ICIS2010)

an oral presentation without Peer Review in a conference in Japan.

Two national Qualifications: Software Design & Development Engineer and Fundamental Information Technology Engineer.

These are very famous qualifications in Japan. But I think professors in U.S.A do not know about these qualifications.

Are they worthless in U.S.A?

Work Experience:

Computer Engineer as a VBA programmer for a half-year, a part-time teacher for C language and fundamental algorithm for a half-year, computer engineer for making a web-site with PHP(Smarty), MySQL, and FileMaker Pro for around 3 years.

The Universities I applied.

1. Ohio State University

2. Purdue University

3. North Carolina State University

4. University of Maryland-College Park

5. University of Wisconsin-Madison

6. University of California-San Diego

7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

8. Princeton University

9. MIT

The universities I applied are very competitive so that I am worried about my possibility to be accepted. The time of applications in U.S.A is very different from one in Japan.

So if I were not accepted by any university, I would not know what to do.

[newms]

I'm interested in Machine Learning as well and applied to Michigan as well. As you probably know MIT and Princeton are extremely competitive so it would be very difficult to get into those 2 in particular. UCSD, Purdue, UMCP, Michigan and Wisconsin are top 20 schools so they will be difficult to get into as well, though not as hard as MIT and Princeton. You have research experience, which is good, so I would guess (depending on how good your SoP and LoR are, and how well you fit) that you should get into a at least a couple of these schools. Ohio State and NCSU are not as highly ranked as the others so you should stand a pretty decent chance at those two. Your verbal GRE is a little low, but that isn't too important for CS GRE. Is your ToEFL score ok?

Btw what areas in machine learning are you into?

Edited December 19, 2010 by newms

[yamamotomiechan]

Thank you for your quick response!

About TOEFL score.

I could not get the minimum score for MIT in the end. But I could get the score over the minimum score in other universities.

However, as you said, my score 86 is a little bit low. So I am also worried about that.

About Machine Learning.

To tell the truth, I do not have any research experience about Machine Learning. So I do not have deep knowledge about Machine Learning.

As I said, I created a computer language which is specialized at Web exploring and Web Mashup.

I am interested in developing new tools and approaches to solve many problems around the Web Space, such as the difficulty of searching information accurately on the Web and utilize useful data on the Web.

To solve the problem, I want to study Machine Learning deeply. Also I am interested in Data Mining.

That's why I chose this research area.

What about you?

[newms]

I'm into reinforcement learning and unsupervised learning algorithms.

[starmaker]

There's a lot of machine learning folks here, though we seem to be into different aspects of it. I'm into neuro/bio-inspired computing, robotics, and computational perception.

yamamotomiechan, I think you're right that most people in the US don't know about your qualifications, unless they have ties to Japanese industry.

I honestly don't think your industry engineering experience will be that useful for getting into PhD programs - it's not research-related enough. It might help with MS programs, though. The fact that you have research experience and publications will help will PhD programs. The teaching experience might help with both MS and PhD programs, because it might help you get a TAship.

Your verbal GRE score is very low, but some programs will not care as much about that as others.