Need help for selecting Universities for MS in CS

[amitkt07]

Hi folks, I am from India. I gave my GRE and scored 1250( Q690 V560 AWA 2.5) In TOEFL i got 101( 23 ,23,26,29) I have an aggregate og 55% from Pune University which i think equals a B and have an A in the last year. Please let me know from the list of the following universities, which of them are amitious or moderate or safe

Florida Institute of Technology

IUPUI

North Carolina State Univ

NorthEastern Univ

NYU Poly Technic

San Jose state Univ

Univ od Santa Clara

Stevens Institute of Tech

univ of florida

Univ Of massacheusets dartmouth

UNCC

Washington state univ

university of georgia

Ohio State University

Univ Of minnesota

Syracuse University

WUSTL

Iowa State University

[starmaker]

I'd be happy to answer your question for the programs that I know about if you give me some information. You just rattled off some numbers that are mostly useful for beating cutoffs, and expected a serious answer about your chances. For some reason, CS applicants seem really prone to doing this (I'm in CS, so I spend plenty of time on that subforum). I know nothing about your research & development experience, your subfield(s) of interest, the quality of your recommendations and the faculty writing them, or whether you have a clear reason to be interested in these specific programs. I'm in one of these programs, so at the very least I could help you on that one, but I need something more than GPA, GRE, and TOEFL.

[amitkt07]

I'd be happy to answer your question for the programs that I know about if you give me some information. You just rattled off some numbers that are mostly useful for beating cutoffs, and expected a serious answer about your chances. For some reason, CS applicants seem really prone to doing this (I'm in CS, so I spend plenty of time on that subforum). I know nothing about your research & development experience, your subfield(s) of interest, the quality of your recommendations and the faculty writing them, or whether you have a clear reason to be interested in these specific programs. I'm in one of these programs, so at the very least I could help you on that one, but I need something more than GPA, GRE, and TOEFL.

Hi Starmaker.... I am currentl working in Persistent Systems Limited in India as a Software Engineer. I will have a years experience till i join a college in Fall 2011. I am well aquainted with technologies like Silverlight, WPF, MVVM design pattern, C#, .NET Framework 4 .. My final year project was sponsored by the same company and was titled Video Annotations in Social Networking Sites. I also had given a seminar on CLoud Computing during my engineering. I will be taking recomendations from my HOD, a professor who had taught me 4 subjects and also guided me in the practivals related to those subjects. And my third reco will be from my project mentor who guided me during my final year, she is a Senior Team Lead and having an experience of 9+ years. I am new to the industry with just 5 months of experience .... i dont think i am inclined to any particular field...( is this bad ? ) ....

[starmaker]

i dont think i am inclined to any particular field...( is this bad ? ) ....

For an MS program, it is not necessarily bad, but if the MS program requires a thesis (which many don't), the admissions committee might worry that you don't have the focus to complete it. You should probably pick a couple of interesting subfields to talk about in your statement of purpose, at any rate.

I think you would be competitive for Northeastern - they like people with industry experience, even a relatively small amount of it, and have strong software engineering faculty and courses. If you are at all interested in programming language design, they are considered a top department in that area.

Many of your listed schools, I don't know much about. But I think you would be a very strong applicant for Stevens and UMass-Dartmouth, and a competitive one for Syracuse or NYU-Polytechnic. Ohio State and University of Florida might be stretches, but neither is out of the question and both are probably worth applying to.

I would suggest going to Petersons.com and looking for programs with a large number of part-time students. This is because programs with many part-time students also tend to be programs that like applicants with industry experience or a preference for software engineering or other industry-oriented areas.

[amitkt07]

For an MS program, it is not necessarily bad, but if the MS program requires a thesis (which many don't), the admissions committee might worry that you don't have the focus to complete it. You should probably pick a couple of interesting subfields to talk about in your statement of purpose, at any rate.

I think you would be competitive for Northeastern - they like people with industry experience, even a relatively small amount of it, and have strong software engineering faculty and courses. If you are at all interested in programming language design, they are considered a top department in that area.

Many of your listed schools, I don't know much about. But I think you would be a very strong applicant for Stevens and UMass-Dartmouth, and a competitive one for Syracuse or NYU-Polytechnic. Ohio State and University of Florida might be stretches, but neither is out of the question and both are probably worth applying to.

I would suggest going to Petersons.com and looking for programs with a large number of part-time students. This is because programs with many part-time students also tend to be programs that like applicants with industry experience or a preference for software engineering or other industry-oriented areas.

Thanks a lot Starmaker....