My chance for getting a PHD (with funding) in Computer Science

[NickZ]

Hi there:

I'm an international student from a small European country. I'll be applying for a phd in Computer Science in a reasonably good university in USA in Fall 2011.

Basic info about me:

Currently doing a MSc in Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Grades unknown yet.

Undergrad was also in Computer Science, with GPA = 3.3 after transformation into the US system. It's low, I know.

I had one publication, as the third author (and the last author) in one of the CS conferences in my country. It was not in English, so many of you might not even know it.

GRE: verbal:510, quant: 800

Toefl: 110

I've got other experiences such as working in non-profit organizations in quite a few places like Africa, etc. But those really have nothing to do with the field (computer science) in which I'm applying for a phd.

So what are the universities that I should consider applying for? Assuming I get good grades, and do well in my thesis (like 10% at Oxford). It will be great if you could give me a few EXAMPLES(just an example: U of Washington. Possible?? Impossible??) so that I'll know my position when I apply.

In addition, I've got the following questions:

1. If I do well(get good grades) in my MSc at Oxford, can it make up my poor gpa for undergrad? I know admission committee will look at many aspects of an applicant, so here I'm talking about making up the low undergrad gpa with my MSc grades. No other aspects (like research, recommend letter etc ...) get involved in.

2. Oxford University is, at least in Europe, a very famous university. Does that help when I apply for a phd in USA? I know USA has quite a few famous universities as good as Oxbridge, if not better. Will they buy the brand of "Oxford" when considering applicants?

3. Recommendation Letters: does a letter from Oxford carry any weight even if it's not from USA? I'm assuming that, for the worst situation, my recommender has NOT been heard of by a particular school I apply to.

Thank you very much for your time, and I really look forward to hearing some advice from you.

[newms]

Hey. I'm going to take a shot at answering your questions. You should know though that the most important thing that CS adcomms consider is your research potential, and a large part of that is your research experience, so without knowing your research experience I can't say how strong your application will be. A publication (even if it's a third author) will help your application a lot. Here are a couple links by CS profs about what they look for in applicants:

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

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf

Another big consideration by adcomms is how well you fit at that department. So I can't give you an exact idea of which school you should apply to, you're going to have to look at the research being done at the various schools and see which ones are your best fit. I would say though, that a publication will probably give you a shot at a top school like U Washington - not a big shot, mind you, since top 10 schools usually accept only around 5% of applicants. So I would suggest you apply to a range of schools (maybe 1 or 2 top 10s, 2 or 3 top 30s, 1 or 2 top 50s) that have strong research that matches your interests.

To answer your other questions:

1) Grades aren't very important at the Master's level as long as you meet the minimum needed. So really a 4.0 GPA at the MSc isn't going to impress the schools much, what will impress them is glowing letters from your advisors/profs as well as research experience. So you really should try to get as much quality research experience as you can at the Master's level.

2) The reputation of Oxford will help somewhat, what will matter much more is what your LoR writers say about you.

3) In CS, conferences are pretty important - in fact that's where most of the top research gets presented. Chances are, your profs at Oxford would have been to quite a few international conferences and it's quite possible that profs in the US will know profs at Oxford if they're well regarded in the field. So it is very possible that profs in the US will know or know about profs at Oxford and will consider their recommendation carefully.

[NickZ]

Many thanks for the response. Those are indeed reasonable answers.

Any other inputs, guys?