please evaluate my profile

[kobeallen]

I want to apply to about 15 universities at about top30 such as from berkeley, stanford, gatech, purdue to UCSB, penn state.

I got bachelor degree from a Chinese university and I am doing master degree in wright state university.

GPA: 80/100 in undergraduate 3.85/4 in master

I have two papers in review. One is in VLDB 2012 and another one is SIGMOD 2012. I am the first author in both of them. I also have one paper accepted in SSDBM 2011 as the second author. Besides, I got some awards in ACM international collegiate programming contest

GRE: 700+800+3.0

I also have a question about whether my resident status can decrease my difficulty of admission because now I am permanent resident of USA. Does it mean I don't need compete to many excellent international student so I will have great chance to enrolled into top tier universities?

Please evaluate my chance to get into these universities.

Thanks a lot!

[OH YEAH]

VLDB and SIGMOD are the best of the best database conferences, so if your papers are real contenders (and your letters of recommendation indicate this, and come from professors who one would believe) I think you've got a great shot. Being a resident of the USA might increase your chances ever so slightly, but not as much as being a masters student reduces your chances. If those papers got in, and you just had your bachelors, I'd say you'd get in anywhere you wanted. As a masters student, it is less impressive since you have had a year (or worse, two) to do more research than the other applicants. I think you still would have a great shot for top 10-20 schools if those got in, though. When will you hear back from the adcomm? Can you update your application while it is in review to say that they were accepted?

Edited November 19, 2011 by OH YEAH

[kobeallen]

VLDB and SIGMOD are the best of the best database conferences, so if your papers are real contenders (and your letters of recommendation indicate this, and come from professors who one would believe) I think you've got a great shot. Being a resident of the USA might increase your chances ever so slightly, but not as much as being a masters student reduces your chances. If those papers got in, and you just had your bachelors, I'd say you'd get in anywhere you wanted. As a masters student, it is less impressive since you have had a year (or worse, two) to do more research than the other applicants. I think you still would have a great shot for top 10-20 schools if those got in, though. When will you hear back from the adcomm? Can you update your application while it is in review to say that they were accepted?

I just studied my master program this January. My VLDB is under extra discussion now and the result will come out this month

[Amogh]

@kobeallen I think you should consider the entire top 50 and choose 15 schools doing great work in Databases and apply to those instead of going just on the rankings. If your papers get admitted, your chances of getting in will skyrocket. Don't think too much about the master's degree reducing your chances. professors will bat for a good student if they are impressed no matter what the other credentials are. So get good Letters and apply and keep your fingers crossed .