Profile Evaluation for MS C.S. Fall 2013

[RD16]

Hi everyone,

I finished my undergraduation from University of Pune in July'2011. I worked for about 11 months as a web application developer after which I took a break to give my GRE, study some French and explore the field of computational linguistics ( I didn't have it in my undergraduate curriculum).I intend to apply for a master's program to schools that are reputed for NLP as well as data management (database management systems, information retrieval, data mining).

My profile is :

3.23/4.0 GPA overall , 3.37/4.0 major GPA

GRE : 160 Quant (760/800) 158 Verbal (580/800) 4.0 AWA

Toefl: 117/120

I have shortlisted the following universities :

Ambitious

Columbia

GaTech

CMU-INI & CMU-LTI

Northwestern

Moderate

JHU

USC

Univ of Colorado Boulder

UC Santa Cruz

Safe

ASU

Univ of Rochester

Indiana Bloomington

UFL at Gainsville

I have tried to enhance my profile by doing a course on algorithms on coursera and doing mini projects in NLP.

My questions are :

1) Is any one aware of the reputation of database research at Colorado Boulder and JHU ? Their NLP staff is pretty reputed.

2) Should I exchange one of the 'safe's with UMBC ?

3) Do you think my application may not even get processed in the ambitious universities ?

4) Will a gap of a couple of months (after leaving work in June'12 till applications Nov'12) be thought of negatively ? I have mentioned all the NLP exploration that I did in that period in my SOP.

5) How is the quality of the C.S program in the moderate & safe ? I have done my research and find them pretty good, but I could do with a second opinion.

Please suggest any other univs that I could consider.

Thanks !