Machine Learning Grad Schools

[anantag]

Hello Everyone,

 

I am a Fall 2013 applicant, about to pursue a MS in CS with a specialization in Applied Machine Learning. Even though I am waiting for most of my results, I wanted an opinion regarding the following universities considering both a specialization and a general CS (non thesis) program. 

 

1. NCSU

2. UT, Austin

3. UBC, Canda

4. Univ. of Utah

5. TAMU

6. UCI

7. SUNY Stony Brook

8. SUNY BUffalo

9. Iowa SU

10. Rutgers, New Brunswick

11. Univ. of Cincinnati

 

Thank You.

[OGTuring]

UT Austin is almost certainly the best place for M.L. on your list.  UT has a prodigious research output and labs that cover a great range of AI subfields: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ai-lab/lab-list.php

 

While I'm not familiar with every school on your list, I know UC Irvine has a vibrant ML culture as well.  Their ML point-man, Padhraic Smyth, advised Netflix on their million dollar competition.  Similarly, I've seen some cool reinforcement learning projects come out of Rutgers.

[DFitz]

I'm going to hijack this thread and add a few schools that I'd like to see compared for their ML programs:

 

UT Austin

CMU

Cornell

Columbia

UC San Diego

 

Can anyone weigh in? Or, a general list of the top ML schools would be helpful. You never know whether to trust the rankings on google and it would be helpful to hear input from those in the know.

[OGTuring]

CMU is probably the best place for ML.  They have their own Machine Learning department: http://www.ml.cmu.edu/  CMU is, IMO, only rivaled by Berkeley (since they have Michael Jordan, who is to ML as the other Michael Jordan is to basketball) and MIT with their AI Laboratory.

 

UT Austin would probably be second on your list.  Cornell, Columbia, and UCSD are, obviously, all great schools, but I think the only way to compare them would be to specify an ML subfield.  U. Washington, Standford, and Georgia Tech all have outstanding ML research as well and are probably better overall in ML than the above three.  In fact, look for UW to climb towards the top in the coming years; they recently poached some big names (Ben Taskar, Carlos Guestrin, and Emily Fox) from CMU and Penn.  Lastly, don't overlook UMass Amherst.  Although they are not generally regarded as an 'elite' CS department, their AI/ML is very strong and ranks higher than Cornell, Columbia, and UCSD in US News' AI rankings.