Please provide feedback on my list of schools (for NLP/ML)

[cicada2014]

Hi all, was looking to get feedback on my list of schools (applying for Fall 2015).

 

Brief background:

 

Undergrad: Electrical Engineering from a top 10 school. GPA: 3.7

Grad: MS in Mathematics from a decent school (their math department is top 5). GPA: 3.8

GRE: 168/165 Q/V

Publications: 1 publication at a mid-tier conference, 1 workshop publication (the workshop is of decent repute). Hopefully will have another one under my belt by the time I apply

Research experience: This is where my red flag is. I don’t have any “official” research experience with a professor. The above publications were result of personal projects (with occasional guidance from professors) and/or class projects. My function at my current company is in an R&D role, but doubt that will help.

LoR: Should be good-to-excellent, though probably not “top 5 students ever” category.

 

Current List (my interest is in NLP and Machine Learning). Incidentally, these are the schools I identified as having both strong NLP and ML faculty. If I’ve missed any, please let me know (of course, the top 4 are good at both but I don’t think I have a realistic shot at Stanford, MIT, or CMU).

 

Berkeley

U Washington

UCSD

UCLA

Columbia

Upenn

Brown

USC

NYU

Edited February 14, 2014 by cicada2014

[dat_nerd]

I think you'd be a strong fit for UIUC. 

 

Others to consider:

Cornell

UT Austin

GA Tech

UMass Amherst

[ironmaiden]

Georgia Tech has very strong Machine Learning presence: http://ml.cc.gatech.edu/

Particularly in NLP, a rockstar would be Jacob Eisenstein: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jeisenst/

[PhDerp]

UMass, especially under McCallum. He's world-famous for his contributions to NLP. He's also a sweetie. Like, the man taught me that you can be respected and compassionate at the same time in academia. There's another professor who just started at UMass recently who's applying NLP to the medical domain. Her name is Hong Yu.

There's also the CMU Language Technologies Institute.

EDIT: Also, double check UCLA. I SAS going to apply there this year, but didn't think there was as much NLP going on there any more, so I skipped it. But I did this whole thing really backwards and chose schools based on location, THEN checked for research fit, lol

Edited February 15, 2014 by PhDerp

[Icydubloon]

Apply for the top 4 anyway. You might get in. 

[moolriaz]

Apply to the top 4. I got into one of the top four with no pubs, lower GRE than you. It's all about the references I think.

[cicada2014]

Thanks all!

I might apply to Stanford as well then, given that they are ridiculously strong at both NLP and ML.

I looked into UMass, and know about McCallum, but I don't think their ML department is strong. I also looked into UIUC but wanted to live in a more urban area.

But thanks all for the suggestions!

[DeleteMePlease]

Apply to the schools you want to go to and forget about rankings (at least for one or two ).

 

I have the feeling that if you are really interested in a program that your SoP for that school will be much stronger. And that adcoms look for people who know what they are applying to and do not only apply because of prestige. 

But this is just my personal opinion!