Keen on pursuing MS Fall 2015 with interest in Info Retrieval and Machine Learning

[Gjena]

Hi,

 

I'm an international student applying for MS Fall 2015. My interest areas are Information Retrieval and Machine Learning.

 

My profile is as follows:

 

College: Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Pune, India
Branch: Computer Science Engineering
Field of Interest: Computer Science 
Degree Goal (MS/PhD): MS (Machine Learning and Information Retrieval)
GPA/Percentage: 3.7/4 
Your rank in your class: 1 or 2
GRE: 324 (161 V, 163 Q)
TOEFL: giving in Nov
12th grade: 90%
10th grade: 93%
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Internships: 
Summer Internship at Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (one of the top schools in the country)
Also, exchange semester on scholarship at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (GPA 4.1/5) 
Research workshop at Carnegie Mellon for a few days (75 students selected globally, 3 from India)
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Submitted or Accepted Publications: 
1. Poster presentation at Grace Hopper conference, USA
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Projects:
1. Neighbourly renewable energy harvesting (presented at Grace Hopper)
2. Modifications to edX platform
3. Automated sharing for communal progress
4. Developed software for automation based project
5. Miscellaneous projects for coursework and some independent mini-projects
6. Few projects in Physics which were presented and accepted at international and national conferences
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Recommendations:
1. Chair of CS, U of Pittsburgh (mentor for renewable energy project)
2. HOD, college
3. Assoc. Prof, college
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Misc Achievements:
1. Google Student Ambassador
2. Indian Institute of Science Summer School participant and problem solving winner at the same
3. Best Poster at Raman Memorial Conference, Pune U
4. Founder and president of Google club in college, few posts in other clubs/activities
5. Past scholarship at BITS-Dubai, Boston U, Auckland Int'l College
6. Governor's Gold Medal for 10th board exam result

 

I'll be applying to CMU, U Penn, maybe UCB, NYU, USC, ETH Zurich, EPFL, U Toronto, Waterloo, maybe Gatech, maybe UT Austin. Still looking at few other schools.

 

What would be my chances at these universities? Any other universities I should consider? Thanks!

[milara]

You seem like a pretty strong candidate to me!

 

The one thing I'm noticing that is really missing from all of the posts like yours is that people are not talking at length about their own goals/research interests. Do you want academia or industry upon graduation? What do you want to do with information retrieval and machine learning? Those are huge areas of interest and it could mean many different things.

 

IME, once you have established your competency, what decides your admission is related to how well you match professors on the faculty who are looking for more students. If the professors that suit your interests are full up with no room for more students, then you could be the second coming of Alan Turing and it wouldn't matter.