Aim I aiming too high? (PhD Fall 2016)

[GitInTheCloud]

Hello, I'm trying to figure out if I'm aiming too high and any advice or reality checks are highly appreciated.

GPA: 3.8 from average university (not top 50 for CS)

GRE: 157V, 158Q - Retaking November

Letters: 1 from professor who knows me well and has done research with meme (very supportive!), 1 from professor who is famous and has done research with meme (supportive, but moody and busy) and one from either my advisor or lecturer (neither will be very special)

Research: 1.5 years of full time research after graduation in SE, NLP, Databases and ML.

Publications: third author on journal

Pending publications: second author ICSE, 4th-6th author ICSE, first author VLDB

Applying for all the big STEM fellowships as I'm American. I've gotten lots of help on my NSF application from my two good letter writers and a former winner. I'm also an older student, so I don't know if that hurts (28).

Target schools: Harvard, Brown, WashU, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, UPenn, Yale

If these are all a major reach, I'm considering applying to masters and would apply to Georgia Tech, UCSD and UVirginia.

All schools are in order of faculty I would like to research under because I like their work.

[svent]

I don't see how GT, UCSD, and UVA can be safeties.

[GitInTheCloud]

I would only be applying to their masters programs, not their PhD. I know GT isn't a safety in any regards, so that would also be a reach but I've gotten pretty friendly emails from potential advisors from UCSD and UVA. 

[svent]

Doesn't matter. Everything is extremely competitive. You're aiming way too high. You have a solid GPA, but not from a powerhouse school, lousy GRE Q score, decent recs, and probably pretty good research. The people applying to the top 20 schools will be superstars. Maybe you get in to one of them, but you need some safer options.

[GitInTheCloud]

Thanks for the feedback! This is actually the kind of stuff I wanted to hear because I don't have enough money to waste on application fees that are an automatic no. I guess I'll scrap the top 30 schools and look more into the 60+ range! Thank you, svent.

[svent]

Not necessarily scrap, you should still apply to a few, you never know if you'll get in if you don't try. But take it from me, I applied to Math Ph.D. programs several years ago. 7 schools in top 30 (mostly top 20, but only 1 top 10), and a couple safeties ranked around 50-60. Got rejected by my safeties, and only got into one school (off the waitlist, after 4/15). And that was a while ago, things only get more competitive each and every year.

Unfortunately, there's no longer a CS subject test to weed out some of the weaker applicants. At least in Math, we have that to differentiate ourselves. But the general GRE doesn't measure a whole heck of a lot. Unless of course you actually have a Math background and want to study CS theory, then you can ace the subject test and stand out.

Edited September 9, 2015 by svent