University suggestion for Masters in Operations Research or Scientific Computing

[fightorflight]

Details: 

GRE: 332 (VR: 169 QR: 163 AWA: 3.0)

TOEFL: 109 (R: 30 L: 30 S: 24 W: 25)

Undergraduate score: 89/100. Silver medal, Osmania University, India in Mechanical Engineering

2 years of experience in a large organisation and 1 year in a start-up as a physics simulations Engineer. Expertise in non linear finite element analysis and structural optimization.

My interest is in Operations Research/Optimization/Scientific Computing.

Which universities in the United States do you think I have a fair chance? Personally I have seen a few other websites suggesting these universities:

Reach: University of Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech

May/May not: Ohio State, University of Massacusetts-Amherst, University Of Washington, Texas A&M university, UT-Austin

Safe: NCSU, ASU, 

 

 

[robot_control]

I just wanted to point out something. OR and scientific computing are very different fields, with very different course requirements, and very different career outcomes. Look at programs, their course listings, and most importantly alumni placement before deciding whether it is suited to your needs and tastes. OR is basically optimization and some applied statistics. The focus is clearly on problem solving and applications are primarily in business, economics, and possibly information technology.

Sci. Comp. is totally different. There people view computation strictly as a tool to understand physical phenomena. You'll be taking courses on PDEs, finite element analysis etc. There could be some overlap in areas like stochastic simulations, but Sci. Comp. will use it strictly as a tool for something like computational material science.

Think about what you want to do after MS - data crunching in banks, analytic firms, software, data sciences etc. are better served by OR. Anything involving CFD, climate modelling, computational biology etc. in places like national labs or R&D labs is Sci. Comp. domain.

[fightorflight]

My interest is primarily in optimization. I am inclined to go for a PhD after this. So, what industry I could get into is not my immediate concern. However, because my experience is in using FEA in conjunction with optimization algorithms, I considered applying to one or two scientific computing programs. But since optimization generally falls under OR, it is my first choice.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. 

[robot_control]

Sci. Comp. programs don't really deal with optimization. Certainly not at the algorithmic or computational level. Some sci. comp. applications do use optimization, but it is mostly just formulating an very simple optimization problem and passing it on to a numerical optimizer (they don't write the optimizer themselves).

My limited point is that there is very little overlap between the two programs. I have seen quite a few who applied to MS/PhD programs without exactly realizing the aims, topics, and scope of the programs, and became very frustrated later on. Just do your research well, and apply to the appropriate one. Best wishes

Edited October 13, 2015 by robot_control