Profile evaluation: Stanford/Cornell

[rohtak]

Hi all,

I am applying for PhD admissions, Fall 2010 and would greatly appreciate if you could kindly evaluate my chances of getting an admit in any of the following universities:

1) MIT EECS/Media Lab

2) Berkeley

3) CMU

4) Cornell

5) UIUC

6) Stanford

7) University of Washington

My profile:

1) GRE General: 1370 (780Q+590V), AW:4

2) TOEFL: 108(R:30, L:30, S:24, W:24)

3) GRE CS: 820 (86%)

4) Grad GPA: 6.5/8.0 (M.E., Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India)

5) Undergrad GPA: 71% (B.E., NSIT/DCE, University of Delhi, one of top colleges in India)

Scholastic honors:

1) All India Rank 3 - GATE CS (for admission to graduate schools in India)

2) One of the 6 students selected to the prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), India (as a research scholar).

3) World Semifinalist (top finisher from India) Microsoft Imagine Cup (Algorithms)

4) Earned maximum number of course credits in the entire batch of Computer Science,

IISc, 2007-09. I completed 50 credits (13 courses) against the stipulated requirement of

40 credits (generally, 10 courses)

5) Selected for "The 2010 Winter School on Machine Learning and Computer Vision" being organized by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and Microsoft Research (MSR) in Jan. 2010.

6) Selected as the Employee of the Year at Vedasoft Solutions Pvt. Ltd., 2006-07 (A start-up, worked there for an year as a research and design engineer because it suited my area of interest).

7) All India Ranks: 234 in CEE-2002 (NSIT/DCE, University of Delhi), 169 in CET-2002

(CET, Chandigarh), 358 in CEET-2002 (NIT, Kurukshetra), and 1748 in AIEEE-2002

(for undergraduate admissions in engineering colleges across India).

2 Publications in International Conference, Journal:

1) IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (IEEE's flagship conference in automation)

2) A journal paper in IJDMMM (not very well known)

Other 4-5 papers under review/ in process.

Other Info:

1) Currently working as a researcher at Indian School of Business (top 15 B-School in the world)

2) Reco (All Profs.): 1 from HOD of my department, other 2 IEEE Fellows (I expect at least 2 of these recos to be particularly strong).

3) Job offer/recommendation from: Cisco/Google

Areas of Interest: Game Theory, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Computer Vision.

I know my GPA and GRE Scores are hopeless to say the least, but the places I come from (IISc/University of Delhi) are really top-class institutes and I hope the admissions committee would bear that in mind. Do I really stand a chance, or are these places far beyond my reach.

I would be greatly obliged if those who have made it to some of these places could share their opinion. Thanks a lot!

[rohtak]

Any evaluations, please?

[rohtak]

Anyone???

[kobie]

I saw your post in CollegeConfidential a few days ago and the people there already gave you some helpful feedback. I wonder why you bother posting here again.

Edited December 15, 2009 by kobie

[thisAintNoGame]

You certainly seem to be very impressive but I do believe that you made a bit of a mistake in only applying to top 10 PhD programs. There are a number of very qualified applicants who will all be competing for those spots, so nothing is a sure thing. There are many hidden variables to the process and there is an inherent degree of randomness. Additionally (and unfairly) domestic students (students from US undergrad) are preferred to foreign students. I am not saying this a good thing or that it is fair, but it is the reality. So I would estimate that you have a decent chance of getting accepted to at least one program, but if you had to do it again, you should have applied a little more across the board.

Just my $.02

[DJLamar]

No Georgia Tech? Our school is really quite good you know, and we have a sizable number of faculty working in computer vision

[datamineguy]

You certainly seem to be very impressive but I do believe that you made a bit of a mistake in only applying to top 10 PhD programs. There are a number of very qualified applicants who will all be competing for those spots, so nothing is a sure thing. There are many hidden variables to the process and there is an inherent degree of randomness. Additionally (and unfairly) domestic students (students from US undergrad) are preferred to foreign students. I am not saying this a good thing or that it is fair, but it is the reality. So I would estimate that you have a decent chance of getting accepted to at least one program, but if you had to do it again, you should have applied a little more across the board.

Just my $.02

i agree with what he said.

you should have applied to some "safety" or at least 50/50 schools. phds are generally harder for international students to get into.

[rohtak]

Thank you very much datamineguy, DJLamar, and thisAintNoGame for taking out your precious time to post your comments... really appreciate your gesture... many thanks guys!