Profile Review and Advice on Phd after MS

[sriram]

Hi all. I am an international student and have applied to the Master's program. Not received any decisions yet, feeling tensed coz I feel most of the univs are on the ambitious side.

Could some one help me on my chances at the univs I have applied. My area of interest is Theoretical Compsci (Algorithms)

My profile is as below :-

UG insti : NIT, Trichy (Ranked 6th in India)

UG GPA : 8.36 /10 (On a 4 point scale, it could come up to 3.6)

Papers - 1 in International Journal (but not a top journal )

Other Achievements - National Math Olympiad, SPOJ , Internship at a reputed HPC organization

Work ex - Currently working at Yahoo! as developer since June 2009.

My list of Universities (All MS programs):-

1 UT Austin

2 UMich ,Ann Arbor

3 UMD, College Park

4 Penn State

5 UCLA

6 Rutgers

7 SUNY , Stony Brook

8 Georgia Tech

Also, I primarily intend to pursue PhD , but I felt i lacked sufficient Research experience. Hence I decided to apply for Masters and on reaching there and evaulating after a yr, I would decide about Phd.

My question is, how easy or tough is it to upgrade from Masters to Phd within the 1st year? Will Profs and College be kind enough to accept it? The Masters thesis would not help in case I decide to pursue Phd after completing MS.

Thanks in advance.

[karl_marx_jr]

There is a conference and journal ranking list at google check it out, there are conferences and journals with rank A+, if you could get accepted one publication in one of them you would definitely get a Phd offer from a top school. Mostly A+ venues are attempted by newly graduated Phds or by Phds who are close to graduation and also recommended to academics for getting tenure positions in universities.

Actually its very tough to get succeed but instead of doing 5 week publication shots in 1 year period, its better to do one big shot to kill the elephant if dont miss the target, else you are killed by the elephant.

[sriram]

There is a conference and journal ranking list at google check it out, there are conferences and journals with rank A+, if you could get accepted one publication in one of them you would definitely get a Phd offer from a top school. Mostly A+ venues are attempted by newly graduated Phds or by Phds who are close to graduation and also recommended to academics for getting tenure positions in universities.

Actually its very tough to get succeed but instead of doing 5 week publication shots in 1 year period, its better to do one big shot to kill the elephant if dont miss the target, else you are killed by the elephant.

Would appreciate some profile evals for me.

Thanks.

[grotesqueidols]

Would appreciate some profile evals for me.

Thanks.

Sriram: you did not provide your GRE and your TOFL score (if you are a non native English speaker).

That said, cold profile evaluations are essentially meaningless: you are more than your numbers. How are your recommendations...are they personal and glowing? Do your clearly and expertly conveyed research goals match with those of the universities that you applied to? etc etc. I'm really not sure what the people here can tell you beyond the nice advice that they have offered.

[sriram]

Sriram: you did not provide your GRE and your TOFL score (if you are a non native English speaker).

That said, cold profile evaluations are essentially meaningless: you are more than your numbers. How are your recommendations...are they personal and glowing? Do your clearly and expertly conveyed research goals match with those of the universities that you applied to? etc etc. I'm really not sure what the people here can tell you beyond the nice advice that they have offered.

My GRE => Q = 800, V = 610, A =3.0

TOEFL => 112

Recommendations from => 1. Asst Prof ,2 Prof (with whom i published my paper) 3 Team Lead at Yahoo! (Recommendation Letters , i must admit, were typically glorifying and hackneyed)

Actually, i feel my SOP resembles an applicant for Phd rather than Masters, but I wanted to put across the point that I would be pursuing research even after Masters. I wrote it from my heart though.