[antztein]

Hi Wildrunner,

If you wish to pursue research in Algorithms, you be better off at Duke than UW-Madison. Here's what I found on Duke's site -

The algorithms group, rated among the best nationally, makes leading contributions in computational geometry and topology, data analysis, data structures, approximation, online, and combinatorial algorithms, algorithms for database and data stream systems, high-performance computing, I/O-efficiency for external memory, geographic information systems (GIS), and nanotechnology systems and structural biology.

I personally wouldn't care about the rankings.
Given the shortage of high-tech workers and scientists in US, biggies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. are hiring from lesser known universities too. I know of a girl who did her Masters in CS from UC Riverside and was hired by google.

For PhD one's focus should be on how good a particular department is in your chosen field of research.

Also wanted to add, the tri city area of Raleigh, Durham and Cary is known as the research triangle and a major hub for networking and open-source technologies. I believe Red-hat has their HQ there.

I personally visited Raleigh and absolutely loved the place...it is so green and beautiful and quite peaceful too.

I wish I'd applied there!