Admission at University of Alberta

[omaradib]

Dear friends,

My prolonged ordeal has ended at last with the MS in CS admission offer with TAship at University of Alberta. I applied in AI and machine learning there.

I would like to thank you all in this forum for helping me out always, specially CalmLogic, who have never stopped helping more.

I also got admission without funding (:P) at University of Illinois at Chicago, PhD CS. Applied in AI here too.

Given that, I can fund myself, where should I go?

[CalmLogic]

Wow, you hit the jackpot! Definitely to go Alberta. They are awesome for machine learning. And, IMHO, I think they are significantly better than UIC for both CS and AI. For example, regarding CS generally, Alberta appears on the following list but UIC does not:

Academic Ranking of World Universities: Engineering, Technology, & Computer Science

[MDK]

Congratulations Omar, University of Alberta is just awesome. It's the best in Canada when it comes to AI ( as my friends told me).

[omaradib]

Thanks to you both.

Can you provide a ranking of US+Canadian schools on AI and/or machine learning?

Additionally, how to consider UBC against UoA with respect to CS dept and AI+ML separately? It will help me decide whether to wait for UBC or accept UoA.

[omaradib]

Now, UBC has offered me admission with financial support for CS MS.

[CalmLogic]

Does British Columbia even have a machine learning or AI lab?

Certainly, Alberta is the place to be for machine learning.

[omaradib]

I am trying to figuring out few things:

Factor


CS: UBC better
AI: Alberta better
Weather: Vancouver (UBC) better (warmer)
Some said, Vancouver is big city, so job will be a lot, (if it even matters)

Another important factor is living cost. One said Both are costly places. I believe UBC will still be costlier, though it not only depends on living expense, but also on the stipend they will provide, which I have to figure out more definitively.

Where can I find listing of living expenses of US/CA cities?

I applied UBC in Data Mining, possibly DM is very strong in there, isn't it? And, is ML/AI research scarce in there?

If I plan for switching to a better school for ML+AI after MS, does Alberta still hold the preference?

[CalmLogic]

I applied UBC in Data Mining, possibly DM is very strong in there, isn't it? And, is ML/AI research scarce in there?

Yeah, ML and AI look scarce at UBC, at least compared to Alberta.

Regarding data mining, I am pretty clueless about Alberta vs. UBC. Unless someone has some good info, you may want to call some of their professors and see what they think of each other for data mining BTW, as you may have seen, this guy went to Alberta for data mining:
Stanley Oliveira

However, their database lab seems to be focusing more on wirelessly-aquired spatial information:

Research Profile: Database Systems - Department of Computing Science - University of Alberta

It seems to be a matter of:
DB Research @ UofA
vs.
UBC Database Group Website

Based on websites alone, UBC seems best.

[tabman]

omaradib could you please tell me a little bit about your profile ?

Thanks

[omaradib]

PROFILE:
BSc in CS from a leading school in a South Asian Country
with 3.77 cgpa and in top 30 percentile of all students of my class ( ( ).

GRE 560v 800q 3.5a
AGRE CS 770 (65%)
TOEFL 28R 28L 22S 25W (103/120)

1 yr experience in a financial computing firm.
Work also relates data mining and machine learning.

1 publication in AI/Machine learning.

Applied at (in order of preference):
UT Austin PhD rejected
UIUC PhD rejected

Rutgers PhD pending
Ohio SU PhD admitted without funding
U of Alberta MSc admitted with funding
U of British Columbia MSc admitted with funding

University of Rochester PhD rejected

UT Dallas PhD admitted without funding
UIC PhD admitted without funding
UC Riverside PhD Pending

Decided to go to Alberta to do some AI/ML