Kindly evaluate my profile

[techforn10]

Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad, India

• Bachelor of Technology with Honors in Information Technology Aug. 2007
– CGPI -8.69/10

GRE: 1130 (V:380, Q:750) (major screw up)
TOEFL: 98: R:23, L:29, S:22, W:24

Research Experience:
------------------------

Research Assistant
----------------------
Database Systems Lab, Max-Planck Institute for Informatics (MPII) (Oct 2009 - next fall)


Research Intern
-------------------
• Distributed Information Systems Laboratory, EPFL (Sept. 2007 -Sept. 2008)


Intern
-------
• Microsoft Research Geneva (Sep. 2007 -Feb. 2008)

Guest Researcher:
----------------------
• Distributed and Multimedia Systems Laboratory, University of Vienna Jan. (2007 -Jun. 2007)


Research interests: Information Retrieval, Peer to Peer systems, Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence

Publications:
---------------
"Environmental Monitoring 2.0", Submitted at ICDE '09, 25th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering. (top tier database conference)

"Hybrid Approach using Case-Based Reasoning and Rule-Based Reasoning for Domain Independent Clinical Decision Support in ICU", Expert Systems With Applications Journal, volume 38(3), Elsevier Publication. 2007. (one of the leading journals of AI)

"Multi-Level Reputation-Based Greylisting", Published in IEEE ARES '08 in Barcelona, 2008 (acceptance rate: 21%). (Best paper award)

"Clinical Decision Support for Multiple Domain ICUs using CBR and RBR", Accepted at ICAI,07 The 2007 International Conference on Articial Intelligence, Las Vegas (June 25-28, 2007)

"Hybrid Approach for Parallelization of Sequential Code using Block level and Function level Parallelization", Published in IEEE PARELEC Conference in Poland, 2006.


Honors and Awards:
-----------------------
• Paper "Multi-Level Reputation-Based Greylisting” got selected for Best Paper Award and was
among top 3 papers in conference ARES 2008, Barcelona (acceptance rate 21%).
• Fellowship holder at EPFL, LSIR.
• Fellowship holder at Distributed and Multimedia Lab, University of Vienna.
• Microsoft Imagine cup 2007, International software Design contest India nationalist
• Recipient of Pratibha Scholarship and Gold Medal for Academic Excellence from Govt. of Andhra
Pradesh.
• Selected among top 1.5% of the 4,20,000 students appeared in AIEEE 2003.

Positions of Responsibility
-------------------------------
• Online Network and Website Consultant, IIITA (present)
• Network and Website Administrator of IIITA (Aug. 2006 -Jun. 2007)
• Member of Technical Club of IIITA (Aug. 2005 -Dec. 2005)

Recos from 1 prof (bigshot) from EPFL, prof from Univ of Vienna and my univ prof (I think I can get strong recos from all)

I want to apply for PhD. Do I stand any chance for top US univs??

Can you please help me in selecting good univs to which I can apply??

Do I need to give GRE CS?

[CalmLogic]

Congrats on such a great profile. As you know, you should retake the GRE, but that will be easy for you.

I am not as familiar with PhD admissions, especially for top schools. However, I would suggest applying to all top 10 ten universities that you are interested in, e.g. Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, CMU, UIUC, UT Austin, University of Washington, etc.

Assuming you have taken the standard required CS courses in your undergrad, you do not need to take the GRECS.

Generally speaking, taking the GRECS can help boost any profile, depending on how well you score. If you could score above 90+ percentile, you would almost be guaranteed to get into a top 10 CS PhD program with your research experience. You really have nothing to lose by taking the GRECS except the fee if you don't have the scores automatically reported.

Though I obviously can't see your transcript, GA Tech would probably be a very safe option for you as they are less selective (and apparently less respected) than other top 10 schools, so I would probably not apply there unless they are better for your research interests.

If you haven't already, I would suggest also posting your profile at the Edulix forum to get more feedback there.

[techforn10]

Thanks CalmLogic for thy quick reply. I have some doubts:

I am very much afraid of the GRE score, as u can see how bad it is. Will it affect my profile? Should I give it again? Actually I ain't finding much time to give it again. Bit busy with my research. What to do?

[CalmLogic]

Certainly, if I had the time, I would retake it, though it is the least important factor. My gut feeling is that your application would not automatically be filtered out based on your GRE scores, but these places like Berkeley and Stanford get so many applications that I really don't know what they do. For all I know, the graduate secretary filters them out based on her own heuristics.

I know I read that Berkeley likes to see at least a 770 on the quantitative, but I really don't know what that means since they also say research is most important.

Also, this has some info that may be a little outdated but still relevant:

Computer Science Admission Requirements of Top USA Schools | Admission Sync

And there is this advice from a faculty member at CMU:

Your score on the GRE will be largely ignored by the top schools, particularly if you are coming from a top school. At CMU we look at the Verbal GRE score only when the applicant is not a native speaker of English. We look at the Subject test score only when we have an application from a school whose CS department we’re not familiar with.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Eharchol/gradschooltalk.pdf

So I really don't know. Your best bet may be asking the departments in question and tell them about your situation (spending more time on research vs. more time on GRE).

[techforn10]

I really appreciate for your suggestions CalmLogic. I have no words to thank you. I have posted in Edulix too. I posted there a rough list of univs with my profile. Will let you know, what they say and then I want your opinion on the list too.

[techforn10]

MIT
Berkeley
Stanford
CMU-LTI
Univ of Washington,
UIUC
Univ of Maryland, College park (internal recommendation)
Univ of Texas Austin
Univ of Wisconsin Madison
Cornell Univ
California Institute of Tech
Yale
Upenn
Brown
UCSC

This is my rough list. Please let me know which ones are safe, moderate and ambitious. Also it would be helpful if you can tell me which univs don't provide funding etc, as its a important factor for me. Edulix guys said this list is fine, but administrator asked me to add few moderates from 10-25 ranking.

[CalmLogic]

While you are waiting for comments from others....

I would definitely replace UCSC with something else, probably GA Tech. You are too good for UCSC (Santa Cruz) and people with much lesser profiles would not even apply there since it is unranked for CS. Months ago, I spent at least 5-10 minutes searching the internet for CS professors who got their PhD from USCS. I only found one at a decently ranked department, and he is at UF, as I mention in this thread:

http://www.urch.com/forums/computer-...r-science.html (In at UCSC (PhD in Computer Science))

(The original poster of the thread above turned down UCSC even though he got funding.)

[techforn10]

Aah, thanks for that info. Actually, one of my senior is doing PhD there, so I thought its good. But what you are saying is making sense. Can you please tell me which are safe and ambitious from the above list?

[CalmLogic]

Originally Posted by techforn10

Can you please tell me which are safe and ambitious from the above list?

I really don't know enough about PhD admissions to comment, though I think it's a good list for now. Regarding California Institute of Technology, I did get the impression somewhere that they are even more selective than their rank would indicate. For all I know, it may even be possible that it's easier to get into Berkeley than CIT.

I did see at TheGradCafe.com where one guy who was admitted to Stanford and Berkeley was rejected from University of Washington. That seems to be a good, though possibly uncommon, example of the unpredictability of top PhD admissions.

[Ancalagon The Black]

Excellent profile friend. I like the emphasis on the research and the signal that you took 2 years off after graduation to pursue research and publish them in decent (IEEE) international conferences !!

You have a good chance in top 10 CS departments. The only thing is that someone from IIT with a similar profile like yours might just pip you to the post especially since their LORs count a tad more.

I would advise you to:

1. Retake the GRE and try and get that quant score as near to 800 as possible.

2. Take the GRECS and score above 90%+.

I would think that this would be possible since you are into academic research and have 1 year to go before even applying so I think that you can get a very beefy application down.