riteshn

Thank you for the info. I will do further research on it.

Hello I am an MS student in Univ of Iowa planning to apply for PhD. What are the other good schools for databases/datamining? I would like to apply 2 better colleges then Iowa and couple of colleges inferior to Univ of Iowa. Anywhere where I can find more info?

Univ of Iowa has some good AI research. I know 2 proffs. here who work on AI. BTW, is it possible to give GRE again? Your profile is good except that GRE and Toefl scores. If you can give then give it again and try to get something between 1350-1450 and you will have even better chance. I am not sure which colleges are good for AI (i am a database guy so know about databases :)) but I will suggest that you dont apply to ASU and SDSU. They are really not worth. Even Rolla is not good. Utah is good!

Sending 5 instead of 3 may or may not matter. Depends upon college but general thumb rule - the more the merrier :) I dont understand what do you mean by decent reco and outstanding reco??? I mean wont all the reco letter say that you are good, hard working blah blah blah????? IIT Bombay prof will be better then college professor anyday!!! It IIT afterall :)

I will go for: 2. Berkeley 4. Texas Austin 5. U Wash Seattle 6. Purdue 8. UCLA 9. Gatech 12. SUNY- Stony Brook 13. NCSU USC (this one is just because USC has one of the best job scene) This list depends upon the college goodness. Getting funding in all of them might be difficult since you are goin for MS. The univs have tightened the screws on MS funding these days. NCSU is worst in that list for funding. So if you have funding to be kept in mind, maybe you will have to change the list.

Matter in LOR dosnt matter....its just the number of LOR...if you have 3 you should be good...dont worry about the content in it... Worry about the content in SOP...very important!

Are you sure that all the above colleges have good research in your area...if any one of them are not..then clean them off immediately..

Come to tink of it, you are going for MS....work experience will help you...i will say select - NCSU, Purdue and Stony Brook from the aove list.... I have more experience in evaluatiing PhD applications so I might be wrong too about those safe colleges.

I have no clue about distributed computing but with your profile all the above (maybe expcet UCI) colleges are tough...get some more average colleeges.....

Are you sure all the above colleges are good in AI??? I dont think Cincinati, Utah have good research in AI. If all are good in AI then you are in all except maybe - UTAH, Rutgers, ASU.

I will digress from bohemian. NCSU is extremely tough with your profile and so is SUNYSB and georgia tech.... IOWA state and UTD are reasonable tough.... I had similar profile like yours (better in some) and I had 5 yrs of hardcore experience in industry and I was rejected by colleges of similar level. NJIT would be too easy though. Choose 2-3 from the above list and go for some more average ranked ones.

Hard to say if you dont tell us your acads, research area, paper publication...... Generally, if you are in top 5 college like MIT, Stanford - they somehow always fund their students but medium level, MS funding is very hard. U of Iowa tries to give most or all of his studdents some kind of assitantship but then U of Iowa is not something extremely great...I am there because two of the professors are doing good research in very specific area of my interest!!!

Not trying to be discouraging but your profile is really good but all yoru choices are really high. Select some medium level too... To get into such high college you require papers published in famous journals which you dont have so its a high chance that you might be rejected in all. So select 4 from this list which are good in Networks. I am 100% sure that all of them are not good in Networks and you dont wanna end up in a college which has no good networks research even though it might be a top 10 college. Specific area of research is very important!!!!! Looking at the list, I will say you are 99% sure in TAMU for MS but I cant say for PhD. For PhD, you require kick *** papers in top journals for the other colleges or you have to be from IIT....are you from IIT???

Just get some reco and you are there dude....that is one of the best vita I have seen....

I think it depends from college to college but general idea is that you cannot start MS until you have completely finish BS.