Ancalagon The Black

To add my $0.02, in top schools in India for masters degrees, if you get admitted you do not need to pay tuition and you get a stipend. Its mucho cheaper than studying masters in the US.

Indeed it does. :P

Well, the learning curve is pretty steep at Cornell. They love theory and I do a lot of statistical modeling and algorithmic game theory sort of work as applied to social networks. Luckily, with the help of one's doctoral committee, one can waive out of almost any requirement.

Sure. I am in at, an arguably top 5 place. I have no CS background. My undergrad is in finance and masters is in information science. My interests are in social network analysis. If I can get in, anyone can.

Get a provisional degree certificate ASAP from PTU. That will work.

Mathematical Statistics by Miller and Miller and Probability Models by Ross would be good for an introduction.

Which Indian universities are we talking about here?

I am a doctoral student in, arguably, a top 5 US department. I am also an Indian. I come from a very well known Indian school (non IIT/non engineering) which has placed students into top schools (although not CS departments) for a very, very long time. I had good (not great) GRE scores, very strong LORs from well published faculty and significant, published research experience. I believe these are the factors which adcoms look for in order to admit potential doctoral students.

MS in CS in US schools are not difficult to get through at all. As long as you show enough funding, and get great GRE scores, for Indians, it is not difficult. MS (CS) in top schools are basically the money rakers. Therefore, they admit a lot of students.

I will take a stab at this if only for completeness. I applied to b-schools, i-schools and cs departments for IS/MIS PhDs Undergrad GPA: ~Top 1% Grad GPA: ~Top 1% (Ranked 1st in class) GMAT/GRE: 800Q/790V/6.0 Age: 24 International/US: International Research Experience: 2 years as RA in grad school. Accepts: Cornell, CMU, Berkeley, Northwestern, Iowa State, Michigan, UIUC, UMD, UWA, Penn State, U Pittsburgh Withdrew: UC Irvine, Eller Rejects: Stanford, Stern (not heard back from) Anything Else notable: 4 Journal publications in tier B journals/11 tier 1 conference publications/1 book chapter

I will agree with chimerical and figuringout here. Some reseach experience is always good. If you have publications (they don't have to be Management Science or OR types), then as long as they are in international journals or conferences with well known rostrums (like IEEE/ACM/ ICIS etc) then they add to your profile as well. I don't have a strong academic background as most of the applicants here but I managed to hold my own in the admissions cycle due to my research experience and publications all of which were referred to and asked about in the various interviews that I have had by different adcoms and POIs.

In another development, I was actually told by a potential adviser to state in detail, the reasons why I did not accept their offer as it would help in next year's recruitment efforts. I wrote her a detailed email and she was very pleased with it. :)

I wrote emails to a POI (if I had contact with any) or the person who sent me the admit email.

I should also probably mention that I made detailed reasons for the 2 schools which really wanted me. The rest, I haven't officially declined yet or had withdrawn my application before they made any decisions.

Very good point figuringout but I was hounded by a couple of schools which just wouldn't let me decline so I had to go into specifics thinking that 5 years down the line I might be a job seeker at this very institution and at the very least, I should be civil. :P