Chances of getting into a top CS grad school

Graduate School
1

GPA: 3.14
School: Top 3 US News
Research: 1 CS publication as first author + Open source software package. 3 semesters of CS independent research on additional topics in my field. Award for best research poster Fall semester. 2x Summer Research Internship at Government Lab.
GRE: TBD

My main concern is my GPA being too low. The first year and a half of my undergrad I was dealing with a lot of family stuff and it really impacted my grades, (I took a year off and fixed everything up). After this my grades have been good all B+ and up but I’m very concerned this won’t be good enough.

I’m really passionate about research and want to go to a program top in my subfield like CMU, MIT, or Berkeley.

Is this possible? Should I mention this in my personal statement? Should I do a masters and then apply to PhD programs?

Thanks

2

I think with a GPA of 3.14, getting into PhD at CMU, MIT, or UCB is difficult. In fact, getting into PhD at those three schools is difficult with any GPA.

Why does it need to be one of those three? There are other schools with good PhD programs as well.

Re. GPA, see https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/apply.html