computer science at berkeley?

Graduate School
1

<p>I go to a lesser-known school (Florida Institute of Technology) and am wondering what are my chances of getting into some of the best CS programs, so any advice or evaluations would be appreciated!</p>

<p>I plan to apply to:
Berkeley, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, MIT? (prolly not since I'm sure I'll get rejected), and Boston University (as a back-up)</p>

<p>I've always wanted to live in Cali or near Boston... and well, I"m just now hearing what it takes to get into good grad schools...</p>

<p>my stats:
-Undergrad School: Florida Tech
-Year: Senior (will grad. in Fall '06)
-Majors: Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
-GPA: 3.89 (4.0 in C.S.)</p>

<p>-Research: 1.5 yrs on a NASA funded "Anomaly Detection" project (a.i. stuff); ~1 yr on "Web Personalization" (more a.i. stuff) (All under the same professor and relevant to what I plan to do in grad. school)</p>

<p>-Internship: Harris Corporation for a summer</p>

<p>-Awards: "Outstanding C.S. Junior, Senior" awards... (same w/ math) and such; national honor society scholarship winner, but nothing state-wide or significant</p>

<p>-Involvement: Resident Assistant for 3 yrs; C.S. honor society member and provide weekly service to students needing help; founding member of the math club; Florida Tech team member within the Southeast Regional programming competition...</p>

<p>-Coursework: I've pretty much taken the most number of courses possible each semester (6 extra c.s. courses that don't even count towards graduation); 2 grad. courses</p>

<p>But I haven't published anythign yet (although I hope to before I graduate), so I fear not getting into these schools... I also hear that having good recommendation letters is most important... I think I'll have decent letters :-/</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Grades, letters of rec, and research experience are all roughly equally important... it's O.K. if the research isn't published before you graduate, that is pretty hard to do given that once the research is complete, it often takes up to a year for the work to get written-up, reviewed, and published...</p>

<p>It seems like you have the grades & research... the best way to determine what your chances are is to find out what happened to previous graduates from your school with similar qualifications... usually your advisors can give you a fair indication.</p>

3

<p>Berkeley is one of the most selective CS programs. Their EECS department receives over 3000 applications a year for 100 new students. MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon are also very selective. I'm curious why you're only applying to the top 4 programs and BU which is ranked #60 in CS. Surely you could apply to a wider range of programs. If you're interested in California or Boston, there are also Caltech (#10), UCLA (#14), Harvard (#20), UCSD (#20), USC (#27), UCI (#29), UCD (#42), UCSB (#49), and UCSC (#55). With your stats, you probably don't need to apply outside the top 25 or so.</p>

4

<p>wow. well, i knew that berkeley was a great school, but i had no idea that ~3,000 people apply for EECS. where did you get this info? also, where did you get your rankings for the other EECS/CS school programs? i would like to look at other schools on the list so as to 'diversify' more since yea, it seems as if i'll struggle to get into the schools i listed :-/ thanks for the info though!</p>

5

<p>do a google search on NRC graduate rankings,
and then sort by faculty quality only...
NRC stands for National Research Council...
they do a once-a-decade ranking of PhD programs, and
are considered the most reliable, by academics anyway.
The last NRC rankings came out in 1994... the next set are a bit late, but are due out sometime in the next year.</p>

6

<p>Here are the most recent US News Graduate Rankings for CS:
1. Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California – Berkeley
5. University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign
6. Cornell University
7. University of Texas – Austin, University of Washington
9. Princeton University
10. California Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin – Madison
12. Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Maryland – College Park
14. Brown University, University of California – Los Angeles, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
17. Rice University, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania
20. Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, Purdue University – West Lafayette, University of California – San Diego
25. University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Yale University
27. University of Southern California, University of Virginia
29. Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Rutgers State University – New Brunswick, SUNY – Stony Brook, University of California – Irvine, University of Utah
35. Ohio State University, Penn State University – University Park, University of Arizona, University of Chicago, University of Colorado – Boulder, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Washington University in St. Louis
42. Indiana University – Bloomington, Northwestern University, University of California – Davis, University of Rochester, Virginia Tech
47. Dartmouth College, University of Florida
49. Michigan State University, North Carolina State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Texas A&M University – College Station, University of California – Santa Barbara, University of Pittsburgh
55. Arizona State University, SUNY – Buffalo, Syracuse University, University of California – Santa Cruz
60. Boston University, Iowa State University, OGI School of Science & Engineering – Oregon Health & Science University, University of Delaware, University of Iowa, University of Oregon, Vanderbilt University
67. Case Western Reserve University, Northeastern University, Oregon State University, University of Tennessee – Knoxville</p>

<p>Also it seems that Berkeley received fewer applications last year due to the improved economy. They had received over 3000 the couple years before that. "If Berkeley is your preferred choice for graduate study, and you believe that you have superior qualifications, then we encourage you to apply. However, you should be aware that admissions are very competitive. Most successful applicants last year had GPAs above 3.7 and GRE quantitative scores above 90%. Most successful Computer Science applicants took the GRE Computer Science Subject test and scored above 90%. For Fall 2005 we had 2500 applications for 100 slots." <a href="http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Gradadm/admissions.shtml#competition%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Gradadm/admissions.shtml#competition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

7

<p>thanks a lot!</p>