<p>First, my background:
I am a international student from China.
My university is top5 in China.
My gpa is 2.6 in computer science, extremely low but kept rising in four years.
I am working for a Sillicon Valley IT company, Beijing branch, as a Java developer
It is a quite smale scale company but a leader in its area.
I am quite confident with my practical coding skills :)
btw: my gre scores v490 q800 a3.5</p>
<p>I fully prepared to pursue a master degree in top 40 CS graduate schools.
I do not expect financial support and I have prepared the tuition.</p>
<p>Would you like to give any suggestions about choosing schools with such a low GPA?
I send emails to UIUC, Columbia and some other universities to ask for it, but they did not reply. I think they are too busy recently :(</p>
<p>I am also curious that which university is seriously focus on the academic performance and very strict for GPA. What about UWisc-Madison, UMD-College park, UIUC and Columbia? Do I still have a chance?</p>
<p>I can’t help you with most of your questions, especially since I know nothing about computer science. However, I have to imagine a 800 Quant score would help you out–I am assuming that computer science is heavy on quantitative skills and not verbal abilities.</p>
<p>One suggestion regarding GPA: look at different ways that your GPA can be calculated. My GPA is 3.3 overall, but if you just look at my in-major GPA, it is 3.45. If you look at just the last two years, it is 3.55. I started and stopped school several times, working full time for stints. After my last full-time working stint, I returned to school for 3 semesters to finish. My GPA in those 3 semesters (rather than a full 2 years), is 3.85. Some of the classes that I failed as a freshman I repeated as a junior and got A’s in. </p>
<p>You can bet that when I mention my GPA troubles in my personal statement or elsewhere, I’m going to emphasize that my grades were on an upward trend generally, and that if you compute my last 3 semesters, once I really got my act together, it is 3.85. </p>
<p>You should do something similar…in-major GPA, GPA excluding language courses, GPA in last 2 years, GPA in final year, GPA once you decided on a career path, GPA once you were mature enough to handle school and focus on it. Were there any extenuating circumstances that led to your low GPA (family issues, working to support yourself/family, anything that caused your low GPA at first, but is now resolved so that you can work well)? If so, CONSIDER mentioning it. But only if it is resolved (so it won’t screw up your MS grades) and says something positive about you as a person. Mine was just pure laziness, so I’m not offering any justification–it would just seem like whining.</p>
<p>Good luck. Hopefully others can respond with regard to computer science programs specifically.</p>