Help me choose Graduate CS Schools

Graduate School
1

<p>Kindly tell me which of the following are extremely ambitious, ambitious, moderate and safe for me, considering my profile below:</p>

<ol>
<li> Georgia Tech</li>
<li> MIT</li>
<li> Stanford</li>
<li> University of Texas at Austin</li>
<li> University of Wisconsin Madison</li>
<li> Princeton University</li>
<li> Harvard University</li>
<li> Purdue University</li>
<li> Columbia University</li>
<li>John Hopkins</li>
<li>Ohio State University</li>
<li>Michigan State University</li>
</ol>

<p>My field of interest is Information Security and Cryptography (Computer Science department). </p>

<p>I have done B.Sc. Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan with CGPA of 3.54/4.00 (ranked 5th in batch of 114). </p>

<p>My GRE Scores are Total: 1350 (Quantitative: 750, Verbal: 600, AWA: 4)
TOEFL: Total: 106 (Reading:29, Listening:25, Speaking:23, Writing:29)</p>

<p>2 Months teaching experience in Department of Computer Science at IQRA University, Peshawar teaching subjects in which I want to purse my Masters and PhD.</p>

<p>I was Research Assistant at University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan for 1 and half years.</p>

<p>I have also done one year R&D project with government of our province here in Pakistan (though not related to field which I want to pursue).</p>

<p>I have 7 research papers in international journals and conferences, all publications in my field of interest. (3 papers as single author, 3 papers as first author and one paper as second author).</p>

<p>I also have one short book published by German multinational publisher and available on Amazon.com for sale. (as first author)</p>

<p>I also have one book chapter (proposal accepted and full chapter under process). (as single author).</p>

<p>I am reviewer and program committee member of 4 international journals and 9 international conferences.</p>

<p>I have done CCNA, CCNA Security and CNSS 4011 (American Government organizaton certification), which are all internationally recognized certificaitons in my field of interest. I also have 5 Juniper networks certifications also related to my field of interest. </p>

<p>I have done non-research internships at Alcatel-Lucent (Country Head office), Nokia Siemens Networks and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited.</p>

<p>I have received MOL (Hungarian Oil and Gas PLC) merit based scholarship worth $3000 USD.</p>

<p>You can view my complete details and my CV at my personal homepage:
<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/naveedisp/%5B/url%5D"&gt;https://sites.google.com/site/naveedisp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I would be really grateful for your help and time.</p>

2

<p>I’m still not sure if you’re applying for MS or PhD…
For PhD… I kind of know what percentage of people get admitted, but you’ll stand out much more at T15 schools than T4 schools.</p>

<p>MIT/Stanford: Very ambitious (extremely high competition, 5-10% people get admission)
Harvard, Princeton: Very ambitious (Smaller departments, <10% people get admission)
UTA/Wisconsin: Ambitious+ (~10% people get admission)
Columbia/GT/Purdue: Ambitious (~10-20% admissions)
JHU/OSU: Moderate (~20+% admissions)
MSU: Safe</p>

<p>Wisconsin doesn’t have much going on in security… the few people who do it already seem to have a lot of grad students. GT on the other hand is excellent in security and slightly less competitive. </p>

<p>For Masters, MIT has no MS, Wisconsin treats its MS admissions the same as PhD (so it’s just as difficult, 10% admission rate), and Harvard and Princeton are probably very unlikely. However, your chances for Stanford,UTA,GT,Purdue,Columbia,etc. all go up a notch for masters.</p>

3

<p>@trout</p>

<p>Thanks for replying.</p>

<p>I am applying for PhD.</p>

<p>You said I have a good chance in T15 and then u ranked all T15 as ambitious for me.</p>

<p>Which schools I should go for?</p>

4

<p>You should apply to mostly ambitious schools! If you apply to lots of them you have a higher chance of getting in-- there’s more safety in numbers. </p>

<p>Ambitious here means you maybe have 20-30% chance of getting into an individual school, but if you aggregate that over 5 or more schools you have a good chance of getting into one.</p>

5

<p>@trout:
I’m curious where do you get the stats. So many people asked about stats but I can’t seem to find them anywhere. It would be great if you know any reliable sources. </p>

<p>@naveed:
Personally, I only know this year MIT has less than 5% admission rate while GT has about 8% (both for CS PhD). In general, the PhD admission rates for all top 10 dept are below 10%, but I don’t know the exact figure. Admission into the top 4 is always a crapshoot for international students. Top 5-10 is still very hard, but more predictable. If you’re applying for masters, take note that an institution’s selectivity for PhD program doesn’t always translate for their masters. Stanford for example, has a lot of slots for their masters program, so the admission rate for the masters program is a lot higher. The same goes for GT.</p>

6

<p>explorer-</p>

<p>a couple of the numbers i heard from when i toured the schools after acceptance (i.e, wisconsin is ~10% for masters+phd in 2010)</p>

<p>some other numbers are from lists of acceptance rates-- i know berkeley and mit are around 6%, and the others are rough but perhaps outdated figures.</p>

<p>i’m at gt now and i don’t think it’s as low as 8%… where did you hear that?</p>

7

<p>@trout</p>

<p>Do you think I should apply for Harvard, Princeton and Wisconsin? Can you tell me some other good schools to substitute them?</p>

8

<p>@trout:
I’ve heard some faculty talked about it. Come to think of it, the number might have been for my area only. But I’m still pretty sure the overall number is around 10%.</p>

9

<p>I have a friend doing his PhD at Harvard in Cryptography. Their computer science department is small but to be honest, have elite faculties. I think they only have like 3 people in the crytopgraphy part and one of them is a turing award winner. The other one is possible to win turing as well. So if you apply then these people will be reading your appilcation and might be kinda tough. They have one guy working on Information Security and he is a joint professor with Harvard Law school and currently the director at some internationally funded internet security institute. So considering the quality of their people in these areas, it might be tough. You can apply to a different area and still end up doing cryptography. Oh, one thing, at Harvard computer science, I think most of the faculty is only theory. All them faculties in Cryptography did their PhD in pure math. You can also apply to UIUC computer science. It’s easier and it is also a great department.</p>

10

<p>@appliedphysics</p>

<p>I have actually done bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering, so, I don’t have a background in theory. So, do you think I should apply for network security and after admission can change it to cryptography? </p>

<p>I would be grateful if you reply soon, as I am applying these days.</p>

11

<p>Naveed, I am sorry that I don’t really know too much about computer science. But I did my undergraduate in EE and Physics so I know how prepared EE students are. I think you can pursue theory if you want still. But if you don’t and rather want to work on a more design based research, maybe apply to some more technical based fields is easier, such as programming language and computer architecture. I think you can change after you get in. However, you should check this online. Because I think my friends who is doing crytography at Harvard did his undergraduate in math. He is actually not in Harvard computer science but he is in Harvard Applied Math. I think most crytography requires a lot of math such as number theory and things like that. But I might be wrong. Things like computational complexity is basically math. But you should consult some experienced computer science students here because I am really not an expert in computer science.</p>

12

<p>Every security conference has committee made up of some of the most active researchers in the field, listed by school name. Check out the profs’ web sites, and if you see lots of security profs at one school, you should think of applying there. Otherwise you’re wasting your money!</p>

<p>If there’s only one sec prof at a school you’re interested in, give them a short, polite email asking if they will be taking on new students, because whether or not you apply relies on their answer.</p>

<p>I don’t think Harvard will consider you for crypto if you don’t have a strong number theory and abstract algebra background.</p>

<p>USENIX security committee: [USENIX</a> Security '11](<a href=“http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/organizers.html]USENIX”>USENIX Security '11 Organizers)</p>

<p>HotSec organizers: <a href=“http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec10/[/url]”>http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec10/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>SSP Organizers: <a href=“http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2010/archived/pc.html[/url]”>http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2010/archived/pc.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>List of security conferences: <a href=“http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm[/url]”>http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/guofei/sec_conf_stat.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;