<p>Anyone know a good list of schools in this area? So far I've applied to a few CS programs that have a security track (I go to Berkeley though I'm currently a visiting student at another school for the semester and applied to a few) but by GPA is below 2.8 (yeah..CS is hard) so I'm trying to find some backup options. I've found some that seem to be based in either IT, Business or "MIS" departments (such as Marymount in DC, George Washington....these seem to have less hardcore courses and less stringent cutoffs) and I was wondering if anyone knew of any that might be low GPA friendly. It seems that a lot require a high GPA (one school had a 2.8 cutoff, another had a 2.5 cutoff, most have a 3.0 or 3.3 cutoff unfortunately...though they rarely have a firm GRE/GMAT cutoff for some reason).</p>
<p>Don’t worry too much about GPA cutoffs. It is possible to get into schools with a required 3.0 or 3.3 GPA with your sub-3.0 GPA.</p>
<p>A CS program is a lot more solid than the IT, MIS programs. Coming from UCB will be a boost for you. Are you looking at MS or PhD?</p>
<p>Well I’m looking mainly at MS. I never thought I’d ever be offered a PhD given my GPA. I don’t really have much work experience either. I’m not opposed to that though, I just figured that would be a “down the road” type decision.</p>
<p>Some schools (like UW-Madison where my daughter is in grad school in CS-Theory) admit you or not regardless if you intend MS or PhD. So if after 2 years that is enough for you, if guess you walk away with the MS. If you like to continue on to phD, you are already admitted. It may be a little biased to PhD, however, as she discussed PhD as goal in application, and was given 4 yrs guaranteed funding, impling phD track… </p>
<p>I’m wondering if you have any other thing to contribute in your application, you didn’t mention project or research. or gre for that matter.</p>
<p>If you read this paper about grad admissions in CS, you will see that a low gpa from a very strong school like UCB counts for more than another school. And that the higher level schools regard gpa and scores less than some lower ranked. </p>
<p>Best bet is to find the schools that have the profs that are working and researching in your area of interest. This will make your application stronger, more relevant and more appealing to your schools. There may be lower ranked schools/depts that happen to be stong in your area so go deep in the rankings. The Industry people will know that.</p>
<p>Anyway, a CS degree is much stronger than an IT degree. I’d think hard about that. Don’t you have an advisor? </p>
<p>the paper, while this refers to phD apps, it is good info for grad school in general:
<a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf</a></p>
<p>I don’t really have any experience. I’ve gotten mid-600’s on the GMAT (took after 2nd year in college, I could probably crack 700 if I took it now) and around the equiv. GRE score. I was mainly looking at employment results when looking for programs and it seemed like grad MIS people were doing pretty well if they attended decent programs. It generally seemed like salaries were comparable.</p>
<p>I’m definately going to look at some PhD programs now though - in CS and IS/MIS. Getting funding would be nice, and I could see myself doing research in certain topics. I don’t have any research exp but I’ve done a software team project.</p>