Please help me in finalizing Universities for my profile.
I would be taking the non-thesis option under MS in Computer Science . Hence, Universities that have good placement opportunities are required.
CGPA: 9.69 (5th rank in one of the top universities in my state)
GRE: 166 quant; 158 verbal
TOEFL: 111 (Reading: 28, Listening: 29, Speaking: 26, Writing: 28)
Work experience: 5 month internship plus 16 months full time at a startup where I worked on a text based Virtual Assistant (domain: NLP). Currently, I’m working on a workflow documentation tool in the same company.
Research: No research experience
Projects: Worked on minor projects in Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Digital Image processing, Database Management, Web Technologies and Android Development. While most of these projects were a part of my course work, others were done during the summers under professors in college.
I did my final year major project while interning for 5 months.
LORs: I can get 2-3 decent LORs from professors for the above projects. I can get 1 LOR from my workplace.
Universities shortlisted:
Georgia Tech
UCSD
UCLA
UC Irvine
USC
Stony Brook
Texas A&M University (TAMU)
UT Austin
Purdue
University of Michigan
NYU
UC Santa Barbara
University of Maryland
Please let me know which of these can be considered as safe, moderate and ambitious. Feel free to add more Universities to the list in case I’ve missed any that suit my profile. Note: I’m looking for a non thesis option.