I’m about to graduate in December right after completing my semester-long internship. I was looking at graduate programs (PhD) in NY for computer science. Most of the time, I’d see people asking about Columbia or NYU but CUNY and SUNY less so, perhaps their programs aren’t exactly top programs. So my question is, is it easier to get into state universities like CUNY and SUNY or is it just as tough as compared to Columbia/NYU?
Initially I thought about getting a Masters first because I wasn’t confident of my credentials (3.53 GPA, 1 year plus research experience, possibly one first author publication at a IEEE conference (in progress). Could get 1 good LOR from the prof that supervised my research. Other LORs would be from profs where I got an A, but didn’t interact much with me though willing to write a LOR. Still have to take the GREs too). But funding for a Masters program is tough.
With my credentials, do I even stand a chance at CUNY/SUNY (I hadn’t thought of which specific college)? Or will I have to do something to increase my chances?
The difficulty in getting into a graduate program generally has little to do with its undergraduate ranking or whether it’s public of private. Rather, the admission ranking will correlate best with the ranking of the department or program. Their US News grad school rankings for computer science follow: 15. Columbia; 29. NYU; 40. SUNY-Stony Brook; and 82. CUNY.
Agree with the previous comment. Public/private doesn’t make much of a difference compared to ranking in the field. Amount of publications coming out the department is also a good metric to use.
Honestly the best strategy is probably to apply to a range or reach, match, and safety schools that way you have options.
^It’s not even necessarily strongly correlated with ranking at the master’s level - sometimes, other factors come into play as well. In both nursing and public health, for example, you’ll often find that some good to great public university master’s programs have lower acceptance rates than some more highly-ranked private universities. The reason is often cost - in-state students can pay sometimes less than half the cost getting an MPH from CUNY, for example, than they would at NYU or Columbia, and CUNY has a great public health program. It’s even more pronounced in nursing where prestige is not important - since employers don’t really care whether you got your nursing degree from Stony Brook or Columbia, it makes sense to try to go to Stony Brook for half the cost or less.
At the PhD level where cost is less of an issue, then yes, that’s going to be primarily ranking-driven. There are still other factors, like location - a program in a rural area may get fewer applications than a similarly ranked program in an urban or suburban area. But those will feature less prominently.