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Finally applying this year. Couldn't do so last year due to a number of reasons, some person, some beyond my control.
I completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering this year in June, and have been working full-time since July.
I'll be applying to a number of universities in the USA for an MS in CS, but I don't have any idea, being in India, of which places I should target given my profile. So I've come here asking for help, knowing that quite a few here have a good idea of what's going on in the academic scene.
The profile:
1) Academic Record: ~58% aggregate over 4 years. (I aced the practicals, the 'oral' examinations, and the internal evaluations, but I lost out in the written examinations due to my almost illegible handwriting. So the former three have an aggregate of ~90%, and the latter of ~50%, odd thought it may seem.) I don't really know how to convert this into a GPA, but a rough estimate would be a B+ average, consisting of A+ in the practicals, oral examinations, and internal evaluations, but B in the written examinations due to my handwriting.
2) GRE: 800/800/5.5
3) Subject GRE in Comp. Sci.: 850/900 (93rd percentile)
3b) This may not be relevant, but I had taken the GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) this year, and an currently ranked 159th in the country (99.85th percentile overall among all exam-takers). This exam is conducted to serve as a basis for admission into Master's programs in engineering in India, but I had taken it merely to see where I stood in the competitive rankings. To be honest, I was a little surprised by the result - I had thought the competition would be tougher.
(In case you're wondering about the disparity between the percentile here and in the Subject GRE, that can probably be explained by the fact that I took it in a city ~500KM away from Pune when I had a mild fever and a cold, had gone there with effectively no preparation, had flown in a day before and gotten little sleep due to my cough, and had a university exam the day after that, for which I had to fly back to Pune a few hours after I finished the test.)
4) Final-year project: worked with the C-DAC (India's supercomputing centre) to develop an addition to their scheduling and resource management system. It's a bit of an involved project, so I'll provide the details later if required.
5) Miscellaneous: In the third year, I've given a seminar on evolutionary computation, and in the two semesters of that year, implemented two projects. The first was relatively small, and was a database (with a crude GUI) designed to allow easy extraction and analysis of both historic and current statistical data relating to the Indian Premier League's cricket games. The other was a complete system to allow our (or any) college to organise their annual event; this was a pretty significant one.
6) Current work: right now, as a hobby, I'm just finishing up a small simulator for the theoretical constructs found in introductory courses on the theory of computation (DFAs, NFAs, PDAs, NPDAs, and TMs). I had noticed back when I studied the subject (and now that I see others study it) that the biggest hurdle to an intuitive understanding is the initial learning curve of knowing how to convert a mathematical abstraction - which is essentially a static one, consisting of a bunch of sets and a function - into a working mental model of a machine. The most difficult part of learning that subject is learning how to transition from static description to being able to run a visualisation of it in your head. This is something I've always thought would have been useful to me at that time, so I plan to finish it (and distribute it those of my juniors I know) in a week, so that it is usable before our University examinations in December. (Batteries - the most common examples used to teach ToC - included.)
This is in addition to my regular job, where I'm working on creating a custom Linux-PAM module for our customer's product.
7) Letters of Recommendation: These I can get from my teachers and project guides; they know me well enough to pass informed judgment.
Given this background, which universities would be appropriate for me to apply to? Any help would be highly appreciated, as right now I'm simply shooting in the dark.
I completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering this year in June, and have been working full-time since July.
I'll be applying to a number of universities in the USA for an MS in CS, but I don't have any idea, being in India, of which places I should target given my profile. So I've come here asking for help, knowing that quite a few here have a good idea of what's going on in the academic scene.
The profile:
1) Academic Record: ~58% aggregate over 4 years. (I aced the practicals, the 'oral' examinations, and the internal evaluations, but I lost out in the written examinations due to my almost illegible handwriting. So the former three have an aggregate of ~90%, and the latter of ~50%, odd thought it may seem.) I don't really know how to convert this into a GPA, but a rough estimate would be a B+ average, consisting of A+ in the practicals, oral examinations, and internal evaluations, but B in the written examinations due to my handwriting.
2) GRE: 800/800/5.5
3) Subject GRE in Comp. Sci.: 850/900 (93rd percentile)
3b) This may not be relevant, but I had taken the GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) this year, and an currently ranked 159th in the country (99.85th percentile overall among all exam-takers). This exam is conducted to serve as a basis for admission into Master's programs in engineering in India, but I had taken it merely to see where I stood in the competitive rankings. To be honest, I was a little surprised by the result - I had thought the competition would be tougher.
(In case you're wondering about the disparity between the percentile here and in the Subject GRE, that can probably be explained by the fact that I took it in a city ~500KM away from Pune when I had a mild fever and a cold, had gone there with effectively no preparation, had flown in a day before and gotten little sleep due to my cough, and had a university exam the day after that, for which I had to fly back to Pune a few hours after I finished the test.)
4) Final-year project: worked with the C-DAC (India's supercomputing centre) to develop an addition to their scheduling and resource management system. It's a bit of an involved project, so I'll provide the details later if required.
5) Miscellaneous: In the third year, I've given a seminar on evolutionary computation, and in the two semesters of that year, implemented two projects. The first was relatively small, and was a database (with a crude GUI) designed to allow easy extraction and analysis of both historic and current statistical data relating to the Indian Premier League's cricket games. The other was a complete system to allow our (or any) college to organise their annual event; this was a pretty significant one.
6) Current work: right now, as a hobby, I'm just finishing up a small simulator for the theoretical constructs found in introductory courses on the theory of computation (DFAs, NFAs, PDAs, NPDAs, and TMs). I had noticed back when I studied the subject (and now that I see others study it) that the biggest hurdle to an intuitive understanding is the initial learning curve of knowing how to convert a mathematical abstraction - which is essentially a static one, consisting of a bunch of sets and a function - into a working mental model of a machine. The most difficult part of learning that subject is learning how to transition from static description to being able to run a visualisation of it in your head. This is something I've always thought would have been useful to me at that time, so I plan to finish it (and distribute it those of my juniors I know) in a week, so that it is usable before our University examinations in December. (Batteries - the most common examples used to teach ToC - included.)
This is in addition to my regular job, where I'm working on creating a custom Linux-PAM module for our customer's product.
7) Letters of Recommendation: These I can get from my teachers and project guides; they know me well enough to pass informed judgment.
Given this background, which universities would be appropriate for me to apply to? Any help would be highly appreciated, as right now I'm simply shooting in the dark.
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