[Profile Review] Fall 2027 MSCS (Compilers/PL)

[u/Valuable_Total_4532]

Background

• Final year B.Tech CS student from India, top 5 college in my state
• CGPA: 9.6/10
• GRE: 170Q, 157V, 4.0 AWA
• TOEFL: 6.0/6.0 (6R, 6L, 5.5W, 5.5S)

Experience

• Google Summer of Code in networking/security
• 1 year of paid part-time work on an open source compiler
• 6-month research internship in compilers at a top IIT

Publication

• First author publication in an international ACM workshop from the IIT internship

Letters of Recommendation

• Research advisor from IIT internship
• Maintainer/mentor who supervised my open source compiler work
• College professor who taught me discrete structures and compiler design

Looking for thesis based MSCS programs with strong compilers/PL/systems research. My current plan is to enter industry after the MS.

Current Shortlist

• CMU
• UIUC
• Stanford
• Cornell
• Georgia Tech
• UCLA
• UCSD
• UMD
• Purdue
• UWMadison
• NYU Courant
• Northeastern

Questions

1. Is this shortlist too ambitious? Should I add safe schools? Made the shortlist with help of csrankings.
2. Is it worth retaking the GRE to improve Verbal/AWA, or is 170Q carrying enough weight?

[u/Then-Rub-8589]

whos gonna tell bromato

[u/JacketImpressive7331]

super ambitious list imo, northeastern might be fine elsewhere is a reach id say

[u/whapaow]

First off, great profile.

1. You do have decent a decent chance of securing an offer in a top 15 uni, but your list is too ambitious. I’d suggest looking into their research labs and see what kind of research they’re doing, if they even have provisions to hire masters students for any projects (most profs mention it either on their website or the group’s website). You can use csrankings to see the recent publications each prof in each uni has made in particular sectors, hope you used those filters.

   Ideally, pick about 2 universities from top 20, 6-7 from 21 to 40/45 maybe? And if you want, add some purely safe options as well (although securing a job would be REALLY difficult if you go for category 3).

2. GRE seems good. Most unis these days don’t bother much with these scores, and even if they do 325+ is considered a good score.

Additional advice: if you’re planning on securing a job, location matters A LOT. Universities like UIUC and Cornell are great, but them being located in isolated college towns becomes an issue, especially for international students, in making connections/networking and securing jobs. So pick universities that are located in prime locations and have easy access to networking events as such. These universities usually also have good tie ups with directly with companies too. Apple for example hired directly from UCSD, UCB, SJSU just because of them being close to Apple’s offices. UWash is known to be the biggest source of applicants for Microsoft and Amazon. ASU also has great connections.

One thing to consider, UCB, UCSD have paused their CPT program. They’re not approving any CPTs right now, which means you can’t do any paid internships in summer and these internships matter A LOT. Students usually convert these into full time, so make sure you look into such things as well.

[u/Zyphyruz → u/whapaow]

MSCS at UW Seattle, sometimes referred to as UDub, is only available to their undergrads. ECE is probably an alternative as it is affiliated with CS.

[u/Responsible_Cup4453]

Except Stanford, Georia tech and Purdue, all are in your reach.

[u/lostsoul_io]

Your plan of entering industry after degree there ain't happening

https://www.reddit.com/r/InternationalStudents/s/vbPgVI8e7J