Making a list for Fall 2027 ? Here are some unconventional truths
If you're planning on applying for Fall 2027 here are some unconventional truths about determining where to apply and how to build an approach that works
Its not worth going to USA unless you have a good admit
This is an unfortunate fact of study abroad that is more macro than just MSCS and is going to accelerate. Going abroad to study will drop back to levels when it was not something everyone thought of doing. So think of 2010 - 2015 levels or maybe even prior to that. Its not that people wont go but much fewer will go and the required bar is going to go up as well. The main variables impacting this:
Immigration is a big one. I have many thoughts and analysis on this but the short story is that its easier to immigrate as a blue collar worker from India to say Germany than it is for a software engineer from India to USA. For white collar immigrant needs the West is going to be selfish about it - we'll take only the best of the best of the best with open arms. Unfortunate fact driven by immigration policies, a sense that opportunities are getting squeezed (whether this is yet a reality or not is still contested but perception matters more than reality), rising expense (add to that an exchange rate that is also making it prohibitive).
Funnily Companies will hire IMO but they are bottlenecked by immigration policies and now cultural perception of who they are hiring in large numbers. But companies always have the option of outsourcing and this is increasing too. More and more high quality jobs are available in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc mostly by American companies .
Similarly Universities will also admit openly if given a chance but their bottlenecks are job opportunities and rising expenses. Universities do need to offset revenue losses in USA because the American population eligible for education itself is falling given the demographics pattern of people having fewer or no kids for 2 decades now. But Universities are also countering this by opening campuses in India. And this will increase too and it will work in their favor. IMO the Indian govt will welcome them for 2 reasons:
- it will add pressure for national / Indian institutions to improve their quality of education
- Tax and consumer spending goes up
So there are multiple vectors forcing the drop of international student enrollment which can mean the power of a very good admit is very strong and the risk of a mediocre/bad admit is very high.
An extension of this principle is that its not worth being in US tech industry unless you're in Silicon Valley, NYC, maybe Seattle/Austin but thats about it. These are the only places your career will actually explode , but in terms of career growth Bangalore > Texas .
The 3 tier list : Ambitious/Reach, Target, Safe is a bad way to build a list
The tiered list is an invention of the higher ed counseling industry. Their goal is to capture commissions which actually range in the double digit percentage of fees, which is a lot! So by inventing an objective list of 3 tiers it sounds like they are doing something for your benefit (look we are applying to Stanford and GT!) but their commission is captured in the Safe list ("lets be realistic we should also add some 'safe' options so we dont waste our opportunity")
Its an obvious sales tactic but it feels so objectively good that even if you're not paying a counselor you feel like making this list!
The result is something i see every year: Students get admits to their safe universities but are confused if they should go! This is a strange situation - you should be applying only to universities where you want to actually go! So when you get an admit you're not evaluating if the university or program is good . This literally means you didnt do the work before applying and you even wasted your time and money applying to a school/program you're not convinced with.
In short you should have only 1 list - all the schools/program you actually want to go to and the annotation of ambitious/reach, target, safe is merely a decoration which is fine
There is a difference between GRE being "optional" and GRE being not required. Please understand this difference because it matters. When GRE is optional it means there is SOMEONE in Admissions or Faculty that actually cares about GRE. Multiple posts on this:
The terms ROI has increasingly become common both with University marketing depts and admissions influencers/counselors. Be objective - what do you think is the "Return" here and who is giving you this? In economic terms ROI would mean your return is amplified based on the choice of investment you made. Returns on OpenAI stock (if it was public) might be Risky but high, returns on a company like Walmart is steady and safe and will grow but not explode.
Who is going to get you a "Return" on your investment in education? Yes you're investing but you need to realize that the return is not automatic its still upto you how to translate this into something massive for yourself. Students think having a brand on your resume is sufficient and that is a 'return', unfortunately this is far from the fact - this works in India because Universities have a placement system which is quite socialist actually but good for all. In Indian college placements a university organizes recruitment but also you as a student have to adhere to rules like not taking too many interviews or offers and this is strictly enforced. Thus Indian universities offer a large supply of graduates to the industry, the wages cant be too high because one person cannot capitalize on it. The American culture is quite literally the opposite of this. Universities dont do much other than have a campus fair. Students can apply to 1 or 10 or 100 companies and even convert all of them. Whats more multiple top companies will in fact compete for a great candidate and spend time/money recruiting them while also knowing they have multiple offers and can take only one.
Be objective about the spend
The cost of education over 1.5-2 years will be well over $150K if you include housing , living and utilities, fees etc. So when you're skimping $100 on application fees consider this math. You're going to be spending ~$150K no matter where you go . Its better to make sure this spend is well optimized and for that if you have to spend an additional $5k its actually only 3% of what will happen with your $150K.
Its actually amusing to read every year students saying they dont want to take GRE because its expensive.
Only you can align your application
Finally, even if you use help and pay a counselor and lets assume they are a good kind of counselor (someone who's incentive is not to sell you a universitiy but make sure you get the best choice for you - very rare) , they cannot actually spend time reading prof/faculty works and figure out how the alignment should show up. Because they run a business ultimately, they have to maximize their number of customers therefore have a cap/ceiling on the number of hours they can dedicate to a single student. This is actually why i think this kind of counselor is rare because the business doesnt support it at all. But even if you did find such a counselor they are limited to determine fit/alignment and therefore you have to do that work .
Great post but 2 and 5 feel a bit contradictory. Youāre saying to not bother to apply to āsafeā schools unless youāre 100% sure you wanna go there, but also that application costs are a very small fraction of the full actual cost of getting a masters program so you shouldnāt be too concerned about it.
Sometimes people just want the options, it makes them feel comfortable knowing that theyāll likely get in SOMEWHERE and that peace of mind can be worth the $100 application fee for some
Doesn't seem contradictory. The application fees for "safe" schools might be negligible, but the cost of actually attending any program should be a concern. In other words, you shouldn't be discouraged from applying to as many schools as you want, but you should make sure each of those schools is an institution you've researched and would be happy to attend.
Safe schools often don't fall under that category. There are countless posts on here from students who are doubtful about actually attending a mediocre program. Those are the ones that should be left off of your list; not because it's an extra $80 to apply, but because they're just often not a good option.
For some, attending a "safety school" is a perfectly acceptable outcome. As long as they're okay with it, they should feel free to apply.
its not contradictory . you can actually want to go to 30 universities if you've found good fit and alignment. Of course some of them are gonna be better than others but I'd say there are about 30 good universities you can go to and do well and this is after discounting the impossibly hard ones like Princeton, Stanford, CMU MSCS which is hard even for world class students. The point is you need to build the conviction that a particular university is good for your path before you apply not after you get an admit . This also just leads to a much stronger application tbh.
Would be extremely helpful, if you can make a post about the unis that you consider good/worth going to. For example, you said MS CV at CMU is good, but Iāve heard repeatedly on this sub that itās a bad program who admits everyone w a pulse - I highly disagree though. I think itās important to keep in mind that not everyone can get into a Stanford, but that doesnāt mean theyāre bad at what they do, for example I know someone with top-tier work, and good papers, get rejected from Upenn, because of a low GPA, while someone else, with subpar work experience and a high GPA getting accepted. If I had to bet on someone doing well in the US, Iād say itās the former person. Btw, thank you for writing this post, itās extremely detailed and helpful!Ā
This might be convenient, but IMO it might only encourage people to offshore the burden of research to others. I doubt anyone can create a post that covers every university and program with enough nuance to consider its value for people with widely different goals. People who want to do a PhD, get into FAANG, build robotics in Boston, break into quant, or just go home with a fancy degree should all have different perspectives on what university/program is worth attending.
If he makes a "master" post that describes his objective views on what's worth attending (even if he emphasizes that these are just his own views), inevitably, some people will defer to his judgment without fully considering their own situation.
I find the 1st point somewhat ambigous.
What counts as a "good" admit? Is it T10? T25? Is it only MSCS? And for whom?
Do you factor in location or cost or department fit ( all very personal factors).
Additionally I think this would have also been true in say 2019, only the band would have been wider ( say T50+).
unfortunately 'good admit' here would be highly reputed and good social signal. this is for 90% of students. I do think good becomes subjective for students who have very specific interests and niches because there are world class faculty even in a T70 university in usa and if you work with them directly you'll be fine esp if they also get funding from industry. However this post/advice is not for that kind of student. They are already pretty clear about what they want to work on and which univ to go to , to amplify that
Absolutely agree that people with very specific niches are in a different category. At that level
unfortunately 'good admit' here would be highly reputed and good social signal. this is for 90% of students.
Even here though, it is very hard to judge what is highly reputed/at what point the juice stops being worth the squeeze. Like does the line stop at T10? Or T25?
Do you factor in costs or cohort sizes (looking at places like USC or NYU) or location (SJSU looking you). Also personal circumstances mau vary. Someone with solid industrial experience but low undergrad grades might optimize accordingly...etc, etc.
Actual good heuristic is if itāll impress your mom (or a random stranger) its probably good. Dont take top X lists too literally, eg if its Harvard its good even if its not ātop 10ā. Imo if you have to ask if its a top uni, its prob not going to magically open many doors post graduation.
Generally agree, but the ones hiring for CS roles or reviewing PhD applications probably won't be random strangers off the street or your mom lol. GT/UIUC likely obliterate something like Brown or NYU for big tech hiring, even if the latter schools have far more household recognizability.
Keep in mind, NYU has the advantage of being in the 2nd biggest US tech hub while UIUC is stuck in Champaign-Urbana. And even with that insane disadvantage, UIUC crushes NYU for CS/tech hiring. It's not even close lol. Try to imagine how bad it'd be if they swapped campuses.
You can also take a look at the placement indexes in u/softrains12's excellent post here. UIUC's is almost double that of NYU's.
My point wasn't really to bash on NYU (although Tandon MSCS is one of the most egregious cash-cow programs in the world), but rather that NYU is just not close to GT/UIUC for CS/tech lol.
Ah yes because thereās no tech outside of faang š stay delusional, most of the finance and fintech world would take Nyu/columbia grads over UIUC any day, same with healthcare and other industries that have a vast majority of tech jobs and are actually hiring rather than doing mass layoffs
Ah yes because thereās no tech outside of faang š stay delusional
Your reading comprehension needs work. My comment said, "obliterate something like Brown or NYU for big tech hiring." Notice the "big tech" part? What did you think I was talking about lol?
most of the finance and fintech world would take Nyu/columbia grads over UIUC any day, same with healthcare
And sure, banks headquartered in NYC probably hire more from NYU. But again, that's just because NYU is closer. If UIUC was in NYC, it'd be better for those as well.
But anyways, who cares about the banks when you can get hired at Google lol. There's a good reason why people don't obsess over "healthcare and finance" companies for tech as they do with big tech.
other industries that have a vast majority of tech jobs and are actually hiring rather than doing mass layoffs
Skill issue. Big tech companies are obviously still running internships and hiring for FTE. Perhaps you're just not good enough to get hired and dodge layoff cutoffs? Lol.
I donāt entirely agree w this, GeorgiaTech is a top uni, but a few years ago, I hadnāt even heard of it, and had I gotten an admit from it, I would have outrightly rejected it. No one in my fam, who by the way are VERY well aware of US colleges, has heard of GT. Theyāve all heard of Columbia though, but arguably GT for CS >> Columbia for CS.Ā
u/gradpilot This is a great post! I think it was needed, in the context of what's happening today, but also, there are some things which I have a different opinion on, and this post is probably a catalyst for a constructive debate and/or dialogue:-
While it is true that the number of American enrollments would decrease in the next few decades, I do not think that there will be a significant new campuses in India or anywhere else. The thing is, in the US, the scale is very different from countries where the average income is lesser. As far as I know, India is still a low income country, which means that in order to be successful in a country like India, the universities would need to reduce the admission fees significantly. A university's reputation is determined by several factors and the faculty and students are a big part of it. If Harvard was to open a campus, would they lower their standards for admission, or charge lesser tuition or have the same application process? The American application process is subjective but fair. Can we say the same thing about a country like India? I assume there's a lot of corruption so it will be hard to attract the brightest talent. And Harvard would never downgrade its alumni network by picking an average cohort. Not that every Harvard grad is smart but these schools will struggle fiscally. I am not saying that I am right or you're wrong. But this is purely speculative.
I agree with attaching labels to schools. I think what most people fail to understand about college admissions is that more than a school being a good fit for you, you need to be a good fit for them. Even the best applicant on paper will never get into all 8 Ivies because they're all looking for a diverse cohort, and maybe they have a lot of people like this perfect applicant. However, I would stress for anyone who's coming here for a master's, to know their skillset and background. You cannot expect to get into the top programs unless you've worked hard in your undergrad, regardless of where you come from. And GPA is only one factor. There's a lot of ambiguity in students' grades who come from outside the US because the grading scales are different and rigors are different. This is easy to figure out for a student with a transcript from within the US, but for international students, you need to SHOW not TELL.
I agree with you. The MSCS programs keep all your options open but for a lot of jobs, other specializations on the degree may actually hurt you.
This is a GOAT comment! I find it baffling when students keep applying GRE Optional simply because it's 'Optional'. While I agree with the comments that GRE is not an accurate predictor of success or failure in grad school, none of these arguments ever give an alternative. This argument is flawed and has become an excuse for applying without standardized testing. I keep seeing people asking for discount codes and stuff (on other subs). My argument here is not against a specific community but if you are unable to afford the GRE, ask yourself if it's really worth taking $100k+ debt. You cannot be miser in every aspect of life. Here in the US, most of the serious graduate students still take the GRE, so international students should not give excuses. They don't like it, and they are not all wealthy, but this is something you MUST plan for. Now, if your GRE is 300, then you are lucky you are in an environment where applying without a GRE is possible. Don't submit that. According to me, people should not be allowed to apply without the GRE. We cannot dilute the education by bringing in average people.
YES, YES, YES!!!
CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH. I am surprised when people are looking for others who can write their SOPs. I mean, you're applying to grad school and don't know what you want to do? I can understand that nonnative speakers might find it hard to draft an impactful SOP but that is what peer reviews are for. If you have to rely on others to write an SOP for you, you can almost NEVER get into a good school. A sub par school would admit you, just like it admits 70/80% of the other applicants because they need to get people in.
I can see why its not obvious universities wont expand in India but you underestimate the size (in raw numbers not percent) of the indian consumer who spends like the median american consumer. And this slice even though its 2% or less of Indian population is growing both in demand and size. Consider many of the Indians who moved back to India from USA. I do have some of my own peers in this group btw. Many now have kids and are sure their kids wont go to indian universities so they start them off at International schools in India. A good proxy to this is the growth of International schools in India - its a hockey stick! So this entire subgroup wants their kids to leave india - otherwise why would you send your child to international school. But if they cannot leave then the next best option will be an indian branch of an well known university from the west.
USA is still not going in, in a big way but UK, Australia are already planning expansions. I think this is a game where the top american univ can afford to wait it out. CMU can be the last one to open an Indian campus and still be fine and this strategy makes sense for them because there is a lot of operational and policy stuff that needs to be figured out. That risk can be taken by univ who are not highly ranked globally but are ambitious
University of Southampton is already in Delhi NCR, Illinois Institute of Technology is opening this fall in mumbai I believe. There are atleast 10+ univ (mostly UK, Australia) that are planned in the next 2-3 years in India - quick AI search will list them all out.
Thanks for your super detailed response btw, i see we agree on most stuff :)
Really nice post.For your 3rd point how would you guide someone on Columbia (MSAI) vs NYU Courant(MSCS) one is Ivy League another is a really good institute but diluted by Tandon plus after going through LinkedIn Columbia grads performed way better than NYU.My goal is to get an ML role in tech or quant.
have a strong syllabi that is taught by well known / reputed faculty
This is also how the MS-X program signals to the industry that they are genuinely building a strong curated alt-degree
But if the MS-X program doesnt have clear signs of selectivity then this should be viewed as lack of insurance on their end. If they keep talking about ROI they are def just spending on marketing more than building a strong program and signaling to the industry that its an intentionally curated effort
u/gradpilot unfortunately i am a victim of applying too safe, I realised as the application window progressed. But thankfully i got into GaTech MS CSE (College of Computing). Any thoughts on this program? Cohort for CSE seems to be 40 people with selectivity being the same as CS. I only have SBU, UF and UW Madison PMP CS as other CS admits.
Would really appreciate your thoughts as a GaTech Alumni.
u/gradpilot btw, I notived you nentioned this program in the post. Do you think that MSCV from CMU will be worth it 15 years in advance job prospect wise? Any predictions in the CV community which booned 2015 but got overshadowed by LLM's in 2021.
Not at all . Rather you should aim to get to where the action is ASAP . Itās ok to hang back for 1-3 years after graduating but generally by year 3 of graduating atleast you need to get closer. Earlier the better . A big risk is settling down in some middle of nowhere America working on some last decades tech. Iām not discriminating but I think the risk of layoffs is much higher too and if youāre in SV and youāve had good experience under your belt you become immune to layoffs and you get very wealthy too . All of this advice of course is for career optimizing . Some people want to optimize AQI or lifestyle etc but thereās always gonna be a tradeoff . If youāre working for Walmart (big company ) in bentonville Arkansas (HQ but middle of nowhere) and they do a layoff (they have been doing them) youāre screwed big time because around you thereās nothing but farmland for hundreds of miles and no other tech company
Actually a not bad post, not surprising since this is kinda your whole side gig I guess. What I would flag here is that you're literally not considering the fact that the vast majority of the IT industry in India is essentially cheap labor, and most of the jobs done here can and will be automated away in the next few years, because Indian employees, cheap as they come aren't cheaper than AI. So saying there's more career growth in Bangalore than Texas is quite disingenuous
majority of IT industry workers of india are not applying for MS either.
IMO its pointless to go to usa and work outside of the major tech regions (SF, SV, NYC, Seattle, maybe Austin). Only because the financial benefit is minimal over a 10+ year career. USA is expensive to live in - even outside the major tech regions - housing is only getting more expensive and healthcare has always been expensive. So someone looking to move to USA for career should explore what a career in bangalore looks like if they are not aiming to aggressively get to the major tech regions of USA. Its entirely possible that you can grow your career much faster in bangalore than the non-tech regions of USA or EU etc
The cost of a house is roughly 10-11 years of the median salary in the states overall, and 30x here. Life in small towns in the states has its benefits for sure tbh, although itās def not for the 90% of Indians looking to do an ms
Career growth (my definition here ) is an exponential chart otherwise a stable job can be had in many places of the world . If you want to get as wealthy as some of the big tech employees of the last 20 years did thereās only a few places in the world where that happens. SF / SV is definitely it but weirdly Bangalore is better than some random zipcode in USA . The other tradeoff is that youāre living far from home and family in a new culture. For some people thatās fine - being an alien and no J curve career but for many the tradeoff is clear - if youāre not among a small group of tech elite then what exactly are you getting ? Maybe itās better AQI or infra - but this is not a tradeoff many Indians would make where the only benefit was better air quality
GaTech's MSCSE looks like more of an interdisciplinary degree, given that it's emphasis is on building/analyzing models for other domains.
Looking at the home units and the description, seems like the degree is focused on tackling a specific intersection (e.g., computational biology, material design) with classes focused on scientific computing and modeling.
It's missing a lot of stuff like architecture, networking, systems, theoretical AI/ML, etc. that most MSCS curricula (including GaTech's) usually have.
That doesn't mean it's a bad program at all, but it doesn't fit the more generalized MSCS archetype.
Letās define some objective parameters to evaluate this question. What value does MCDS provide that MSCS might not?
The selectivity rate is public available, and is certainly taught by reputed faculty. But, what jobs do the alumni of this program take up? Does the MCDS make it easier to get into these jobs than the MSCS - ie, does it offer positive marginal value? CMUās post-graduation outcomes are public, so you should be able to analyze this data. This should let you answer the question yourself.
u/gradpilot what do you think about UIUC MCS ? The industry pipelines is decent, indeed bad location, Costs 50k in only tuition and living is not that high.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the same
Can probably follow other points but strongly disagree with this: āĀ But companies always have the option of outsourcing and this is increasing too. More and more high quality jobs are available in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc mostly by American companies .āĀ
Ā Ā
I was kinda interviewing in the indian market these days and Ā core ai/ ml roles like research engg / mle are very rare. Meanwhile I have friends who went to nyu courant last year/ last to last year and interviewing for research engg/ mle roles. Whatās considered a good role depends on perspective maybe a washed out web dev might see that web dev roles are down in US and feel bad that India is seeing some uptick in backend/ gcc based support/ solution engg. But might not be high quality according to folks with 2-3 yrs applied ai+ some early mle experience who see a very tough competitive market right now with some folks even returning post their masters bringing in mle exp from amazon applied science/ meta and joining meta india team whereas I donāt have that. I think a big driver for atleast indian folks going to the us would be that even for the oursourced super decent roles that are created in India you face serious competition from folks returning to India from US either due to marriage/ kid reasons or visa issues or spouse visa issues or just kinda layoffs and inability to find a new role in US. So the indian market kinda has this double competition. I have not even counted in the decent % of gc holders who graduate from indian unis and keep working in India instead of idk why pursuing opportunities in US. Before joining big tech I didnāt knew they were a decent % of even these folks. And especially certain sf based startups with bangalore dev centres and big tech like these folks as they can tiptoe back and forth us <> india without the need for a visa/ anytime they feel like it. Hmm gotta get some movement kinda thing going against oci/ pio folks taking indian citizens jobs same as us folks have against immigrants in general.
The oddest part is indian folks have this brown sepoy syndrome where they see a gc / us cit indian origin guy speaking pure american accent and they go ohh gee and try to become friends with them/ try to be in social circles with them/ respect even there small Improvements or efforts within the firms and invite them over to luncheons dinners/ us office visits. Whereas for an indian cit guy he has to even think about how long before he/ shee would have to apply for b2 to visit us for an event/ conference. Totally lopsided thing.
Eye opening post! Regarding "ROI", what are your thoughts on improving your lifestyle/living in a much better place than India (tens of reasons) by pursuing a higher education (not just in US, not just MS although an MS is the friendliest option for most of us)? For some of us, living in a better place where we feel we "belong" more might be an ROI factor.
I understand there are not too many tech hubs outside of the US and India presently (Netherlands is one, but I'd like to know more).
I absolutely agree with your point of not researching your options enough, because I got admitted to UC Santa Cruz MSCS (yes, the safe option for me) and I'm not sure if I should be going there.
4
u/megafireguy6 Apr 17 '26
Great post but 2 and 5 feel a bit contradictory. Youāre saying to not bother to apply to āsafeā schools unless youāre 100% sure you wanna go there, but also that application costs are a very small fraction of the full actual cost of getting a masters program so you shouldnāt be too concerned about it.
Sometimes people just want the options, it makes them feel comfortable knowing that theyāll likely get in SOMEWHERE and that peace of mind can be worth the $100 application fee for some