Applying for General CS, although interested in distributed systems, ML/Data science.
Prologue : As you can see below I gave my GRE in 2012 when I originally planned to apply but couldn't due to some personal reasons. The score is still valid and I don't intend to give it again (its decent and doubt it will improve). In the meantime I have gained some good programming exp (detailed below) and feel I am a bit more prepared
B.E. Electrical Engineering from Mumbai University
Aggregate: 64% (Ranked around 15 out of 75)
Topper: 76-77%
GRE: 323; Q-165;V-158; AWA-4.5 (Given in 2012)
TOEFL: Given last week (scored 110 last time)
Work Experience :
- 4 years at NPCIL, worked mostly on Distributed control systems, PLCs, bit of networking.
- 2.5 years as the Tech Lead (de-facto CTO) at startup. We build a Restaurants Loyalty and Payments platform. Was incharge of the complete backend which included re-writing the initial PHP app to ROR, managed the DevOps on AWS, developed the complete web dashboard. Apart from this ended up doing a lot of Android too and generally was heavily involved in the product development (The CEO will be one of the LORs)
- 6 months (1 year by year end) working for a firm that software consulting. This was a step back to deepen my programming roots. I have been doing more Elixir/Erlang now along with ROR and ReactJs. Primarily I have been developing for one of Indonesia's largest payment processors, involved in lot of DevOps and increasing my OSS footprint.
Publications: NIL
LORs:
- My college HOD (Electrical Engineering)
- The founder of my startup (reported and interacted directly everyday)
- The founder of my current co (reporting directly plus collaborate on OSS)
This is my review of my profile :
PROs
- Last 3-4 years work ex is strong, and will use it a lot in my SOPs and LOR
- Decent test scores
- I am sure I will get great LORs from my last 2 employers
CONs
- Too many years out of college (8 by the time MS starts)
- Under grads in Electrical Engineering
- First work ex is a bit more towards EE or CE (will mostly downplay it in the texts)
Here is my preliminary list based on what I know :
AMBI
- Columbia University
- University of California - Los Angeles
- University of California - San Diego
- University of Massachusetts - Amherst
- University of Pennsylvania
MOD
- New York University (Courant)
- State University of NY, Buffalo
- Arizona state university
- Northeastern University
- North Carolina State University, Raleigh
- University of Florida
SAFE
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Indiana University - Bloomington
- Syracuse University
- San Jose State University
Looking to apply to 8-10 univs (2-4-2 or 3-4-3 or even 4-4-2 with some mod-ambis). Will apply from mid Nov to Dec period, so that my current job period is almost 1 yr and the reco makes more sense.
Epilogue:
My journey has been to move from my EE roots to CS. It was a big switch for me when I joined the startup and the move to the current job was so that I could again focus more on programming (my role at the startup was becoming more geared towards product and man-management).
Prologue : As you can see below I gave my GRE in 2012 when I originally planned to apply but couldn't due to some personal reasons. The score is still valid and I don't intend to give it again (its decent and doubt it will improve). In the meantime I have gained some good programming exp (detailed below) and feel I am a bit more prepared
B.E. Electrical Engineering from Mumbai University
Aggregate: 64% (Ranked around 15 out of 75)
Topper: 76-77%
GRE: 323; Q-165;V-158; AWA-4.5 (Given in 2012)
TOEFL: Given last week (scored 110 last time)
Work Experience :
- 4 years at NPCIL, worked mostly on Distributed control systems, PLCs, bit of networking.
- 2.5 years as the Tech Lead (de-facto CTO) at startup. We build a Restaurants Loyalty and Payments platform. Was incharge of the complete backend which included re-writing the initial PHP app to ROR, managed the DevOps on AWS, developed the complete web dashboard. Apart from this ended up doing a lot of Android too and generally was heavily involved in the product development (The CEO will be one of the LORs)
- 6 months (1 year by year end) working for a firm that software consulting. This was a step back to deepen my programming roots. I have been doing more Elixir/Erlang now along with ROR and ReactJs. Primarily I have been developing for one of Indonesia's largest payment processors, involved in lot of DevOps and increasing my OSS footprint.
Publications: NIL
LORs:
- My college HOD (Electrical Engineering)
- The founder of my startup (reported and interacted directly everyday)
- The founder of my current co (reporting directly plus collaborate on OSS)
This is my review of my profile :
PROs
- Last 3-4 years work ex is strong, and will use it a lot in my SOPs and LOR
- Decent test scores
- I am sure I will get great LORs from my last 2 employers
CONs
- Too many years out of college (8 by the time MS starts)
- Under grads in Electrical Engineering
- First work ex is a bit more towards EE or CE (will mostly downplay it in the texts)
Here is my preliminary list based on what I know :
AMBI
- Columbia University
- University of California - Los Angeles
- University of California - San Diego
- University of Massachusetts - Amherst
- University of Pennsylvania
MOD
- New York University (Courant)
- State University of NY, Buffalo
- Arizona state university
- Northeastern University
- North Carolina State University, Raleigh
- University of Florida
SAFE
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County
- Indiana University - Bloomington
- Syracuse University
- San Jose State University
Looking to apply to 8-10 univs (2-4-2 or 3-4-3 or even 4-4-2 with some mod-ambis). Will apply from mid Nov to Dec period, so that my current job period is almost 1 yr and the reco makes more sense.
Epilogue:
My journey has been to move from my EE roots to CS. It was a big switch for me when I joined the startup and the move to the current job was so that I could again focus more on programming (my role at the startup was becoming more geared towards product and man-management).