Am I being too ambitious? What all unis can I target for grad school?(majoring in CS/ML)?
Hey all, I'm looking for grad school for next Fall and inclined towards US/Canada. Although, I'm majorly looking for schools that provide some funding (most schools in Canada do for MSCS and some US schools as well like Utah etc).
A little bit about myself: I did my undergrad in 2021 from RMIT University (QS ranked 123rd), Melbourne and graduated with a US equivalent GPA of 3.72/4.00 (that's what WES and Scholaro says, my aus gpa in transcripts is less). I'm currently enrolled in a PgDiploma in AI as my undergrad was a 3 year degree, and i've confirmed from some unis in US that i atleast need that to be eligible, without that, my options would be limited. I've been working in industry as a backend and ML engineer since last 3 years and by Fall'25 I would have around 4 years of work experience.
I also recently submitted a conference paper in a similar field (more around high performance computing) with a research scholar at Stanford and an advisor from University of Toronto. I'm yet to take GRE, targeting 320+ and I don't require TOEFL. I'm looking for some suggestions for universities that I should be targeting. My current list includes:
Super Ambitious/Dream: Georgia Tech, UC Berkley, CMU, UCLA, University of Chicago, Uni of Toronto, Uni of Waterloo
Ambitious: UT Austin, UMCP, UCSD, Purdue, UNC Chapel Hill, USC, TAMU, McGill University
Moderate: UMass, University of Alberta
Safe: ASU, Uni of Utah, Illinois Institue of Tech