u/Rude-Sea-9353

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to apply for MS CS programs for Fall 2027 and wanted some honest feedback on my overall profile strength.

• BE comp eng at tier 3 college
• 8.53/10 cgpa
• gre: yet to appear (targeting 165Q+, 330 overall)
• toefl: yet to appear (expecting over 110)
• Internship: Data Engineering + LLM/RAG pipelines (6 months) and Data Analyst (3+3 months beginning June 2026)
• tech club lead (2yrs) lots of impact and work done for the community
• research: completing first paper this semester (Sem 7)
• publications: none

My Current Shortlist:

Dream CMU MS CS, Georgia Tech MS CS

Target UIUC MCS, UCSD, UMich, UT Austin, Purdue, UMaryland

Safe USC, Northeastern, ASU, UMass Amherst

My Specific Questions:

• Is my shortlist realistic given a non-IIT background with 8.53 CGPA and no research?
• Are there any target-tier schools I'm missing that are good for industry placement and accessible without research?
• Does tech club work carry any real weight in MS CS applications or is it largely ignored?

also if im going the wrong direction, if there are things i need to reconsider, please lemme know. thanks <33

EDIT: as a follow up, wanted to ask if there are other courses in these tier 1/2 unis which are worth doing (an mscs extension basically)
however ive read alot about cmu's courses and how they are oversaturated, so not sure how wise this is as well