u/ephemeral__epiphany

Applying for Fall 2027

• Undergrad: B-Tech CS (2024) from an IIT, CGPA: 9.55 / 10.0
• Work
  • Working in India at a well known American Finance/Quant firm since 2024
  • Did a summer internship at the same firm in 2023
• Research
  • Second author in a journal paper at Elsevier - Knowledge Based systems
  • First author in a journal paper (not so well known journal)
  • 2 submissions currently under review at NeurIPS and AAAI (second author in both)
• LORs
  • two professors whom I did reserch work with
  • one professor (CSE HOD) whom I did two courses under and performed well
  • work manager
• GRE: 335 (168Q, 167V)
• Software Projects (work + personal): revolving around realtime-systems, kafka, redis, agentic AI, web development, finance etc

Based on my profile, I have prepared the following list of universities that I shall be applying to:

• Dream: Stanford (MSCS AI Track), CMU (MSML/MSCS), UC Berkeley (MEng EECS)
• Ambitous (Target): UT Austin (MSCS), UIUC (MSCS), Georgia Tech (MSCS), Cornell (MEng), U of Toronto (MSc CS), NUS (MS CS)

I have not added any to safe list as I want to go to the US (by paying huge sums of money) only if I get admission in one of the best/top univs

Please let me know if this list is realistic. What additions / deletions should I make.
TIA!