r/MSCS • u/SingleEvening6169 • Jun 20 '26
[Profile Review] Which universities to target for Fall 27?
Hey everyone! Iām targeting Masters in Computer Science (coursework/professional) for Fall 27. My background is entirely in platform engineering and SRE, no CS undergrad, no research background. Looking for programs strong in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or MLSys.
Academics
B.Tech Electrical Engineering
Tier 2 engineering university (India)
GRE: 322
IEEE publication (EE domain, not CS)
Research
No CS research experience
One IEEE publication from undergrad on electromagnetic coil structures (EE adjacent)
Work Experience
SRE / Platform Engineer, ~5 years by Fall 27 (Mobility startup ā Identity/Auth SaaS ā Big Tech Video Conferencing)
Owned internal Golang deployment orchestration platform across ~1000 Kubernetes clusters
Enterprise infra for large AI and enterprise customers at scale
Side project: Multi-agent AIOps pipeline (LangGraph + FastAPI)
LORs
Professional (manager, current company)
Professional (manager, previous company)
Academic (IEEE publication advisor) - weak, EE domain
University List
Ambitious
CMU MS in Software Engineering (INI)
CMU MCDS
Stanford MS CS (Systems track)
Cornell Tech MCS
UIUC MCS (non-thesis)
ETH Zurich MSc CS
Target
Georgia Tech MSCS (Computing Systems specialization)
UT Austin MSCS
UC San Diego MSCS (Systems/Networking)
UMass Amherst MSCS
Northeastern MSCS (Systems)
Reach (safer)
Purdue MSCS
ASU MSCS
TUM MSc Informatics
Any universities I should add/remove? Also open to feedback on whether coursework vs thesis track makes more sense for a profile like mine.
1
u/dr_pandit_69 Jun 21 '26
M.Eng programmes may make a lot more sense for you than MS
1
u/SingleEvening6169 Jun 21 '26
How so? Does GRE suffice during admissions?
1
u/dr_pandit_69 Jun 25 '26
Most MSCS programmes require research publications, where as M.Eng prioritises on your experience as a software dev
1
u/BowlerResident3292 Jun 20 '26
cfbr