申请得很差 问题出在哪 该不该gap呢

LZ情况是，女生，学校Top30 211，专业是InfoSec，算科班，GPA88 major89，GT刚过线 。
有THU实验室打杂和BAT研发实习经历，申请CS master 想毕业后找研发的工作 。

选校方面，曾经咨询过W大，说专排top30应该没问题 。
不过自己眼光也有点高，申请的都是专排top40以内，综排还不错的学校的CS，一共13所。
当时觉得自己比较有戏的是UCSD Columbia Uchicago Dartmouth Gatech-CSE CMU-MSIN
其中申了两个保底，USC CS(general) 和UCI新项目MCS ，结果主申冲刺全悲剧了，USC还没信……据说后面都是18 spring？
现在就一个UCI的AD，算是自己申请的学校里综排最低的了，况且还是新项目，还是挺不甘心的。

最近一直在想自己为什么申得这么差，可能一是拖延症吧。
托福到九月十月才开始走心地准备，结果1月初那场考试才过线，很多截止比较早的学校都是先用九十几的分申，再update的。
现在想来，可能我update的时候有些学校已经审过我的材料了吧。
而且因为托福这事，申请做得也不是特别用心。
虽然当时自己觉得做得挺用心了，但是现在看到有些三维平平申到好学校的人准备PS的过程，还是觉得确实有差距。
二是有点高估自己的水平了。
像Rice、CMU-MSIT，当时觉得bar不高，不太看得起，就没申，现在想想还是有点后悔。
其他的我也不知道了。

4.15过了，结果大概也就是这样了。
要么去UCI-MCS，15month的项目，将就着念完找工作。
要么gap一年，把gt刷高点（其实挺讨厌很死板地学英语，想想觉得有点痛苦），找找海外科研，或者找个工作边工作边准备，尽量不要犯今年的错误。

顺便把PS CV传上来了，马掉了点姓名和学校之类的信息，恳求大家看看有没有大问题。
如果大家觉得我今年申请的失误真的挺大，那么gap后重新做好申请，主申档能录的希望应该会大很多吧？
如果大家没有看出很致命的问题，确实是我运气比较差，那我也知道CS申请在逐年变难，不gap也罢。
如果还有gap过的学长学姐，可不可以讲讲你们gap时的体会？
感谢各位有耐心读完，希望听听各位的建议，望不吝赐教。

------------------------------------------------------------CV---------------------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------------PS/SoP--------------------------------------------------

Statementof Purpose

My parents owned an Internet café from 1999 to 2008, which gave meunlimited access to computers and software growing up. As I grew older, insteadof merely being a user, I wanted to know more about how computers were built,and how programming worked. I therefore chose information security as my major,which I thought sounded very appealing, and most importantly it was all aboutcomputers.

I have progressed a lot since then and am now a senior student at XXXUniversity. During my time here, I have not only maintained an average GPA of88.01, but have also taken part in numerous activities in computer science. Iserved as project leader for five course-based projects and participated in anindustry-sponsored project at Tsinghua University. I also participated in aresearch project focusing on detecting repackaged Android apps, and my team’spaper has been accepted by the eighth International Conference on Wireless Communicationsand Signal Processing. Since July 2016, I have been working as a softwaredevelopment intern at Baidu Inc. In addition, I excelled in my mathematicscourses and received three awards at national and international mathematicscontests.

My research interest lies in artificial intelligence (AI), and stemsfrom a course-based text-processing project in my sophomore year. Usingthousands of pieces of sports news and a dictionary, I created a C++ programthat automatically divides Chinese news articles into words. I then applied theNaïve Bayes (NB) algorithm to classify the articles into various sports.Initially, it did not work well—nearly half the test articles were classifiedincorrectly. After delving into NB, I revised the algorithm several times andfinally achieved an average accuracy of 78% and average recall of 73%. The resultwas not remarkable, but it fascinated me because I never imagined that acomputer could classify data on its own. It revealed the power of AI, and mademe realize that AI interested me more than information security.

Driven by growing interest in AI, last summer, I seized the chance tointern in Dr. Guilan Dai’s lab at Tsinghua University. While there, Iparticipated in a news mining project, mainly focusing on developing a webcrawler in Python. Although everything was new to me, it took me only two weeksto learn Python, Json, MySQL, web crawler, and news-retrieving APIs provided bythe New York Times, and another week to apply them to the crawler. Although mypart of work was not about AI, I still eagerly learned linguistic models andmachine learning algorithms. This experience was meaningful to me not onlybecause I learned how to build the foundation of a mining project, but alsobecause mastering so many new skills gave me a huge sense of accomplishment.

To learn how these techniques are applied to industry, I took a job asa software development intern in Baidu Inc.’s Portal Search Department in July.We use Hadoop and Shell to deal with the huge amounts of data in the Baidusearch engine system. Along with my colleagues, my job is to improve the probability that a good newsite is displayed or clicked on by users. While running some statisticalanalysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the current site-control strategy, Idiscovered that a lot of bad sites were mistakenly classified into thehighest-quality layer. I developed a series of MapReduce programs to identifythem. Now, I am applying Exploration & Exploitation algorithms to thestrategy to improve its performance, which gives me a new insight into how touse AI in a distributed system. My time at Baidu has exposed me to the processof modifying an industrial system and honed skills such as normativecoding, making plans and communicating efficiently. I feel honored to do my part to serve our billions of users and enjoybeing an engineer.

My ultimate career goal is tobecome an outstanding R&D engineer working at the forefront of AI. TheMaster of Science Program in Computer Science and Engineering of UCSD will provide me with exactly what Ineed.First, UCSD’s renowned faculty can shed light on the latest theories,which is essential because progress in AI is powered by research. Second, sinceyour program allows students to tailor their courses to suit their objectives,I will be able to take more courses relevant to AI and gain a systematicunderstanding of the topic. Third, UCSD’s fantastic location and reputationwill provide access to jobs at elite global corporations. All of these haveconvinced me that this program is my best choice.

If admitted, I plan to excel in my coursework and get actively involvedin research and development projects. After having had workexperiences as a team leader in a world-class company, I hope to return toChina and set up a high-tech company to contribute my share to the developmentof AI. With my skills, knowledge and passion for computer scienceand the guidance provided by UCSD, I am confident I can achieve my goal.

申请的时候瘸脚真的是痛，给不给ad真的太难说了。（InfoSec到底科班不科班不好说，我们学校的那些课超级硬的...）
LZ说的几个比较有戏的学校里Dartmouth&Gatech bar应该是想低了。定位还有些奇怪。

说说一些想法，
大多数拒掉楼主的很多项目固然好，像UCSD，Columbia之流。
但是如果楼主不想毕业直接回来的话，UChicago这类地理位置不好，专排不高的学校并不值得楼主放弃UCI。
&在UCI的情况下也并不值得楼主gap一年再申请。我大概是明白楼主那种为什么他录了不是我的心情，但是在美国就业这些都不重要，只是你心里过不去那道坎。

UCI足够你过简历了，我相信你也会是UCI里最优秀的那些人之一。你在好学校要和同样优秀的那么多人抢资源，而在UCI的机会绝对不会少的。

如果楼主实在放不下一辈子的名校光环，心有不甘的话建议你去UCI，然后现在直接重新申春季，在UCI读了以后转校。

最后，我去了bar不太高你看不太上的Rice，而直接decline了你主申的UCSD。希望这个给你一点别的想法。
祝好

大家回了很多，非常感谢各位的意见！

稍微补充一下吧。
我已经说了自己选校时定位略高了，确实是这样。
但是我申这些学校，不是我非常不切实际，也是因为看过近两年有背景差不多学长学姐录取了，才这么申的。
今年知道的同学里也有差不多甚至更差背景录了其中的学校的。
还是受了幸存者偏差的干扰了，误以为自己和他们背景差不多也理应会录，却没关注过往年和我一样的炮灰。
一方面自己背景确实没有出色到稳录这其中的哪一个学校，另一方面，确实申请是玄学……
不过bar稍微低一点学校也没申几个，也说过，有点后悔了。
对于UCI MCS，我真没嫌弃它哪哪不好，只是原本的梦校是其他几所罢了。我也只是发帖来找我自己的问题，希望UCI的同学不要见怪。

因为实习过，我也知道找工作主要还是看个人能力，出身一般的也有很多能找着好工作。
发帖初衷也只是因为申请结果不太好，觉得不甘心，才有点纠结，来问大家的意见。
现在来看，确实是自己有点想不开了。应该还是会去UCI，准备好好刷题了吧。

不建议gap，楼主要找工作去uci很好。 另外，至于申请结果，我个人认为楼主冲刺定位过高，你看看你的冲刺校录的人的背景，你gpa没过90 gt不出彩，更不是名校。拒你正常，录你概率小。
安慰的话：楼主翻翻linkedln，加自己学校本专业校友，or 相关的人，然后linkedln会推荐一些人，你可以打开看看他们的背景。能发现很多学校不好的人，或者根本就不是cs专业出来的，一样找到了四大的sde的实习，最后拿到return。到了美国找工作学校因素影响比在国内小多了。还是好好刷题吧！！浪费一年就少赚几十万啊！666 而且工作形势一年比一年激烈，早点毕业找工对自己有好处。

PS格式在这有点错乱 希望不要介意

我感觉不用gap吧除非你有名校情结 非cmu不去 uci也很不错了，地理位置也很好，又不是一年的项目可以找实习。况且招工的人似乎不太care你是哪个项目的。另，为什么要申uchicago。。。这学校综排是牛，cs似乎很差吧？

Uci 很不错！

90多分的T机器直接cut了啊

PS和CV在申请中占得比重很小，只要不写反动内容，基本不会影响你的申请。
楼主被拒的这些学校都属于，以楼主的条件有希望被录，但是拒了也正常，全拒只能说楼主运气不好。
USC general感觉除了CS，SE很少招其他专业（拒绝拿个例说事的）
另外出身也是一个很重要的因素，不是top 30 211就算出身不错，一些CS出国氛围极差的985/211也是会被当双非看的（亲身体会）。
不太建议gap，明年的形势肯定更严峻

补充内容 (2017-4-17 13:39):
不说明年，今年来看，好多学校已经都摸不透录取规律了，这种情况以前很少有

楼上说的很对，建议选校一定要参考本校学长姐们的背景和申请结果，同不建议gap

没必要gap+1，感觉lz的背景已经很好了，再gap也不会有很大的飞跃了吧，而且ms应该不怎么看ps和cv吧。
除非lz再gap一年能够发出顶会的paper或者拿到神牛的强推，否则小打小闹的背景提升应该顶不住cs申请热度增长带来的难度增加吧。。。
另外，我申请的时候gre也没过线，也是后来补交的，而且我ps和cv也是没时间然后乱写的，看结果貌似没有很大的影响，所以从我的个例来看，lz你提到的几个原因应该不会严重影响你的申请结果。

虽然申的有点高。。按lz的背景感觉能去更好的。。但是找工作的话uci mcs也不错。