I have 1.5 year exp as network software developer in Cisco, a good gre score, and a very good subject gre score in comp sc.  I have letters of recommendation from director of engineering and tech leads at cisco.  Can I apply to top 20 colleges for masters in computer science / what are the probable

I am answering this question as a person who has known many people admitted to top 20 CS departments for masters degrees. This is not necessarily the best advice for everyone. Please make your own decisions, and factor in the below advice if you wish. Yes, you should definitely apply to some of the top 20 universities for a masters in Computer Science, assuming you also have decent-excellent grades to support your experience. Some universities which have reputed CS departments and good CS masters programmes are , , , , , etc. Though most top 20 CS departments will provide fabulous opportunities and future career prospects, some programmes are more selective than others. You must consider this factor while finalizing the list of universities to apply to. For example, MS(CS) programmes of and [1] are not that selective, while 's programme is extremely selective. You must research and finalize the universities you wish to apply to, since there are so many factors involved - reputation of the school, career prospects, financial circumstances, location preferences, your past academic performance, how well the recommenders will vouch for you, etc. See [2] for details on admissions process at (selective) American universities. Update: I am not asking you to apply only to top 20 CS schools. However, out of the 8-10 schools you will probably apply to, ~3-4 should be from the top 20. I have known quite a few admits amongst , , , etc. to know that is possible. [1] http://www.cis.upenn.edu/grad/admission-stats.shtml [2] http://nlp.stanford.edu/~rkarthik/DAGAP.pdf

You can definitely apply to a bunch of schools in the top 20. But do keep in mind that the way you pick your universities has to take into consideration factors like interests, whether the school has good people in the field you like, profiles of the professors and what they are upto now, location etc. (This adds to what Abhinav has already mentioned).

I am not aware of the new scoring system for the GRE, but as other people have already mentioned, the GRE score only goes so far in determining merit for admission to graduate school. What I think matters more is how well your future subject of study and your past experiences are aligned. So if you are interested in any specific depth of study in computer science, I would suggest looking into the faculty and the ongoing research in the schools, and then apply to 3-4 of your top choices and factor in a few safety schools. If you are going for a general CS masters, then I'd like to direct you to the update Abhinav has posted to his answer.