Do grad schools look down upon transferring schools?

Which NON-US universities should I look into for a grad course in CS specializing in Intelligent Robotics?

• I did a course by Sebastian Thrun on udaCITY on Robotics and artificial Intelligence.I liked it very much and weighing my likes and strengths I feel I should pursue a course on Intelligent Robotics/Artificial Intelligence. However,although I've scored well on GRE(326, V-163,Q-163) and am expecting a good teofl score, I am going to miss my shot at reputed universities in the US  due to undergrad scores(without final year score-58.9% Mumbai University). Therefore, I am looking at pursuing my grad in a different country so that I can avoid competition and still benefit equally well from my grad school experience. I am looking at Canada, Australia for now.I want to try Germany but  unfortunately I don't know german and I don't know if they;ll be happy with my scores. Japan presents with a the same problems as Germany and then there's the question of a huge cultural shock. UK was another option, but it seems the government there is not too keen on having us Indians as students and jobs are scanty for us lot. I am hoping to get these questions answered: How good is a grad school course in the said NON-US countries? Which schools in these countries should I be looking at ? Which of the schools from the above category be willing to take me in based on my scores? What are the trade-offs of choosing one of the said countries for grad education(please include costs too in this section)? Thanks a ton!

• Answer:

  I will offer you my standard suggestion about choosing a grad school, which is that you shouldn't focus on choosing a school at all. Instead, choose an advisor. For graduate school, the strength of the school is really secondary. Your primary focus should be on choosing an advisor who is well regarded in his/her field, who treats grad students like human beings, and who has a good track record of graduating students and placing them well. If you have a bad advisor, the best school in the world won't help. And if you have a good advisor, very few people will care which school your degree is from. Use your connections at your undergraduate university - get your professors to recommend advisors, and see if they will facilitate an introduction. That being said, for English-speaking schools, I second Viola Yee's answer. McGill is the Canadian school with the best reputation. In the UK, you could add Cambridge (but good luck getting in), the University of Edinburgh, and I've heard good things about University College London. In Australia, your options for robotics aren't that great, but given your options might be a good bet. Peter Corke, of the Matlab Robotics Toolbox fame, is a professor at the Queensland University of Technology. The University of New South Wales is trying to start a space robotics program, which is sort of fledgling right now but might be a good opportunity to get into a program that is rapidly getting better. The university as a whole is quite well regarded. In the world, though, my dream school would be ETH-Zurich. They are doing really tremendous research in robotics, especially in merging mechanical design, controls, and machine learning. But I hear you about the language issue. I know very little about how much the various non-US options cost for non-citizens of their respective countries. I suspect it varies greatly from country to country.