Hi Friends,

I am planning to apply for MS+Phd. Program in the next year (Fall 2014).

I have a query about the eligibility for the admission.

My Profile is

B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from an state Govt. Engg. College
Percentage in B.Tech 65%
Having Work Ex of 3 years (till April 2014)
Having some good rank at some prestigious online programming contests.
No Paper or Research work.

My query is about that I heard from some of my friends that to get into Good Universities we need some research work in the domain or 2-3 numbers of good published papers. Is it is true? If it is true than help me out from this and suggest me that what I have to do now or what could be the next best step to get admit in a good university.

With Good University I meant the top University of USA

1 Carnegie Mellon University
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3 Stanford University
4 University of California-Berkeley
5 Cornell University
6 University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
7 University of Washington
8 Princeton University
9 University of Texas-Austin
10 Georgia Institute of Technology