I don't know your situation but I while there are certainly ultra-competitive CS programs (e.g., Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, CMU), there are many research-focused

I don't know your situation but I while there are certainly ultra-competitive CS programs (e.g., Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, CMU), there are many research-focused universities in the US (R1) that are totally good-enough for doing research and getting a recognized degree. In a lot of less competitive universities, there is no admission committee per se; you just email the faculty you're interested in and if he wants to recruit you, then it's basically done. There are good research universities in the R2 list as well (RIT, IIT, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_...