[Admissions Advice] NYU Courant MSCS vs Columbia MSCS or UIUC MSCS

I'd like to ask everyone's opinions on how these programs compare. I personally lean towards research, with a focus on NLP. Although everyone says Columbia and UIUC have higher CS rankings, I've noticed that the professors at Courant's CS program are all very impressive, with even LeCun still teaching. I'm quite interested. Does anyone know anything about Courant's master's program, specifically how it's about getting into the lab for research and applying for a PhD?