Advice for Returning to School After Long Break?

arohann asks: "A few months ago, I quit my secure, well-paying (but boring) job as a software engineer in India and have been applying to graduate schools in the US, Canada and the UK. My aim is to get back to computer engineering studies (my undergrad major) as a grad student. However, after a 5 year break from academics I'm not sure about my decision and could do with some advice from Slashdot users." "Here are some of the things that I'd like to know:

1) Typically, how do graduate admissions officials view work experience? Note that I haven't been working as a Computer Engineer but as a Software Engineer.

2) What are the differences between graduate studies at the Masters level in the US, Canada and the UK? I already know a bit from what is available on the websites, so I'm looking for some deeper insights.

3) I'd like to hear from people who've done this, i.e. quit their jobs and gone back to get a higher engineering degree. What problems did you face and what advice do you have?

4) People who've studied in the UK at the MSc, MPhil, MEngg level - how did you fund your education? Were you able to get things like teaching or research assistantships and how much of your costs did these cover?"

Comments

Some advice from a recent grad...

[Cade144]

I just completed a professional degree program after several years away from school. Here are a few nuggets of advice:

• Buy/sell used books online, if you can. The campus bookstore still rips you off.
• If you don't know already, learn to use Power Point (or similar presentation software). As far as I can tell, all university professors have traded in their old View-Graphs and slide carousels for Power Point presentations.
• Collaborate with your classmates (if such is allowed by class/university rules) online. Starting a class blog, or Yahoo! group can help keep you and your classmates up-to-date, and provide a good forum for "what the heck was the prof saying?" type of questions.
• Pack your lunch/snack/coffee. Campus food services/vending machines still overcharge for junk food.
• Use the campus career center as much as you can, even in the early days of your degree. After all, a new and better job is the untimate goal, and University Career centers are still full of fantastic advice.

Good luck, and make sure to do all the readings and homework this time around.

Plan on spending a lot of time reviewing...

[pll178]

Two years ago, I did what you did. I left my good paying job as a project manager at a high tech firm to go back to engineering school. It was scary but well worth it! To answer your questions:

1. For graduate admissions, at least at Carnegie Mellon, they send the files over to the professors based on your interests. The professors then look at your background to see if you are a good fit. In my case, they considered both my academic background as well as my industry experience. In fact, my industry experience helped me.

2. Not sure about US vs. UK vs. Canada, but what I can tell you is that a M.S. in engineering is more than sufficient if you only want to work in industry. A Ph.D. is good if you want to teach and if you want to lead a research team.

3. The biggest problem I had was all in the mental realm. I forgot most of what I learned in undergrad (all that funky calculus stuff, physics, etc ;). I spent a few months doing a major review of everything I thought would be necessary to get me to the level where I should be if I were just coming out of undergrad. I also found that I wasn't as quick as some of the younger students in my lab, but what I lacked in speed, I made up in discipline and focus. :)

Here's my experience

[RealAlaskan]

I went back to school after 11 years. I had gotten my BSEE in '85, then in '96 I decided to go back to school and get a Ph.D in economics.

I didn't know anyone who could give recommendations (all my professors had either moved on or retired), so I went back to my old school as a master's student for 1 year, impressed the profs, and got recommendations which (together with decent SATs) got me into Purdue.

I found that living on a small income was hard, but the studying was actually easier than it had been the first time through. In particular, math was easier to learn. That was a good thing, since econ and stats take more and different math than undergraduate EE.

I never finished my Ph.D (I'm ABD), but I did get an MS in Statistics along the way, and I'm working as an economist. Finishing would have been do-able, but didn't seem worth the cost in student loan debt and time.

If you can get accepted at a school, you can do it, if you can fund it. If they aren't offering you an assistantship with free tuition and a stipend of more than $10,000 per year, keep looking. Schools recruit undergrads, they hire graduate students.