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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?"
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?"
Mature students have pretty good track records. What they may lack or have forgotten in skills, they make up for in attitude and general savvy.
So don't be intimidated. Sure, you'll have some catching up to do, but it won't be that onerous.
Wow, talk about hasty generalization! Must every post from or to an Indian somehow be thrown in the wind of offshore outsourcing?
However, I have to say as a piece of advice, that you are wasting your time going to grad school in CS unless your intent is to be a professor or a heavy researcher. I think the best graduate degree for a CS undergrad is probably an MBA, at least as far as earning potential. If your interests are purely theoretical and money is not something you ultimately desire out of your career, then by all means continue.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
step 1: create a global free market economy
step 2: get fat off the work of foreign workers paid much less that you
step 3: complain when your boss discovers that the free market apllies to your job too.....
step 4: post on slashdot about it, instead of looking at why it happened.
don't go back to school simply to get another degree and cram books. enjoy the college life - go to sporting events, cultural events, join student groups... etc. if you are indian, find a way to acclimate without losing your indian roots. be part of the college community. of course, you should always work hard in classes, but don't let it become an obsession. don't become another stereotypical "foreign graduate student." that's a waste...
Grad schools, from what I understand (I went straight to grad school for various reasons) take work experience as sort of a bonus, if it's relevant. They usually just make sure your previous schooling was sufficient and that you somehow demonstrate through your application that you are capable of handling the rigors of grad school. It's almost more an evaluation of potential rather than actual merit, since a smart but lazy student is much much worse than a hard-working dumbass, because grad school is work, not just book smarts. I would beef up your application by mentioning any projects you worked on long term at your job, any self-motivated work you've done (in or out of work), etc...Also mention how you've stayed in touch with the computer engineering world (if your specialty is VLSI, for example, then maybe if you continually read the appropriate IEEE journal, mention that). I know a few people that went nuts during the dot-com days by getting all sorts of high-$ IT jobs, and then years later came back for an applied physics PhD. Good luck. Oh, and get used to the pay cut...actually, you're comign from India, so the pay will be about the same :)
Shouldn't we, both culturally and socially, be learning from our mistakes? Or are we bound to repeat the pattern of racism every generation?
Step 1: Demand a policy of inflationary government fiscal programs and a welfare state. Step 2: Watch as your wages go up, but ability to compete in an international labor market plummets. Step 3: Complain when companies do the rational thing and opt for cheaper labor. Step 4: Mock someone for trying to better themselves because you're bitter and unable to compete for wage rates.
I recently returned to get a pair of Masters degrees five years after my Bachelors.
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.
They tend to view it quite favorably. Some programs insist upon it, though I doubt that would be the case for Comp Sci. Work experience is a big plus to admission committees in my experience.
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.
Can't answer this one.
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?
The biggest adjustment is getting used to not having a paycheck anymore. It's hard to adjust your standard of living. Otherwise, I found school to be much more enjoyable once I was older. I was a better student, cared more about the material, knew what questions to ask, and could more easily work with the professors.
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?"
I just took out student loans to cover the whole thing. Interest rates are so low right now it's almost free money. I have some student loans as low as 1.5% interest, and in the US the interest is tax deductible up to a certain amount. My only regret is that I didn't take more money out because the cost of capital is so low. (If you don't know what cost of capital means, learn! It's one of the most valuable things to know about) If you get some sort of working stipend or grant, that is great and you should take it but I'd still recommend getting student loans. Throw the extra into an investment/savings account and whatever's left over is cheap money you can build savings upon. (Yes I realize this is borderline with regard to the terms of the loan but no one will check unless you default)
You are bored with your job as a software engineer but you are going back to take a Master's in software engineering?
Are you sure you are in the right field?
and not "insightful" (as it is currently modded), but I, too, left a well paying job to go back to grad school. In my case, the job wasn't even boring, and my employer was great (gave me a laptop computer as a going away present), but I wanted to expand my horizons.
There are far more important things in life then money, and the sooner one figures that out, the closer one will come to having a fulfulling life. Of course, this goes back to the maturity equation someone else has already alluded to.
As to some of the original questions - most US schools will look kindly on relevant work experience (even - or perhaps especially - if that work experience is only tangentially relevant). Diversity is still the watchword here, and that includes diversity of experience. Since most grad students (at my school - UVA) have little to no work experience and are in their early to mid 20's upon entering grad school, the older, more experienced applicant has the benefit of bringing diversity. Additionally, as others have pointed out you likely have additional maturity (e.g., well-defined work ethic) that will give you more of an advantage in the course work than the disadvantage of being away from it awhile.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Unfortunately I can't post as AC (and I'm too lazy to find a working proxy), but I always feel the need to point out when somebody says something based on ignorant and biased views. First of all, I have not yet dropped out of school. I will continue my education until I feel I have done enough. That probably includes at least a Masters degree.
I was pointing out an obvious perspective. No mocking was done. In no part of my Guide to Success post did I say anything about the asker being a bad person, simply that there are many biased people here who would hesitate to help him out.
Obviously, due to this comment, and my other comments, due to several moderator's lack of perspective on the English language, today will not be a good day for my karma.
I did grad school after several years in the working world. My advice: take some good solid math classes on the side before beginning grad school. I had forgotten alot of Diff Eq, and my linear algebra was weak. The math courses also helped my confidence. You can amaze your new colleagues by explaining the difference between eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and eigenfunctions!!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
This is a great Ask Slashdot...
I returned to grad school in music technology after 2 years off. For what it's worth, having been in a "real" work environment (at least in my line of work, at a university) really helped me understand how the whole "school beaurocracy" works.
I think going back to school after working gives you an upper hand on your classmates, especially if you're like me and have a teaching assistantship -- "real world" work gives you a lot of experience managing time and planning on how to get things done. It's very easy in grad school to wait until the last minute just like you did in undergrad, but I've found that since I worked before coming here I'm getting things done early and the quality is higher.
My only advice would be, if you go back to school, treat it like it's a job. Be serious, do your work well, and take time to relax too. If you're doing something you love, it's totally worth it.
1. Start drinking now to build up a tolerance.
No, no, no.
You're a *student*. You will not have a lot of money. You want to be able to get as drunk as possible for as cheap as possible, so don't destroy your intolerance for alcohol; it's your route to getting very drunk, very cheaply.
If you're skinny enough, and lightweight enough, and willing to drink in unfashionable student unions, you can get totally out of your head for under five quid (well, in the UK anyway).
NB; bear in mind that this does not look as cute on 40-something mature students as it does on 18-year old freshers. Plus, you'll probably have figured out that being really, really drunk isn't actually *that* much fun.
The companies are really to blame for this situation, not the students. If they seriously want to help BS graduates get experience to either a) go back to grad school to get a MS or PhD, or b) train up a bit and become more skilled and useful they need to have a ready set of entry positions in engineering that they are expected to fill with young graduates with little to no experience. But those positions are largely gone (from what I've seen and been told by many people). Companies don't want to pay to train people any more. They want the higher education system to do that and to hand them a worker who can contribute on their first day of work.
Space for rent, inquire within
While most consultants just specilize in a job and leave when they are done.
No offense, but you're clearly speaking of consultants in companies I've never heard of. While it's true that what you describe is what consultants are *supposed* to be, in reality the vast majority of the consultants I know are long-term workers with no specified end date. Many of them have worked in a single consulting position (same desk, same type of work) for 3-4 years.
This is birthed from the myth held by many upper management that cutting "head count" will reduce overall costs. While this may be true in some individual departments here and there, what usually happens is that when the policy is originally initiated, some people lose their jobs, and their former coworkers start busting butt to get all the work done. This manifests itself in the form of exhausted, disgruntled workers who produce lower quality but higher quantity. Eventually, despite having no additional head count, the individual departments decide they need more bodies to get the work done, and so hire consultants to help out with some particularly large project.
Once this large project nears an end, other tasks are offloaded to the consultant, and the consultant finds themselves a standard part of the rest of the team. With only one exception: as a consultant, all the employees tend to look down on you a little bit. They don't necessarily think you're a lesser worker, they just feel you don't have the same entitlements. The consultants don't get invited to the company Christmas party even though they might have worked more hours than anyone else on the team, or having been with the company for more years. They don't get access to company discounts, they are not elligible for company training, they may not be permitted to perform certain security actions (such as VPN), and finally, their opinion really isn't given quite as much weight in the decision making processes.
Anyhow, I've digressed. I've spent time both as a consultant and as an employee, and I have a unique insight in that the company for which I'm currently consulting, I am a former laid-off employee of. Now they pay me more (compared to industry standards) than they did when I was an employee. I spent 4 years as an employee, and have now consulted with them for 4 years. It's distinctly interesting how some people who've been with the company for six months to a year look down on me some times, despite the fact that I'm clearly the veteran here. I don't think I behaved that way when I was an employee; I sure hope I didn't.
These guys have no intention of letting it end: they need someone to do the work I'm doing, and they don't have time to do it. Work only promises to get more intense, not less, and they may hire another consultant to help me with the work I have on my plate already. Of my developer buddies, from college, and from 'net acquaintences (a web of friends as it were), I know at least 14 people, myself included (having just now counted in my head, myself included) who are in long term consulting positions with no end in sight. I can think of only 2 that really are in short term consulting positions. Maybe my web of friends is nonrepresentative of current market conditions, but I find it unlikely.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Actually, I'd prefer to live in a society where success and even survival is determined on individual merit. And while it is a bit off-topic, I'd also point out that education and healthcare are not rights, as excercising "rights" does not require coerced participation by a third party. When you attempt to create a "right" to healthcare and education, you are in fact creating an "entitlement". Entitlements come at the expense of rights. So tell you what: you and everyone else who wants socialized healthcare and education, get together and for a nice pretty socialist society for yourselves. The rest of us will participate in a free-market capitalist society. See which crumbles first.
The only other thing you forgot to mention is that there is no "functioning" welfare state: every example is more or less disfunctional, and always tending over time to become more disfunctional.
Every welfare state -- the United States included -- is on its way down as it continues to squander its capital and, consequently, its productive capacity.
I was just about to type the same response, athough perhaps a little less eloquently. Good job!
Why do the people who feel a certain wage or healthcare or education are rights but not other things? Why not a right to food and shelter? Why not a right to a $100/hr wage? Why not a right to a car and fuel to burn in it (certainly that's needed in today's civilized, progressive society). Why not a right to a cell phone, plasma tv, computer, free internet? When forcing others to sustain your "rights", where does it stop?
There is no such society anywhere and there won't ever be. Imagine a society with no advantages of class, inheritance, or accident of history. Without zeroing everyone out, your perfect society is really just a noble class that will seek to perpetuate itself and keep down those talented impoverished who threaten it.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Errrrrr... wouldn't you consider the public school system to be a "socialist education?"
Both a total socialist society and a total free-market capitalist society will fail miserably. (And even if the socialist society did "succeed", it wouldn't be worth living in anyways.) For any government to be functional and competitive it needs to contain elements of both. A pure socialist government is unable to aniticpate unexpected changes and needs while a pure free-market society kills off better long-term ideas with more profitable short-term ones. (For example, the Internet might not have survived if it were not developed under the aegis of the government program known as the military). Why do so many people have to insist on either one extreme or the other?
Happy people make bad consumers.
Many of them have worked in a single consulting position (same desk, same type of work) for 3-4 years.
Generally I hear that called "contracting" rather than "consulting". Contractors do work; consultants talk about the work. E.g., management consultants mainly tell you how to manage things rather than actually coming in and managing your second-shift workers for you.
Of course, the line is blurry in tech-land, as people who can't do the work often say some pretty dumb things when they try to talk about it. And if you can find somebody who can talk about it usefully, it's natural to ask them to do it as well.
The big consulting firms (e.g. Accenture) don't help the confusion in that their big goal seems to be to use the strength of their actual consultants to breach the gate and then fill companies with just-out-of-college contractors that they pass off as consultants so that they can charge absurd rates for them.
Your argument is flawed, because you suggest that one can have basic health care available for all only in a socialist state. This, pardon me sir, total bullshit. One can have a state-organized health care in capitalist state, just as we have state-organized army, police and prisons. And there is a good reason for state interferance in health care business: there is no such thing as a free market in health care, because the supply and demand are controlled by one party -- the doctors, with patients patiently following the herder. Plus, when one buyer (the state) negotiates the costs of medicaments, medical equipment, it can get better deals than when there are lots of independent buyers. Of course, apart from basic health coverage, you are entitled to buy yourself just any health care you want.
BTW, at one point of history, US Agriculture Departament employed more officials than there were farmer households in the country. US cotton producers are one of the most subsidized farmers in the world. So who lives in a socialist economy?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Rational self interest requires the recognition not only of one's own rights, but the rights of others. Unless you're a megalomaniac who believe themselves to be godlike compared to others, you must recognize all rights to apply universally, or not at all. Therefore, to violate the natural rights of others is to declare your own rights to be invalid and subject to violation.
Without getting into the nature of the charges against Ken Lay, I will say that committing fraud is not rational and self-interested. As stated, to commit such an act is to invalidate one's own right to avoid fruadulent dealings. It is not rational to subject oneself to fraudulent dealings. Also, as with all immoral acts, the victims have a right to seek retribution and damages, so violating the rights of others (the only type of action that can be considered "immoral") has negative reprecussions, and is therefore not self-interested (unless you're a masocist).
I wouldn't argue that Health Care is a Right.
The Constitution certainly doesn't support that logic.
On the other hand, Public Health is certainly a legitimate function of the government. We don't educate our citizens because they have a RIGHT to an education. We educate them because we ALL benefit from living in a society full of educated citizens. Likewise, we would ALL benefit from living in a society full of HEALTHY individuals. It benefits us, because the people that would otherwise be Unhealthy, will be a cost-burden on the health system, they are not productive, taxpaying workers, and with regard to communicable diseases, can even pose a threat to the rest of us.
To me, this is a no-brainer.
Personally, I can't wait until the neoconservatives dismantle Social Security, Public Education, and all the rest. We'll find out how brainless this line of thinking is, when we suddenly wake up one morning, and realize we're living in a third-world shithole, and Americans are illegally crossing the border to get into Mexico.
Not today, maybe not even 5 years from now. But it will happen if this agenda keeps moving forward.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Private education works better...
Of course it does. Home-schooling works better than that, with a highly educated parent teaching several children. Both deny education to a sizeable proportion of society which cannot afford either.
Capitalism is an economic system, no government can be capitalist.
... government is the ultimate manifestation of coersion ...
Government is force, capitalism is its antithesis.
These statements are just nonsensical, and the use of "inherently" and "ultimate" don't make them meaningful. But stated with such certainty they sure sound smart! Just how is capitalism the antithesis of force? Capitalism is beanie babies and Popeil's Pocket Fisherman (?), the success of Britney Spears, reality tv, cell phones with cameras, Wallymart and all the plastic junk a good american can buy. What is it that's so special about capitalism?
I'm just taking a guess here, are you an Ayn Rand fan?
And of course you'd agree the victims of the tsunami in no way deserve charity, they've shown themselves as quite clearly not meriting survival, by their free choice of living in a tidal plain. They'd just be SOL in your perfect world, I guess.
How does cheaper labor lessen the ability of the consumer to purchase goods?
Where do you think the consumer gets the money to purchase goods? It comes from having a job. Take away that job, ship it to another country, and the consumer is no longer able to buy goods.
In fact, it INCREASES it. Cheaper labor means cheaper goods.
Cheaper goods doesn't matter when your paycheck goes to 0.
It also means MORE labor, so it means MORE goods, which also means cheaper goods.
But if you don't have a job, cheaper goods doesn't matter- and besides, worldwide and as a species, human labor has been in surplus for the last 10 years.
Unless you're sugesting that opting for cheaper labor ensures that more skilled labor will remain unemployed, which is only possible in a society already on an irreversible economic decline.
Guess what, buckoo- the United States is a society already on an irreversible economic decline- and has been on that road for 40 years, which is the last time we exported more than we imported. Any society that chooses to basically live on credit cards as a nation (by importing more than it exports) is in the exact same position as the guy who took out more in student loans than his career is worth- shit up a creek without a paddle, destined to end up homeless.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Are you sure ? Would you have any savings if you had to use that $1.95/hr to pay for all the things the government provides ? Costs for private security, toll roads, taxis (if you currently use public transport), paying off your primary+high school education loans, etc would add up pretty quickly...