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Best Grad Program For a Computer Science Major?
ryanleary writes "I am currently a junior computer science major at a relatively competitive university. I intend to remain here for some graduate work, and I would like to get a master's degree. What would be a good field to study? An MS in computer science appears to be highly theoretical, while an MS in IT seems more practical due to its breadth (covering some management, HCI, and design). What looks best on a resume, and where might I expect to make more money in the not-too-distant future? Computer Science, Information Technology, or something different altogether — perhaps an MBA?"
What do you want to do?
I think choosing the type of degree based on what looks best on your resume isn't the best way to go. Graduate school is a lot of work. If you pick something just because it looks good on a resume and not because you actually like it, I can't imagine you'd enjoy getting your masters.
I am currently a junior computer science major at a relatively competitive university. I intend to remain here for some graduate work ...
Ok, I'm not going to be able to tell you which degree to pursue but I am going to tell you that remaining at the same university you got your undergrad in is a mistake. I was once like you and my professor told me that it was a bad idea for me to remain at the same university for my masters. I didn't care, I wanted to be closer to my family and there wasn't another decent university around. I never got a good explanation why but due to some circumstances, I ended up moving and the result was my masters at a different university.
I am thankful this happened.
I now understand why it's better that you go to another university for your next degree and it has a little bit to do with what some people consider the most important aspect of college. I've oft heard that it's not what you learn at college, it's who you meet. And while I agreed with this about the bullshit degrees in college (like business, architecture, law, etc.) I had never considered it a matter of importance at all in computer science. But it is! Not because of this connection is hooking you up with this position here but more so because of the ideas that sometimes arise between two particular individuals or the new perspectives other people can put on how you see things--yes, even technical things like algorithms.
And so, by staying at the same university, you are wastefully throwing away a chance to work with, learn with and be with 100s of new talented people. If you stay, you most likely know the staff at your current university and will have everything settled but I urge you to consider throwing away that comfort zone and take a gamble at meeting new people with different ideas and concentrations. I think this helps both universities from becoming too stagnant and focusing on the same damn thing year after year. I don't know, I'm no longer in academia but think about it.
An MS in computer science appears to be highly theoretical ...
It doesn't have to be that way. I was given a set of courses to choose from (as long as I satisfied breadth and depth requirements) and I think there were quite a few practically useful classes I could take--even software business classes. At least at my university it wasn't highly theoretical but an individual could certainly go that way. I knew what I wanted to do with my life: code. And it seems like everything I took in my grad classes was in some way useful. I'm given a large set of requirements and one of the first things I do is theorize with others about practical ways to implement it. Thankfully, you can usually spot the choke points and problem areas with designs and although patterns like proxy, caching, model-view-controller and polymorphism are theoretical concepts, they are often considered and analyzed without being implemented.
The point is, everything will look good on your resume as long as it's a masters. And I'm certain you could go down any of the paths you listed and still land a job doing something one of the others is geared towards.
The real question you should be asking is to yourself and it should be "What do I want to do with the rest of my life?" Once you answer that, you'll get a better idea of what masters program to take. The other degrees, probably also useful. I'm pretty biased though and wanted to be working in computer science for the rest of my life so it was an easy answer. Had I done IT I could probably still be where I am right now but I had no desire for that part of the field. Call your own shots.
My work here is dung.
My advice is: do what you really want to do. If you really like it, you will be above average. That is the average which asked: what looks best?
When i started to study (physics) the future for physicists looked very grim, according to everybody. Now i can't complain.
"What looks best on a resume" depends entirely on who is reading the resume. If you want to work I.T., and simply have a lot of I.T. experience, then you have a good resume. But if you want to work for Microsoft research, then that same resume is worthless.
So, your first priority should be figuring out what you want to do. The best way to do this is to try different things. Get internships. Try everything. Then make a decision; this will tell you what degree to get.
Stop worrying about what's going to make you the most money and figure out what you enjoy. An MBA that hates his job is worthless. A computer scientist that isn't passionate about math and theory is worthless. An IT guy that isn't obsessed with all things tech will never be as good as the guy that is.
Figure out what you love doing and do that. If you really love it you'll be better at it. The best people in any field always make plenty of money.
As an aside- the last thing this world needs is more lawyers. The second to last thing this world needs is more MBA's.
I would say don't bother with an MBA until you've worked for a few years. Personally, I thing the degree is joke in general, but if you haven't even had any work experience, it means nothing to have an MBA.
if you are just going for a masters, you probably want to be a programmer/engineer, so theoretical is likely not the best way to go. that's the best i can do without some more information about your ultimate career goals.
Seriously. I am almost finished with my masters now, and thank god I had a fellowship. An MBA typically costs much more due to fees at some schools. I would say apply to all of them, and decide after they start offering you deals. It would be stupid to make a choice you aren't sure about, then find out you could have gone a different way for free, or even been paid while you are in school. (hint, apply for phd to get the fellowship, then quit with a masters. nobody will be crying about you changing your mind)
I've found that, as an engineer myself (originally) the greatest lack of understanding among computer science majors are the details of the hardware itself. I've had guys with CS degrees try to control 120VAC equipment using the parallel port!! And then not understand at all why this is not a good idea. Control systems are a burgeoning field all by themselves and because they're all computerized now it's a great area.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Seriously, if your concern for going to grad school is solely to have something on your resume that looks better and gets you paid more, don't go. As a grad student in computer engineering, I can't stand the people who want to get a masters just because it makes them look better. And, if you do get a masters, don't bother getting it at a big name university, because that likely won't mean anything once you get it. The big name universities have the name because of the research they do. The research determines the ranking of their graduate program. If you plan on going just to get a degree, and not do any research, you'll end up shorting yourself of a better education elsewhere, and you'll waste the time of professors and other students who are actually interested in doing research. After graduating from one of these schools it won't really make you look much better either. You'll talk to companies and get in the door for having a big research school's name on your degree, and they'll ask you about what research you did, or ask for recommendations from faculty etc. You likely either won't know any faculty very well (as they're concerned with doing research, and not some masters student who only cares about making more money), or they'll have a low opinion of you for wasting space in their program (that space could have instead been used by someone interested in pursuing research).
Sorry if I sound really negative about this, but this is the truth of academia. The big name schools are concerned with research. That is why they have a big name, and that is what they will focus on to maintain their reputation. They often do not offer a better education, and in fact they are often less concerned with teaching than smaller lesser known schools. The professors just can't afford spending too much time teaching, because in the end (for getting tenure at least), research is what matters. In fact, at many of these schools, it is looked down upon if a junior faculty members wins a teaching award. The rest of the university assumes they're spending too much time on their teaching, and not enough on their research.
My recommendation is to talk to the faculty at your current university. See what they recommend, and be truthful about why you want to go to grad school. Slashdot is not the place to find out about this stuff, most people here have no clue. Also remember that as far as graduate programs at top schools go, it's not really that one school is better than another. In reality its that one school is better in one particular specialty area. The choice of which school is best for you depends much more heavily on what you plan on specializing in rather than the US News ranking. Employers know what schools specialize in, and base decisions on that. If you don't plan on specializing (as you don't seem to be concerned with research), the rankings immediately become relatively worthless. Talk to faculty that you know and trust. They can help you, but you have to show that you're worth spending time on. They likely have more important things to do, and don't want someone wasting their time.
phil
I know so many MBAs who don't have jobs it is scary. They are also handed out like TP given all the "extension" universities, etc.
Go get a masters in economics from lse.ac.uk or a masters in security from SANS.
Get some real-world experience first, then get your masters. They work better together.
There's nothing like a few years in-the-field perspective before going back for an advanced degree.
This will give you a chance to see "which way the professional winds blow" for you.
Take those few years to work and have lots of safe, happy sex and generally have a great time. you know, live.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
So further complicating the issue, (and no offense to people who have a BS or MS in IT) but I often hear that IT degrees are for people who couldn't make it in Computer Science.
Couldn't make it, or never even tried because they were scared off by the math curriculum. In other words, lousy programmers. If you're doing well in a competitive CS undergrad program, you're already better than this.
So does going from a competitive CS program to an IT program look like this?
Yes. Yes, it does.
Here's a question you might want to ask yourself: do you like your fellow students? That is, do you find CS people generally enjoyably to work with? If so, stay in CS. The theory you will learn in grad school will make you better at pretty much anything you want to do with computers, ever, and will last a hell of a lot longer than the currently-hot buzzwords you'll learn in IT (which may or may not be still hot when you graduate, of course.) Your fellow techies will recognize this and respect it. You'll have more options, and you'll work with a better class of people.
OTOH, if you can't stand your fellow techies and yearn to be a suit, by all means go for an MBA. You won't learn anything of any real value to anyone, of course, and it does seem that after the latest crash people may be waking up to this fact, but odds are the economy will recover and the con men will go back to doing what they do best. If you have no soul and can cheerfully face the idea of a career as a parasite subsisting on people who do actual work, go for it. Do be aware that every once in a while your hosts will turn on you, but if you can synergize your black-belt mission statement to leverage core black-belt stakeholder assets -- or whatever the buzzword bingo of the day is when you get out of school -- you'll get by.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Bullshit on people not being able to change after 30. Utter bullshit.
To the poster, figure out what career you want and use that to plan out graduate work. You can always go back and get an MBA, even if you have a family and have kids. Harder? Maybe. But with work experience, you will get far more out of it.
University was never intended to be job training. Grad school even more so.
Do it because you are interested. This is the only reason to do so. Do it because you want to, because you want to learn new things and find things out.
Do it whether they are going to pay you afterwards or not. Though it must be admitted a Masters degree is highly saleable. I paid for mine in 3 months after I graduated.
...laura, B.Sc., M.A.Sc.
Whatever you pursue, add some psychology to the mix. Coding can be outsourced, but human interaction can't. There will always be a need for people who can understand both the human mind as well as computers, at least until the two merge... ;)
I was planning to study cognitive science myself, but faith had different plans for me it seems. But never underestimate the power in understanding other people. The hardest part of many software projects is figuring out the real needs, and that nearly always starts with human beings.
.: Max Romantschuk
get a job. work 5 years. figure out what you want to do in life.
if you work for anything approaching a decent company, they will pay for your grad school when you figure out what you want to study.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Apples and oranges, fuzzy thinking at best. By the time you get your degree, economic conditions will have changed.
The first thing you need to decide is what *you* want to do and learn - and resorting to Ask Slashdot indicates to me that you haven't done the basic groundwork in that respect that you should have done years ago.
Despite being an attempt at humor and being modded funny, this is actually really solid advice.
The field of health informatics is going to skyrocket in the next few years. It has become glaringly obvious, as of late, that the health care field overall is lagging behind other industries in leveraging IT to increase efficiency. Anyone who happens to be educated in both nursing and computer science will have skills that are at no less than a "critical" level of demand during the next several years at least.
One year of experience in the industry will do more for your career then an additional year of schooling. Every programmer I've hired from college took at least two years to start understanding what they're doing no matter how advanced of a degree they have. Programming is like everything else, you need a lot of intense practice to become really good at it and school generally doesn't give people enough time to really hone those skills.
See if you can get a job writing code for a couple of years so you can really learn the practical side of all of the theory you've accumulated. Learn how to take the designs in your head and make them work. Learn the product development cycle, how to ship software and the different people involved in the process. You will then have a better understanding of what you like or don't like and either can go back for more schooling or even jump right into the area that interests you most.
You also seem to be equating "software development" with "sitting in a cubical writing code". There are a lot of different kinds of people involved in building and shipping software besides the engineers writing code and most people I know who do them have CS degrees. Software testers, for example, spend their time figuring out how to validate that the software works correctly and under which conditions it will break. It's closely related to engineering (and most testers I know have to write tools) but has a different focus and takes a different mindset. There are also project managers who help define, plan and coordinate the software development process. They need to understand how the development process works, the needs of the customers, what the engineers are doing and how it will help solve the problem. Again, a position that's closely related to engineering but with a different focus and requires a different mindset.
That's just a small sample of the outright age, class, gender and race bigotry you get to experience in academic environments. Remember, the responder is a professor. Consider the source.
He was right about how much easier it is to drop down into easy areas like business after doing a degree in something rigorous -- that actually trains you to think logically -- like engineering.
Remember, the responder is a business professor after having trained in CS. Case in point.
To the poster: remember that your academic advisors got where they are by being white, male, privileged-class blowhards -- and smarter than average, and specializing in "generating new knowledge" in some field.
Figure out who you have the most to learn from in the direction you want to go, and get what little you can out of them: some exposure to a new field, some experience doing original research, a recommendation and a piece of paper.
Good people are scattered across programs, and they are few and far between. It's your job to find someone you can work with, and who will further YOUR goals.
Your advisor will have a far greater influence on the outcome of your graduate studies than the choice of program. There are plenty of paint-by-numbers physicists who are basically doing the same work over and over, and will turn you into a lab rat who spends most of his time dickering with equipment suppliers, and there are psychology professors in cognitive who design truly inspired studies with a great deal of rigor to them. You can't even go by field as to where the really interesting and innovative work is being done.
Some things to watch out for: someone who doesn't have tenure yet will work you like an animal on their own projects and not care one bit about your goals or interests. The recently tenured will be focused on academic empire-building and may or may not care about your goals or interests. People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
Actually, your attitude is part of the problem. We need more tech people moving into management. How else do we get the businesses, the community, and the world to understand and properly utilize technology without providing good technology leadership?
I've been working in this business for 20+ years and I'm considering an MBA focussed on managing tech. Better income? Probably (I hope). A chance to clean up the mistakes of the Neanderthals you speak of? Damn right!
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
I'd definitely recommend getting a more industry-specific graduate degree. Advanced degrees in computer science are common. Someone with a strong degree in C.S., with a post-graduate in a specific field, will be golden (assuming the field of choice isn't dying itself).
It's so incredibly hard to find computing/programming/design talent for specific industries; typically, you get a CS-only person, with no knowledge of the domain, trying to implement a solution for a domain-only person, with no knowledge of C.S. It's a painful process. There's incrdible value for being a strong computer programmer/designer in a specialized field. Again, assuming the field is lucrative to start with.
I'd look at the best-paying fields in general, and find one that piques your interest. Learn more about it, and see if it's something you'd be passionate about, and that would reward you well. Then go for it.
I had a lot of programming experience prior to reaching university; so I took a B.Comm. to start, then finished with an M.Sc. Best choices I've ever made. Having business case insight, and a strong programming/design ability, has really helped me achieve things I wouldn't have been able to, otherwise.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I agree with almost everything in the parent post word for word, but with one major exception. Do NOT, under any circumstance, neglect your GPA. When you are applying for jobs, the first people you encounter are HR types that don't know the subtle details of published research. I.e., they wouldn't understand the difference between being co-author of a paper that appears in Science versus one that appears in some third-rate workshop.
What many of these HR types look at as a first criterion for consideration is your GPA. When they run their filter on GPAs, a 2.3 will get you disqualified before they ever see your list of 15 publications. Many recruiters (though not all) will, by corporate policy, automatically discard the resume of any student whose GPA is below a 3.5 without a moment's hesitation. Because, chances are, they will probably be able to find a student with a 3.5+ GPA and a publication or two.
So, yes, do research. Show your initiative. Work on interesting and innovative projects. But do not let your GPA go down the toilet in the process.
I "washed out" of a PhD CS with an MSCS, and I think most of the parent poster's advice is good. Definitely the bit about not changing after 30 or so. Especially if you get married (or whatever) and have kids, your priorities and possibilities will change radically towards finding one good position and staying there.
I got my BSCS from a department that happened to be outstanding at the moment I went through, even though you've never heard of it. I then foolishly searched for a great CS department to do a CS PhD, (i) without first verifying that I really wanted a PhD and that it would be useful in the kind of work I really enjoyed, and (ii) failing to realize that it's not the department that counts at the graduate level, it's all about the one or two mentors you will have. My grad school has a good enough rep that everyone recognizes it, but the general departmental strategy was "throw everyone in the water and see who doesn't drown". I'm sure that worked for some, but I was completely lost for several years. In retrospect, I'd have been much better off identifying one good person to learn from and studying with them, even if it's at BFE Tech.
Based on that, I'd say that first you should think long and hard about what kinds of positions you'd like to have. If you can pinpoint people who are doing what you'd like to be doing, try asking them for advice.
Second, as the parent said, try to be doing something serious now, and try to identify specific people you'd like to apprentice under at a graduate level.
Good luck.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
For a price. So, MBA it is, then!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A good manager doesn't necessarily need to be knowledgeable about technology; they need to trust the engineers working for them to make correct decisions.
Now YOU'VE moved the goalposts. His original assertion was that it's very, very, difficult. And, quite frankly, he's right. I don't know if he's quite "Disney movie" right, but the sample size of people who do what he was talking about is VERY small. And what he was talking about is precisely what he re-iterated - moving from a less theoretical, academically rigorous, background to doing something like a Math/Physics/Comp Sci postgraduate degree.
No. You're wrong. Managers make decisions for engineers. That's what they do. And they cannot do that if they don't grasp what the consequences of their decisions will be.
The vast majority of real-world programming jobs don't require much beyond addition, subtraction and multiplication. Most of us learned that in high school.
You waited until high school to learn basic arithmetic? ;)
Seriously, a lot of programmers think this way -- until they run into something hard, at which point the ones without a good theoretical background tend to come up with some awful kludge. I've worked with some very talented programmers, who could have been great programmers with a better education, whose code ran ten or a hundred times slower than it should because of a few bad lines. No matter how great a hacker you are, without good formal training in CS, you will write bad programs. And you may have no idea you're doing it until someone more knowledgeable points it out.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Thus we have a world wide example of how incompetent most managers are in Corporations.
Honestly, I have had less competent managers than I have had good Teachers. If they have a MBA they tend to be even more incompetent than the ones that rose through the ranks.
Business needs a complete reboot. Laws need to be change that make all the executives personally liable for everything their company does. If the CEO is making obscene money, then he needs the risk of spending like in pound me in the ass prison.
MBA today means you are more sleazy than a ambulance chaser lawyer or used car salesman. All MBA holds should hide their face in shame.
I just graduated in December and was hired in January by a very large engineering/design/build firm (in the Fortune 500.) ... they prefer graduates with GPAs between 2.5 and 3.5, and that 3.9 or 4.0 students are often too difficult to work with in the office or field.
No offense, but most large companies like that thrive on mediocrity and the status quo, not innovation and ingenuity.
Large public companies need someone to make customers feel comfortable, maintain a giant existing code/technology base, and not rock the boat.
Startups and small companies (or the occasional large tech company trying to preseve its startup roots) need people who can think beyond what everyone else has already been doing and create something new. A bit of eccentricity is ok, and even encouraged, as long as they get results.
some students who keep a high GPA don't adjust as well to office life and field work as those who didn't spend all their time in the library.
Actually, my recollection is often the people who spent all of their time in the library tended to be the average students. A lot of the top students just didn't need to put in the same hours of studying to get by (or exceed).
Then again, I didn't just graduate in December - I have been working and hiring new grads in the industry for over 15 years...
You sound like a very talented person that was capable of changing at such a late chapter in his life. Sure you don't know until you try. Just be prepared for the fallout; such as, $40,000+ in school debt in your mid forties with no job prospects, like me.
I am an excellent programmer
You have a B.S. in Comp Sci and you think you're an excellent programmer? You could be some kind of genius but that's probably not true. They say it takes about 10 years of constant effort to become good at something. More likely than not you're either not being critical enough of your own work or you're not taking on big challenges.
Think about what an excellent programmer will have accomplished. If you've made major contributions to a kernel or file system, solved a major problem in computer science, or on the IT side been the lead on a large commercial project and been able to build a reusable framework out of the experience, that MIGHT put you in the excellent programmer category.
It's one thing to sell yourself and be confident. It's another to delude yourself into thinking you've reached the pinnacle of your potential and therefore become complacent.
It seems to me you really ought to lay out a 5-10 year plan and work out what you want your goals to actually be. Realize that as opportunities and obstacles present yourself you have to stay flexible and might not achieve those exact goals, but without any goals to start with you'll not be working towards anything and therefore will probably just coast along making only incidental achievements.
By the way my Masters is in Astronomy. It hasn't hurt my IT career which is going well, but then again I do NOT want to be a business manager. For what I'm doing right now, more degrees won't help. The ability to learn that I developed from my Astronomy Masters has put me in excellent stead for work and personal life. I'm not afraid to delve into a topic I barely understand and I can plow through terminology to get to the essence of a practical problem. Wouldn't trade that for anything.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Or perhaps I should turn to specific people, instead of universities.
Yes. Read a bunch of papers in the field you want to work in. Figure out who's doing interesting and solid research in the field, and approach them.
The program is much less important than the research for PhDs.
People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
Having worked with some of those people I'd say your over-generalizing. Chicago types, in particular, seem to thrive on discussion and really care less about who you are over what you know.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
No, management is about tracking risk, allocating resources, keeping the schedule, and keeping me out of politics. If a manager is making technical decisions something is horribly broken- the vast majority of the time they aren't qualified. If they are good enough to be making technical decisions they should be programming, not managing. That's what teammates and tech leads are for.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Managers without technical backgrounds tend to be wilfully, aggressively ignorant, and they will always trust their fellow MBA's over the people such as the engineers and accountants who actually know what's going on.
Sanford: "You gotta finish high school if you gonna inherit my business."
Son: "I don't need arithmetic to run a junkyard".
Sanford: "You'll go broke."
Son: "I'll get a business manager."
Sanford: "Your business manager knows arithmetic and you don't? You gonna go broke."
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear