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Ask Slashdot: Comp-Sci Graduate Schools
Colonel Kurtz sent in this question which I figured be of interest to some of you: "I'm considering entering graduate school in abouttwo years to pursue a Masters or Ph.D. in Computer Science. I am a good undergraduate student with a passion for CS and I am seeking the academic challenge of grad school. I'm looking for the (un)informed advice of the Slashdot community. Specifically, how should I select a graduate school? Is it worth aiming for the top-tier graduate schools? (like MIT, Stanford, etc.) or should I aim just a little below those (like Purdue or Syracuse?) At this point, I'd be happy to have any kind of discussion about graduate schools."
syracuse sucks. i go there for ug cs. save your money and go somwhere else
I believe it's the best in the US .. for CS
Yah CMU is the way to go for any CS majors.. But, it's tier one when taking CS into concideration and is extreemly competitive ..
Go CMU! =) MIT Berkeley and Stanford are OK. Depends on what you have for a statement of purpose, and recs (and grades of course).
You'd never have to leave your room.
I'd recommend The University of Texas at Austin. While I did not think too highly of the experiences I had with the undergraduate program, the graduate CS and Engineering schools are excellent, and ranked somewhat highly among the various national universities. Also, it's one of the most affordable of the major universities in the country. Finally, it is located in Austin, Texas, also known as 'Silicon Hills', which has quickly become one of the major technological hubs in the US, what with companies like Amd, Dell based here. My two cents. ^_^
I used to be a CS major at Purdue (Now a happy electrical engineer) and I'd have to say the computer science here is really a dissapointment. Perhaps there's a reason why the program (both graduate and undergraduate) isn't highly rated. As far as I know, the way they rate schools (in US News and Gourman reports, etc) is the reputation of the professors (so what if we have Spaf) their retention rate (this really kills Purdue because they try to weed undergraduates out at every opportunity they get) and the quality of the incoming freshmen (or graduate students) determined by a combination of GRE scores, and undergraduate GPA's. It seems as though they're trying to improve the quality of students level through the acceptance of only very good students, where before they pretty much accepted anyone. And another thing, Purdue is too damn big.. You can't get the close-knit relationships with your colleagues and professors that you'd get at smaller schools. So I'd reccomend CMU because of their wide-spanning research, small size, and their strong influence in the computer science community. Besides, Purdue's campus is ugly.
I recently finished my Ph.D. in the biosciences. If CS grad school is anything like bio, then what is much more important than the reputation of your school is the reputation of your advisor.
My advise for someone who wants to stay in academia (may be less important for someone planning to return to industry) is that you must work with a first tier advisor. There are 1st tier advisors at 2nd and even 3rd tier schools. The rub is, if you go to a 1st tier school, almost all of the faculty will be top notch. The further down the university chain you go, the lower the percentage of top notch faculty. Thus if you're going to go to a 2nd tier school, the important thing is to get a commitment from an advisor before you go.
There are some good professors in CS, but that's like about it. I suppose for grad school it wouldn't be as bad. But in the undergrad program, at least, you can slack off and not learn anything and still end up with good grades. This makes the people who work hard and get good grades somewhat less distinguishable.
Either way, the important thing is to find a professor that you want to work with--regardless of whether they are at Podunk State or MIT, you will be happiest that way.
The knowledge is all out there, why not just read the books and skip school?
Open source higher education, people!
Or do you think professors and universities actually add some value? And that they should be compensated for adding value? Come on, get real.
I suppose someone could suggest a school in another country...or the info may be useful for someone who would like to study in the US. Either way, its not like it is ruining your day to read the post so you have very little to complain about.
Ask your professors instead! Especially professors working in the specializations that you're interested in. Ask them where the most interesting work in your field of interest is being done. Take some graduate paper reading courses and find out which universities are doing the most current and best work in the subject.
You're right.. no Brit ever went to an American grad school. Those uneducated redcoats can't tell the difference between an institution of higher learning and a pair of shoes.
Ok, that was pretty stupid. Seriously though, from my experience as a grad student at one of the top four (Stanford, Cal, CMU, MIT) ee/cs schools, I'd say at least 75% of ee/cs grad school students at top universities in the U.S. come from countries other than the U.S.
when has slashdot ever not been american centric? you haven't noticed all the american flags next to the us government related posts?
I couldn't get into the NYC undergraduate CS program.. just general studies.. so I decided to take CS at Northeastern instead. I am also interested in graduate school, and I would love to go to NYU, what stands out about their program in your opinion?
Well, judging from the guys name he's living in
Vietnam or Congo.
sorry Im dumb.. whats SE?
??? I mean, sure SOME people could just read books. But where would they get resources to do research (stuff that isn't covered extensively in books). And education is not just about learning. It's about interaction as well. The experience of education is very important, it may be more important than the knowledge you're supposed to gain from going to school. And some people (like me) like the format of a class, and interacting w/ a prof, and don't like to read books as much. Bouncing ideas off others is also very helpful. A University can offer you much more than all the books in the world, you just have to know how to use it. I think it was Twain who said, "Don't let studying get in the way of your education." (anyone know if this is the correct quote?) Meaning, there is more to education than just the knowledge you're supposed to gather.
???
I mean, sure SOME people could just read books. But where would they get resources to do research (stuff that isn't covered extensively in books). And education is not just about learning. It's about interaction as well. The experience of education is very important, it may be more important than the knowledge you're supposed to gain from going to school. And some people (like me) like the format of a class, and interacting w/ a prof, and don't like to read books as much. Bouncing ideas off others is also very helpful. A University can offer you much more than all the books in the world, you just have to know how to use it.
I think it was Twain who said, "Don't let studying get in the way of your education." (anyone know if this is the correct quote?) Meaning, there is more to education than just the knowledge you're supposed to gather.
see subject
CMU has more international students in thier CS Depts
I don't understand why schools like RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) don't get the same about of publicity as MIT and Carnegie Melon. We are ranked as number 3 in the Northeastern Region of the US. I guess we will have to settle with the recognition that corporations give us, rather than general popularity. Not to mention our co-op program that is required to graduate is one of the best in the nation. Job placement in tech fields is almost 100%. The average Computer Science student has 3-4 jobs offers at graduation.
You can study free of charge in any Finnish university even if you are a foreigner. You may have to pass the entrance exam, but you can begin your studies right away if you are already studying in (or have a degree from) a US college.
I did my postgraduate studies at Helsinki University of Technology, and I'm happy with it. You can study and do the exams in English. The catch is you are not allowed (by the Finnish law) to work while you study -- even on campus.
(My information is seven years old, so some details may have changed.)
Marko
well i dunno... stil getting there but i've heard some really good stuff aboutit (or i just made it up?) what about the research triangle? damn...
True that. Social skills are gonne be a big thing
when there no longer is a shortege of CS-people.
(I'm dyslexic so don't whine about spelling)
[I am the original poster of Field of Interest]
I left out a bunch of more narrow subfields (e.g., computer networks, approximation, embedded systems, vision, wireless computing, numerical analysis, robotics, computational finance, HCI, VLSI, NLP, etc.) If possible, try to cordon off discussions of subfields into this thread...
Come check us out. We are going to eliminate all non-MS software development by 2005.
* **
It's better to join us now and get on the rolls before the Unix Collapse, which will sends herds of the great unwashed our way. Getting in early at MS means being able to look down on the freshmen, just like a real University. And there will be plenty of Linux people to look down on!
MCSD, MCSE, we got it all baby! Woo Hoo! W2K all the way! ddns forever!
***********************************************
But, if I was a open systems type, I'd have to say this decision is much too important to leave up to the chimpy wannabes who post on slashdot.
You have to research this. Look into the most current research in your favorites fields, and find out where the authors went to University.
I mean if you really like Linux, look at some place like UNC. Sun Microsystems? Maybe look on their research pages and see where the current crop of researchers went to school. Follow your interests.
That's better known as Software Engineering. Try CMU.
almost all of the cs students here are just looking to get paid. there's only a handful that are actually interested in programming, etc. anyway, i'm bitter
CMU as in Carnegie Mellon University or CMU as in the second rate Central Michigan University?
Grad School is a complete waste of time.
Some profs are great. Most are mediocore. If your advisor is mediocore, you're basically just losing money and not learning much.
I'm not just slanted towards CS, for most people, grad svhool in ANY subject is a waste of precious youth.
Most profs and "habitual" grad students are really that amazing, amusing, or productive.
Grad school is welfare with a weekly crossword puzzle, and it is CERTAINLY no longer the hallmark of the intellectual elite.
Anyone who wants to go to grad school can find a school that will take them.
Go out and get some cash while its still easy money in programming.
re:above
i was only a undergrad there, but having been at other schools since, i find CMU has the small school feel (although it wasn't really - the student body size was somewhere around 6000 including grad) where you have better access to the faculty (and i assume possibly your advisor) - and less competition with the professor's side consulting/business project. facility - the school must got load of doe - i have not yet seen a school better equipped with fancy computing resources. again, i was only undergrad there, but for what it's worth... boink
By coming to Canada, you could potentially save a lot of money, as tuition fees are much lower.
For CS, Waterloo is known around here to be the best place to go. I was impressed by the CS department at UoT (Toronto). Carleton U is really good at the undergrad level, and might be of interest for a grad interrested in parallel systems. I've heard some good things about McGill and the University of Montreal also...
Blah Blah Blah Which place to go? You could say sod to it all. Why not do a year abroad and go to Cambridge in England, UK? One of the best place's in the world. Or Manchester, England - Where the humble computer was first created Or perhaps Hull, England. Little known, could do worse, could do better but I'm happy doing what all undergrads in CS do. Drink Beer and and Read Slashdot.
Let's face it folks - there aren't enough brains to go around to populate each CS dept (or any other subject) with talented profs. The stars go to the best schools. Other schools end up with the leftovers.
If you plan on going to a "leftover" school (like I did, and yes, you know it when your school is a "leftover" school), then you're simply wasting your precious time.
I went to Queen's in Canada (which has a subpar if not crappy CS dept) and I can say that it was a total waste of time listening to all the sub-par profs rattle on about their completely and totally irrelevant research.
Looking at some of the research you wonder if these profs had been outside in the last ten years.
If you are going to grad school to enhance your job opportunities, then there's a lot to be said for starting work early after a BS and building some savings. You'll likely be far ahead of people who went to grad school thinking they might make more money.
Damn right! - I'd kill to leave this commie continent (Europe - that is) :-P
...hmm, or perhaps Sweden? ;-)
How are the top 4 tech schools, MIT Stanford CMU and Berkeley better than others in the undergraduate course? How are they better in terms of their way of education? I go to a college outside US, and most of my learning are down to studying text books on my own, which imho is quite pathetic on the school's part. Does the same happen in the top 4? Are they more advanced in what they teach besides just their reputation? Are there any significant differences between their undergrad courses?
There are a vast number of profs out there who are simply milking academic life for all they can. If you work with them you're going to get dragged down into their world of mediocrity.
unfortunately, north americans are obsessed with celebrity power and style over substance.
http://www.duke.edu/web/ACM/grads.html
Some posters have had really useful things to say about choosing graduate schools in CS. The most important component is what you want to specialize in--that's what grad school is about. Who has written the most relevant papers you've read, where are they? You need to know if you're pursuing a MS or PhD: MS is in some ways more senior-level courses, more advanced courses, and some kind of semi-serious thesis/project. A PhD involves a broad set of coursework, advanced coursework to specialize in a few areas, exams over this material, development of a specific research topic with an advisor, extremely focused pursuit of this research topic, writing a detailed dissertation to document results, and an oral presentation/defense of this document. A different thing indeed, MS via distance education is fine, PhD simply doesn't work. The advantage to going through the torture of a PhD with a good advisor is the acquisition of habits and techniques and patterns learned that are lifelong tools not easily learned in another way. Find the dept with a strong program in what you want to specialize in, and find a competent advisor in that department. Make the physical trips to visit the finalist depts, if you're good they might help pay the travel. There is a potentially catastrophic shortage of people trained in advanced subjects in CS. My own organization is starting a PhD fellowship in high- performance computing to support a few people who we hope to have a chance to hire four years later. If they go elsewhere, at least HPC in general benefits. One poster suggested just reading to acquire this knowledge, but without living with academic, industrial and gov-lab experts, having access to the best equipment, and working on the best projects, reading doesn't do it.
For some people this is the right option. If you are in it for the money, or if you're sure you want to work as a programmer for a while, then of course you don't need an advanced degree. However, I just started grad school at CMU, and here's why I think a Ph.D. is worth it:
1. In industry, they pay you to work on whatever they want. At grad school, they pay you to work on whatever you want.
2. If you're considering staying in academia, you need a Ph.D.
3. I disagree that you can go into industry and then come back to grad school later. It will be harder to get in (your GRE scores will probably drop), you won't be used to studying, and you won't be able to tolerate the decrease in salary. Do it now while you're still young.
4. Some of the best jobs in industry go to people with Ph.D.s.
One last note: apply for the NSF fellowship. You can download the forms off the web. There are about a thousand winners every year, many in CS, so your chances are not bad assuming you're a good student. If you win any fellowship this will basically guarantee admission into a second-tier grad school and the first-tier schools will like you more. (Basically, almost any school is happy to take a student when somebody else is paying.)
dmazzoni+@cs.cmu.edu
well i hate to break it to you but these days thats the way it is in most all schools. can't blame syracuse because alot of people are trying to cash in on the current job market.
are you one of those kids in my cis classes that i beat up and harass for lab and hw assignments?
While most of the profs seem to want to make the grad school better, the problem is that Queen's really doesn't put its heart and soul into CS, particularly at the grad level.
The building that the department is in is a complete shameful hole. I wouldn't be shocked if some of the building materials were carcinogens.
Kingston itself is a crappy little dung heap nowhere near any good clutural centers (Montreal and Toronto are both over 2 hours away). It really is depressing being there for any length of time.
The profs are inexplicably aloof, which is odd considering most of them really aren't quality instructors or researchers.
The labs are like a stroll through a computing museum - with an emphasis on the paleozoic era.
The fields of research cover the "typical" CS areas of AI, theory, etc. This wouldn't be so bad, but they really aren't "researching" there at all, they're just examing other people's research and closing off corner cases.
This is all quite shocking considering that Queen's is considered a good school in Canada, but unfortunately its bascially a good undergrad school for arts majors and some engineering fields. Graduate study there is not highly regarded. Unfortunately the adminstration has its head so far up its own ass, obsessed with Maclean's rankings and "prestige" that it can't see other scrapier school like Carleton passing it by in CS.
I live in the NY metro area and I just got my mcse certification and I am trying to get my feet wet in the IT job market. I also have been using linux for about a year now so I have a little unix experience as well as NT and windows95. Does anyone know how to get into the IT workforce? I plan on finishing some more night school while I work and gain expreience. I just need to get my first job and I am interested in some feedback from those here who work in the IT job market.
We always snicker at the advanced degrees when picking new software engineers. Get a job and if you really want an advanced degree go to night school and don't put it on your resume unless you're applying for a teaching position. You can always brag about it *after* you get the job.
I also have to suggest a lok at UTAustin. A very impressive new facility is under construction to house both the graduate CS program as well at the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics. (it will be completed next year) If you are up to snuff, TICAM is an excellent program that receives much money for some very interesting research, mostly involving parallel and distributed processing and scientific visualization directed towards applied problems of physics and math.
Sounds like you've got the interest and *some* of the basics, though most people here would snicker at your MCSE. And don't say "little experience", say "lot's of experience". Take some night school classes in programming and really learn it, it'll come in handy. Keep reading all the good books you can on computers. You'll get your first job, just keep plugging. And when you get the job you can grow your hair out and wear t-shirts.
I can't disagree more with you both. As the number of CS educated people rises (without counting the large number of autodidacts), the demand for more specialized CS grads only rises. It all depends what you want to do: IMO if you want an interesting job, something that is in some ways closer to research you need to have a graduate degree. It's hard to find something really interesting (at least in my view) without it. You don't want to end up doing VB scripts and web pages. Even if you find a good programmer position somewhere, unless you're specialized in some way you'll end up doing some stuff you don't like as part of your job. You need to stand out of the crowd. Plus, I've often been told that statistics show that in the longer term, people with graduate degree often end up in managerial positions faster (team leader, project manager, etc.). Your grad studies don't just teach you equations: they also give you a global vision of your field, which is harder to have if you aren't aware of the current research. Now all that being said, it's true that to get into the workplace you'll need to show some programming skills. Doesn't mean that because you've got a PhD that you can code. But it doesn't mean you have to work in industry to show off those skills. If you've got code to show, projects done (even open-sourced projects), that all counts. Interviews are fairly good at detecting someone who doesn't know about programming right off. If you're a talented programmer, the people interviewing you will find out pretty soon in the process (can you tell I've been busy giving interviews recently?). My advice: if you know what you're interested in, find a place where they focus on that, with good professors (it doesn't always correlate with the school's reputation), get a graduate degree in it, and get hired for your higher skills and to do something you really like. You'll be happier in the long term. Now about the school here's a tip: there are a few good schools up in Canada, for example UBC (Vancouver), UofT (Toronto), or McGill (Montreal), these are more affordable than the ones in the US and often sport a good CS department too.
I just started my grad career at NYU (1 class so far) But talking to other people who have been there and the faculty - if you are into research NYU is great (GNU, ADA had roots here). Education so far seems good - tough but fair teachers. Web page is bare boned but gets the job done. http://cs.nyu.edu
I am definately with you on this one, I am also a CS major like the author of the article and I have been to MIT. Its to cold there to think. So I would have to agree and say CIT is one of the better choices to. You also have a good chance of recieving so nice reasrch work at JPL.
My background: PhD student at a graduate school ranked in the mid twenties by U.S. News. The information below is mostly relevant to people considering PhDs.
When looking at graduate schools, try to find a school with a lot of faculty doing a lot of things that are somwhat interesting to you. At a small school, if one faculty member leaves, that can take away a whole research area.
Beware of relying too heavily on the rankings. The very top schools (Stanford, MIT) are large and have good people working in most major areas of Computer Science. There are also schools with quite small departments that are ranked highly.
Another reason to be weary of the rankings, is that they are based on five areas of computer science research (if I remember correctly): Artificial Intelligece, Theory, Databases, Software, Operating Systems. Smaller schools can be excellent at some of these topics, but can also have no active research in some of these topics.
Getting In: It's all about references. Ideally, your references will come from well-known computer scientists who are closely familiar with your work, and like you socially.
Work Experience: It's a good thing. On the other hand, plenty of people do quite well in grad school without ever working a full year in industry.
What Kind of People Can you expect here? Really smart people. Most have very impressive undergraduate backgrounds. Others have gotten in through recomendations, work experience, excellant social skills, etc. The far majority have engineering/CS backgrounds/Math backgrounds as you would expect. There are a few liberal arts types hanging around too.
Fellowships: As a PhD student you should be earning a fellowship of approx. $17,000 dollars.
Once your in: It's all about research. Oh, and passing qualifying exams which will vary in difficulty with the school. Grades are not as important, and tend to be inflated.
Dropping Out: Lot's of PhD students leave grad school with the Masters. If you have the credentials to be a PhD student, but only want a Masters degree, you should apply to PhD programs. Of course, you should check individual programs to make sure you can drop out with an M.S. degree.
What do people do when they get out? Most people I talk to are considering working for reseach labs at places like AT&T or academic jobs.
Why get a PhD? Why not? If you're interested in research, then it's the way to go. A PhD is not necc. going to get you a higher salary, but it may give you the opportunity to work on the projects you want to work on. It's also nice to spend some time thinking rather than working your butt to make The Man richer.
In Summary: What I would ask students, faculty, and department secreteries when considering schools: 1. How many professors are interested in things that I am? 2. What kind of jobs do graduates get? 3. Exactly how difficult is the qualifying exam? (what percentage passes their first and second time?)
Not a good choice for CS. The administration is only starting to recognize the need for a CS department and are in the process of adding a few more profs, but the department only has about four or five profs, and most of them specialize in graphics. It's a bit less than ideal. Worse than that, the social life at Tech is absolutely horrible. It's the reason why I left. Just about everyone there is unhappy, and it's pretty hard to maintain your own morale when everyone around you is utterly miserable. And what Pasadena shores are you talking about? Pasadena is pretty far from the beach--about 45 minutes in light traffic...
Isn't there a third option? Not in it for specialized further education or the money, but just kind of "have to do it" due to social pressures? I've experienced these social pressures (extended family members asking "Which are you going to be: a PhD or an MD?"), but luckily I'm really interested in the education, too.
no. that would be an insult to canada. plus, too many americans would not know what the maple leaf was
Make your decision very carefully, since you'll be investing the next 2-7 years of your life in school (depending on whether you choose to pursue a Masters or Ph.D.). The quality of the faculty and their research is probably the most important factor in one's decision, but that should not be the only consideration. Be sure to ask schools about such things as:
- where recent graduates have ended up working
- time to degree
- graduation rates
- levels of financial support and the probability of getting supported if you aren't initially
- what kind of placement assistance they provide
- teaching responsibilities (if any), and levels of preparation for teaching
- opportunities for internships in industry
Schools of similar academic standing vary quite a bit on how well students are treated, so be sure to ask lots of questions.Check out http://www.phds.org/ratings for grad school rankings in CS, math, and the sciences. You can compose your own criteria for rating schools and produce customized rankings based on National Research Council data.
Also, http://www.phds.org has lots of links to grad school related resources.
Just to add a little, I think that masters which they do is terminal-only (MCS), so you often can't apply it to get a head-start on a PhD later. At least, that's what UIUC's CS department's take on it is. I've been in a couple of good 300-level UIUC classes which were taped, presumably for this purpose, but personally I prefer being there in person.
Good luck Colonel. Stay on the boat.
I feel like an advertisement but be sure to check out the University of Michigan's CS/CE dept. High quality professors, respected name, quality campus. Not to mention that Ann Arbor is one of the best college towns in the country. Best of luck in your college search.
Experience is useful even in grad school. This way you get both sides of the picture. A good bet is to work somewhere where grad school is reimbursed.
Hm. Well, I live in the middle of Iowa, so 45 minutes to the beach sounds good to me. Of course, real men are physics geeks, not some lamer CS where you get to control all the variables ;)
Grad school in any computer field is something that tends to the choice of the prospective CS prof. If you intend to actually work in the tech field (not to say that Profs don't, but I mean exclusively here), just stick with your BS (or BA if you go to a weird school like U of Louisville like I did) and shoot for certifications. The opportunity costs of another 2 years of grad school are added to your cost...even a cheap school can cost a lot when you consider you're not working full time.
OO is highly overhyped term. Something like AI or expert systems about ten years ago. Nobody knows what the latest and gratest paradigm will rule the CS world in 5-10 years. So, I would advice to use more robust "software engineering" term instead of "OO architecturing".
Is a fantastic school. Princeton review rates it really high. They don't rob you to go to school. The CIS department is fantastic. And the courses and programs are great. http://www.cis.njit.edu
I can't say much about Purdue's CS degree, because I'm not a CS major, nor have I ever been. I'm a computer technology major. It's a great program! I'm in the Telecommunications and Networking part of it, and I'm enjoying it (in fact I should be graduating this year). As for the campus being ugly, I don't think that's true, unless you REALLY like trees, since we don't have many of those. Zal zal@nospam.mindless.com (I'm not really a coward, just couldn't login!)
The way gradschool is like open souce is that YOU ARE GIVING SOMETHING BACK! You do your research - read papers (many of which are hard to get if you're not a grad student, like IEEE Transactions) read, read, read, use the facilities (computers, networks and most of all, the network of teachers) and eventually do experiments, and finally PUBLISH THE RESULTS. Now, as in open source, other grad students hopefully will read your work and build upon your stuff. You get no money in return (unless you have a grant, or a company is financing the lab/university/teacher), but recognition.
It is definitely worth it.
Joachim Thiemann, McGill EE grad student (Masters) Homepage
I'll vote for Georgia Tech... -Reeves
Ditto (but not for comp sci). I'm a Kellogg grad and I LOVED NU. First class education. Great Location.
CMU systems is better than UWashington's, IMHO.
moo to you too.
Pittsburgh is the world capital of robotics.. oh well but you've forgotten everything else homewood greenfield - GFK hazelwood squirrel hill - sq hill mafia east hills homestead oakland come to pgh!!! we gonna beat your
If you feel strong enough to step in the big 4 (CMU, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley), rush! What you're buying there is a name, good connections, etc. But don't expect to be happy there. Welcome to the hi'flying pretentious academic BS!
If you feel those ones are really over the par, then just look at the universities that provide you with the highest educational freedom: cool profs, labs available 7/24, good libraries, etc. You MUST know that 99% of the useful stuff is acquired thru self-teaching. A good prof is a prof who knows (s)he doesn't know everything and that his job is to give good hints and advice to his students. Then, do your homework. At graduate level, a good course is much more a case study than pure knowledge delivery. And don't loose your time with "star" profs who spend most of their time taking care of their overinflated ego.
I highly recommend going to New Mexico Tech for CS grad school. Sure, we're a little school in a little town stuck in the middle of nowhere, but it's an excellent school. And if you don't believe me, just look up Cort Dougan on the Net. For his thesis, he ported the Linux kernel to the PowerPC processor. And now he's working on his Ph.D. Plus there's only around 1500 people here. And it's way cheap. Here's the Web site. Oh, and another page I found on graduate schools in the CS and Math areas.
warning: irrelevent post
Since this topic was posted I figure I might take advantage of it.
Due to certain circumstances I was, in a manner, thrusted into Ohio University in Athens without prior research on the CS department.
I will be majoring in the CS department with focus on software programming.
Anyone attend OU as a CS major?
insights? comments? gripes?
thanx for the info
1) professors who are pioneers in cs
2) cheap tuition
3) the finest looking babes on the planet (they just wont be in any of your classes)
Not necessarily listed in order of importance.
You've given a lot of good advice.
Other things to consider are:
Can you afford this school? If you are doing a normal grad school load, 2 courses/semester, you are probably considered part time, which means that you will need to begin payments on any undergraduate school loans. Many schools don't provide scholarships for master students. Even worse, many of them won't even promise you research or teaching assistantships. They let the PhD. students pick first. You get the left-overs, if any.
Do you want to TA? It's not so bad if you get an upper level course, but as a new TA you'll most likely get the huge, freshman classes, which means a lot of dumb, annoying questions and tons of grading.
Another option is taking a job which will pay for your grad. school. That's usually a pretty good solution if you don't have a family, since it doesn't leave you with a lot of time. But, as a bonus, they usually give you extra time off to handle the classes w/o reducing your salary.
The big names can be good, but sometimes it can be very difficult to survive. A friend of a friend is doing his PhD. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. This guy didn't study one bit during his undergrad years. He's struggling at Stanford. Plus, not many people have fun there -- they spend all day studying. It's extremely competitve. That may or may not be a problem for you.
Furthermore, at a school like that, you're nobody. A smaller school gives you a more personal relationship with the faculty, which can be very important. In the end though, pick a school that offers what you like in an environment you like. Do you like to ski, surf, go hiking? Factor those choices in to your selection. You're looking at a two or three year commitment. Do you want to be near your family?
If you like to travel, look into European schools. I've just recently returned from France, and really, really enjoyed it. I could have easily spent two years over there.
Follow your heart, not a name. You have to really enjoy this stuff to get anything out of it.
Best wishes!
I know for a fact the Pennsylvania State University (with many campuses all over the state) is known for being one of the best engineering schools there are. I know you're going for Computer Science, but the Computer Science and Computer Engineering courses run hand-in-hand for a majority of the time, with computer science being more software based, and engineering being the nity-grity electronic components also. I've looked into the same question you asked, and saw this school as a great oppertunity to further a computer degree past a 5 yr.
Just make sure you like to work hard, and remember, it's much better to excel at a somewhat lesser school than struggle at a school one notch up. You're much more likely to tackle interesting stuff. You don't want to wash out at a place where you're in over your head.
You really don't know what you're going to wind up doing 20 years from know. Make sure you read at least one book a month, any book, and you'll stay interesting to your employer, your spouse, and yourself.
Uh, i make about 100k a year with stock options and I dropped out of undergrad. Its kinda silly to say you need a degree to make money. I have much more respect for someone who knows what they're talking about then someone that has a piece of paper that says they know what they're talking about.
su is the only university i know of where so many comp sci students can spend hours a day at the gym working out. so maybe you could kick my ...
Hi, this is Colonel Kurtz. I'm at a foreign machine and my password is at home. Your recommendations above are all very valid, however I go to a small private college for my CS. Essentially , this means that I can't take graduate courses b/c my college doesn't offer them. So, i've been trying to improve my academic standing - namely 1) Studying for the GRE like mad (even though i plan on taking over a year for now), 2) writing free software, and 3) reading academic journals. Do you have any other advice for a small college lad like me? Thanks, Colonel Kurtz *runs around looking for password*
Just curious, which schools would you recommend for research in compilers? Optimizing compilers, parallel stuff, etc, etc.
No computer engineering department, but we do have ECE, Electrical and Computer Engineering, which is quite likely virtually exactly what you're thinking of...
I'm a Psych dude at UIUC, so I'm not exactly an expert in CS, but if your CS intersts overlap into other areas (biology, neurology, imaging, cognition, perception), UIUC and The Beckman Institute are THE place to go.
The Beckman Institute was designed to integrate research from far flung disciplines. After all, many of these guys are studying the same thing, just from a different angle. Psychologists study perception, and CS people try to create artificial vision. You have neurologists and insectologists (not remotely the right term) studying the neural systems of insects, and you have CS people trying to create insectoid robots.
Why not bring them together, right?
Check out the Beckman Institute at:
http://www.beckman.uiuc.edu
and what are you basing this decision on? sounds like crap to me.
. . . knowing what the one is talking about the paper correlates well with that piece of paper.
it's not 100%, of course, and it surely doesn't go both ways: people who know what they are talking about make up a small subset of people with pieces of paper; but they are a far smaller subset of people lacking pieces of paper. kids who are "smarter than them stupid profs" usually (not always, but usually) aren't. kids who know they're dumber usually are, of course
a little imposed discipline is worth a lot. they make you study the things that don't look worthwhile until you know them. they address principles as well as just practice. it's good to know why you're doing what you're doing. it won't save an idiot, of course, but somebody who will be a good programmer anyway can become a better one. (i'm a good programmer w/ a BA eng. lit., madly playing catch-up these past few years -- i'm not just shooting my mouth off).
finally, all of this applies only to software. try getting a "real" engineering job w/o a degree in the field. it's not likely to happen. most technical fields are like that; in fact, software's the only one i know of that isn't. of course, if it's the one you're in, that's where you are and that's what counts.
school isn't about money, anyhow, and neither is life for the most part. 100k + options sure does come in handy, obviously
Depends on what field you want to enter. If you just want to be a generic code monkey (applications programmer, client/server, or web developer) or a database monkey (and earn the big bucks), then by all means don't waste your time on a graduate degree. Many people are happy to just code applications and learn a new language or tool every once in a while. Personally, I think that is dull career.
If you enjoy computer _science_, not just computer programming, and you want to find a job where you can work in some of the more esoteric fields of CS, then get an MSCS. I know that in my area (Boston), many of the more interesting positions require an MS. It won't necessarily help you earn more money, but it will open the door to many positions without closing the door to too many others.
A Ph.D, on the other hand, isn't really going to help unless you want to do research, either as a university faculty member or in some of the federally funded labs and research centers. Unlike an MS, a Ph.D. will close a lot of doors for you. Most companies looking for software engineers don't want PhDs except for maybe a few key positions.
. . . in the U.S. That's about where it's at. In normal countries it's regarded as beneficial to the common good if people get educated; in the U.S., it's regarded as a disaster. Hence our "state colleges", which are (in 99+% of cases) temporary holding pens for illiterates, where we jokingly pretend they're being educated, and they jokingly pretend to learn. The void marked "education" has been filled, though, so there's no empty room left for any actual education to creep in and subvert anybody.
Buford Furrow and the state school board of Kansas are a sort of judgement on us for our sins in this respect. You can't have a civilized nation if half the people believe in Elvis and UFO's, and the other half take Genesis literally. And it's getting worse, not better.
THEY LET GIRLS IN THEY"RE BAD BAD!!! EVERTYBODY KNOW GIRLS CAN"T DO CS IF YOU LET THEM IN THEY MAKE IT ALL STUPID MAKE YOU NOT LERN GOOD> THEY BUNCH OF LIBBARALS BAD BAD BAD!!!
Do you think its crazy to want to go back to school after working 5 years in a very good and prestigous financial industry company and making good amount of $ ? I'm seriously considering going for PHD, as I'm sick of working for commercial entity. And I'm probably bound for promotion next year. Am I crazy? Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Take Heart! I did my undergrad. work in ME at a small school with a minimal to non-existant graduate program and I got accepted to several first-tier schools (Stanford, MIT) for aerospace engineering graduate work. I found that the size of the school (approx. 1500 full-time) was beneficial in a way, because I got to know my department chair, program director and nearly every professor in the department. This helps alot with letters of recommendation, which are very important. Also, another thing that helped me was that I did a very extensive senior design project, which got alot of notice at my undergrad school, and because big projects were not common we got a lot of support in terms of room and space resources. I did a lot of "research-ish" work on the project in the first part of my senior year, which I then was able to talk about and use to my advantage in the application process. Anyway, hope that's of some use to you. Oh, one last thing, GRE and GPA help ALOT. Good luck in the future.
Dude, if you have to pay for comp-sci grad school, you are doing something wrong. There is more funding out there than you can shake a stick at. You *pay* to be an undergrad. You *get paid* to be a grad student. That said, MIT is way cool. Go for it.
But these were some good answers. Sorry for the troll! T.O.P.
nice school, takes you with bad grades in your GRE (mine was a crap 1950 and they took me), easy work nice profs.
I have an MSEE from Caltech. Take it from me, if you get a postgraduate degree your career ends at age 30. Unless you've already become a CEO by then. The story is in my book "Seven LEAN Years" at http://www.os2hq.com/.
My recommendation is to get a MBA first. Try Wharton. Then you can learn to manage the money you can make as a CS major.
But that's another issue entirely. :)
The thing is, a lot of one's romantic notions turn out to be off the mark. See what grad school is perceived to be about by somebody who's done it.
You've got it all wrong. Real men are mathematicians. Physics geeks are just people that couldn't handle all the math.
Mapple leaf?!? I always thought it was a pot leaf.
Yup. I moved here (Urbana-Champaign) thinking that this would be a pretty cool place. It's a college town, right? Ha! I can't find pastrami in the local grocery stores, but I can find 10 different types of sandwich meats that contain "loaf" in their names. Yecch!!!
A few years ago I got the Black Flag coffee table book for Christmas [a sure sign of the apocolypse!]. I always wondered why their tour dates included other college towns (Madison, Lawrence, Austin), but never CU. Now I know why!
It's a great place to work and a great place to get an education, but it's a dull place to live.
I graduated from CMU with my BS in ECE (Electrical and Computer Eng.) This was a nice program because it allowed for the engineers to take a wide range of classes as well as specilizing in what they wanted to do. (Anywhere in between CS and Physics)
Shore: as in the redneck way of pronouncing sure.
Object oriented software? Do you mean object theory? Or just software engineering? Choose a good systems if you just want to build system software. My personal fave is University of Washington.
Come on! We all know USA is the best place to study computer science. The university systems in Europe are more theory oriented, more traditional education. If your into that then go for it. If you want a good university in Europe, try Glasgow (hey, Haskell) or INREA (spell?). They have good reputation, other than that, from what the students say themselves, avoid the other schools. Another good, non-state school is University of Toronto.
Yeah, maybe it is, but not *nearly* as dull as Los Alamos, NM.
Waterloo? I've also heard that some of the core compiler technology needed by Merced comes from research at UIUC.
Jesus Cliff, get a clue. Only rednecks call it "Comp Sci". People at real schools call it CS.
Try UQAH (Universite du Quebec a Hull). They're very cool. They can spend x hours explaining quicksort to you, and still get it wrong. You'll get extra points for complaining about how difficult the courses are. Object-oriented there is not a methodology, it's a buzzword, or it's cout, cin. You'll never forget this extreme experience! (if you survive it)
C SC blah
Wrong. Psiren is a character from the British sci-fi-comedy Red Dwarf, and the quote at the end of his message is from the same hilarious show. If your local PBS station broadcasts it, check it out.
I'm a West Lafayette native and Purdue Comp. E. grad. Trust me, if you put enough effort into it, you can stay quite occupied.
Purdue is really easy to apply for. It won't take more than an hour. And they let you know very quickly.
As someone else who has done a PhD and lived to tell the tale, I personally think that the most important thing about doing a PhD is that it can really change the way that you think. The intellectual masochism that you put yourself through does end up paying off when you get a job. (Although I did a PhD in Electrial Eng, so my comments may not apply so much to CS.)
Speak to your current faculty and see what they say - and speak to the grad students who study under the advisors that you might be considering. If they are not happy, there is often a good reason. One of the big nightmares of grad school can be the power your advisor has.
When he said the "information is out there, what do the Universities add?" I hear that you are missing, that he may or may not have actually made. Consider an education as a whole - it involves not only skills and compiled intellect, but also self-knowledge and an understanding of the (meta)physical forces of the world (and more, the point is that it is broad. it is everything you benefit by learning). The information to learn all these things is available without the standard university system (especially with an informational tool such as the Internet). however, the universities act as if they are the only portal to education, and what's worse is that many people believe this. they end up denying themselves a fruitful life as they consider themselves 'grownup' around 25 and grow stale the rest of their lives. Universities can offer so much, but they exist unchecked. they are too formulaic, expensive, political, bent on self-agrandizement. if you could decifer the order of their primary goals, you'd probably see a few items ahead of education. the opensource science model would remedy this, providing an alternative (we can do it well ourselves). one reason OSS is working so well is that the Internet provides us with a means to interact without the aciene regime propping itself up upon our back. let's let them know that we know they are taking advantage of us. let's call them on their bluff. are they really the source of "higher discovery" or do they too much resemble a self-glorified diploma vending machine? mradlerATedenDOTrutgersDOTedu
Why on earth is there such a huge emphasis on getting a college degree for CS? Or especially worrying about the top handful of schools? I've worked with some technically brilliant programmers, but they didn't excel in their careers. Any reasonably bright person with an armful of books, a PC with an internet connection, and six months to kill can pick up enough experience to land a job in IT these days. If you can't provide self-discipline, a six-month tech school degree will do the job.
Don't even start talking to me about the extra money that college supposedly brings. That's true for the first few years of your career...which, by the way, would put you at least two years behind someone that got started without the "benefit" of a degree. After that, it's more or less based on talent. I know plenty of great developers who didn't go to college, including myself, and at my most recent long-term assignment I was making $80/hr...in the bustling rust-belt metropolis of Milwaukee.
I have also known plenty of college grads who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, despite their diploma. I suppose they wouldn't make it out of a top school, but it does serve to illustrate my point that it's the person, not the diploma, that makes the career successful.
Don't forget that excelling at CS isn't the only thing you need to make it in the real world of IT. Good verbal and written communication skills, a strong work ethic, the ability to prioritize and focus, a solid understanding about your company's business, and the willingness to perform tasks without turning up your nose in a huff...these are equally, if not more, important than what you learned in CS or what school you received your diploma from.
I finished my PhD in the US in May (second tier) with an advisor who has no industrial connections whatsoever. I ended up without any reasonable offers, even if my thesis topic was pretty decent and potentially useful (a subset of hardware-software synthesis for embedded devices). Having a university which sells itself by name helps a lot.
Btw. I always wondered what type of diploms were needed to attend an American University such as the MIT. I'm french and studying to become an engineer. I thought it might be an interesting experience to spend some time in a country such as the United States but I don't have any idea of what is needed to so. Could anyone help me ?
On the subject of research/education, can anyone tell me how easy or difficult it is for a non-US citizen to get a postdoc research position in the US?
First off, figure out what your area of interest is. For example, you might be really hip to graphics or parallel computing or databases (yuk) or whatever. Then make sure you get involved with some sort of research project. Talk to the profs in your school who do work in that area and get involved. Graduate school admissions people *really* like to see undergraduate research projects. You'll look better still if you can get your name on a published paper. Second, go through the journals and proceedings and whatnot that relate to your area and note who writes them and where they come from. Pay attention to who cites whom; a cited paper is much more important than a dead end. Third, choose an advisor and not a school. If you want to stay in academia you simply MUST have a first rate advisor. Fourth, do apply to those top schools you think you might not get into. They worst that can happen is that they say "No" and you're out the application fee. "Aim High" as they say and you'll never worry that you could have done better; peace of mind is priceless.
Logical contradiction:
Driving to big cities does not help with the "there's something to do here in Purdue" arguement.
The parties are mostly "let's drink enough to think we are having fun" parties.
PLUG was near dead last year. now it's coming back a little.
I thought watching TV and surfing the web is a typical sign of being bored.
To be fair, purdue has 30k students, its impossible not to meet someone who has the same interest as you do. That's the good thing about being in a huge school.
I am working as software developer and manager
in US for 10+ years and american citizen for 5+
years. I have enough "statistics" to say the
following: people graduated from american CS
colleges, universities and Post-Graduated
programs (even Ph.Ds) usually less competitive,
productive and creative than software engineers
from Europe, India and China. "American" values
are: money, fun and games, usually without real
usefulness for paying customers. My own son
prefer to use of PC for games instead of
learning new stuff and solving real problems.
Also most of american software industry oriented
toward money and intelectual property in a way
that sooner or later you all will be Microsoft's
slaves and the like. Even yours most liked Linux
far more popular outside of US (Russia, China,
Mexico, even Japan and Europe). Yours so called
"leaders" keep crying about software piracy and
keep trying to rob the universe. Good luck!
What about Waterloo University? You guys in the 'States ever heard of it???
Are they any good? I believe they have a fairly large and decent computer science department. Not that the best, but certainly not bad either.
True, at least you have at least THREE chains of grocery stores cf. the single Furr's of Los Alamos. However, being adjacent to Bandlier Natl Forest is quite spectacular for its own sake as well as compared to the Flatland that central Illinois is.
If your looking for a school outside of the US that has a heavy math curriculum then you should try Waterloo (Canada). It compares very well with the top US schools.
UIUC is a better engineering and CS school than IIT. Trust me. Also, CMU and Berkeley are a lot easier to get into than MIT or Stanford. I've heard of people getting into engineering CMU, but not UIUC!
As far as I know, their undergrad program is pretty saturated at this point in time, I don't know how this applies on the grad side... Also think along the lines of proximity - Phoenix is 2 hours away, housing the likes of motorola , intel, not to mention the more local hughes etc. Employment frenzy.
Thats likely derived or based on the same idea as the the quote don't let reading get in the way of thinking, or reading so much you never have time to think.
Work on those english skills though ok?
I'm entering my last ug year in a typical state school (University of Maine) and am in the process of looking into grad schools, hoping to find something catering to network systems and information security research. Any suggestions? I'm a fairly good student, screwed off a little my frosh year. My cumu gpa is only a 3.3 but my cs is almost a 3.7 (I switched from ee to cs my soph year). My "definitive list" of schools currently consists of: UMass, UVA, WUSTL, NCSU, UMBC, WPI, GWU, UDel, GMU, IAState, UCDavis, UIdaho. These aren't the schools that people usually talk about when they mention "top notch" CS grad programs but they look like some of the best networks research programs around, and/or were hand picked by the NSA as infosec award-winning schools. I'm also tryng to be reasonable and select schools that might fund my further education (very important consideration). Thoughts/opinions on any of these? What am I to do? :) prefect@umit.maine.edu
Only those of us that graduated from Waterloo first and then rode the underground railroad to CMU. Which reminds me of this story. One day, six Waterloo geeks walk into Starbucks in Squirel Hill ...
Don't listen to these guys. If you want to get paid to do research, instead of just coding, then go to graduate school.
Ateneo de Manila University is the way to go man! The BEST! :)
Going to grad school in computer science is not always the most economical thing to do. Getting a Master's can be worth the time out of the industry and the money involved, but the increase in earnings given a Phd is not worth the time away from the industry.
That said, go to grad school if you love to learn.
I am an Electrical Engineering Grad Student at UIUC, and my brother is a CS Grad Student. All I can say is that UIUC is definitely up there with Stanford and MIT in terms of assistantships and fellowships, quality of research, and resources generally available to the grad student. That said, the town life is slightly dull, but you will be too busy as a grad student to notice. If your choices are between Stanford, MIT, and UIUC, you can't lose.
As much as the Technology program may have been a "wash out" program several years ago, this is no longer the case. It is very difficult to get into the program. Last year the program only accepted one transfer from anywhere in Purdue including CS. The program is now filled to the hilt with incoming freshmen. And as for the lack of a masters program... You might want to check again... They do offer one.
Systems as opposed to applications. The kernel would be an example of systems software, while Tetris would be an application.
Since this topic was posted I figure I might take advantage of it.
Due to certain circumstances I was, in a manner, thrusted into Ohio University in Athens without prior research on the CS department.
I will be majoring in the CS department with focus on software programming.
Anyone attend OU as a CS major?
insights? comments? gripes?
thanx for the info
Yeah to bad I am only a triple major which is Math Physics and CS so CIT is perfect for me just like I stated in the earlier message. For all these people that say it is dead other there who cares I WILL BE A GRAD student! working on a PHD I dont have a social life to worry about, beside if I want to drink the CHEAP beer (IE keystone) or good beer (IE sam adams). ------- New Strategy for PHD's at Cal tech
Yeah to bad I am only a triple major which is Math Physics and CS so CIT is perfect for me just like I stated in the earlier message. For all these people that say it is dead other there who cares I WILL BE A GRAD student! working on a PHD I dont have a social life to worry about, beside if I want to drink the CHEAP beer (IE keystone) or good beer (IE sam adams). ------- New Strategy for PHD's at Cal tech (Get really drunk and write words on a piece of paper for you thesis)
I agree with this as well. I recently graduated from CMU after going there as an undergrad and staying for a Masters. My main motivation in going straight into grad school was to keep the momentum of school life going and just tough it out. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but I will say that I received much more attention from companies as a senior than as a grad student.
:)
I have to say though.. now that I'm out and working I couldn't imagine going back to school full time.. it's so nice to have money...
I'm entering my last ug year in a fairly typical state school (University of Maine) and am in the process of looking into grad schools, hoping to find something catering to network systems and especially information security research. Any suggestions?
:)
I'm a fairly good student, screwed off a little my frosh year. My cumu gpa is only a 3.3 but my cs is almost a 3.7 (I switched from ee to cs my soph year). I'd like to find a school that will take me on as an RA and fund my education.
Up till now I've been working on narrowing down a list of "resonable" schools. I'm not necessarily aiming for top-10 universities, I'm more interested in finding a good program with plenty of research opporutnites and a respectable background. So far, my list consists of: UMass, UVA, WUSTL, NCSU, UMBC, WPI, GWU, UDel, GMU, IAState, UCDavis, UIdaho.
Many of these schools have great networks programs and a couple were hand-picked by the NSA as infosec award-winning schools. I'm tryng to be reasonable and select schools that might fund my further education (very important consideration) but I want to make sure that the programs are high quality. Thoughts/opinions on any of these?
This is a painstaking process...
prefect@umit.maine.edu
I have first hand experience with SUNY Albany, the University of Washington, and Washington State University. I recommend against SUNY Albany. Where credit is due, the professors there are bright people, who are very smart and really know their stuff. What they don't know is how to teach. They have a tendency to get up in front of the class, "show off" some conceptual stuff with no practical application in the real world, then hand you the book and state that the test will be Thursday. University of Washington is GREAT, but rotsa ruck getting in, especially if you are a non-minority. Also, if you are more conservative than liberal, you'll be miserable there and should consider Washington State U instead. Although WSU is a party school, it's also a fun place and the Compsci dept is decent. If I could do college all over again, I'd start at WSU and stick with it.
Check into any school that you're considering's career center and job placement rate. The point of getting the degree is to find a good job, and don't leave this important requirement out of your list of points to consider. The school I went to basically shut theirs down while I was there. Only about 20% of the people I graduated with in Engineering had a job within 3 months of graduating. I saw many of my friends working at Subway, Varisity, or local bars after graduating. Don't let yourself end-up in the same position! You may scoff at the above and say that it is the student's responsibility to find a job. That's harder to do than you think. I spent quite a bit of time and money driving between Jacksonville, FL and RTP (Durham and Raliegh), NC looking at companies. If they (IBM, Nortel, Lucent, Cisco, etc.) had come to my campus, it would have been much quicker, easier, and cheaper to have gotten a job. A small local college in the town I'm from, boasts a 100% job placement rate on Comp Sci. (and a couple of other fields) graduates over the past 12 years. Graduates from this little school made more money on average than my EE class did at Ga Tech. If a good job is what you're after, then don't choose a school just based upon hype.
Don't bother getting C.S. degree. Get an Engineering degree. Engineers laugh at you guys.
As for a grad degree in CS, thats too stupid for words. As a matter of fact, a grad degree in any applied science is idiotic. There just isnt that much to learn, and the technology changes so fast any "knowledge" you accmulate will be out of date by the time you graduate.
Both schools have very good CS departments. I have good friends going to both. I graduated undergrad at nyu now am working at a new wireless internet startup. Two of my college buddies are also at startups while my columbia friends have either continued to go to grad school or work at investment banks or companies like microsoft. I think the students at nyu have greater access to a wonderful career services office and are in tune with the industry better. Columbia's location in harlem, even though it's only a short train ride away, seems to be not conducive to working with silicon alley companies or wall street. Location, location, location. Even students who weren't even good at CS got great jobs after nyu that they *enjoyed* while columbia students seem to have more difficulty finding those dream internet careers. The OO programming classes seem to be great at columbia and nyu grad has some very good classes that I can attest to (i.e. Padovano - networks, Prof Perlin - graphics course, Prof Shasha - dist comp)
I graduated CMU in '94, the last year they offered separate EE and CE degrees. For the following class years, there was a major curriculum change (more flexible) and a combined ECE degree. Personally, I don't think either is inherently better. -jeff
IF your actually into the programing end of things RIT students hold there own at the top of all the major programing competitions. Typically above CMU, on par with MIT not as cool as Harvard. Almost all industry involvemnt,from all the major players(cisco,apple,microsoft,lucient,sun,sgi,etc. ..)
The only big public project from there was the MACH microkernel. Most of the work is thereotical at the grad level.
As Cornell is among my top list of choices for an undergraduate college (final decision comes within a month, gasp!), joining MIT and CMU in the top three, I would appreciate it if anybody could give me opinions or other useful info about their undergraduate CS program. Thanks.
the women are not better at waterloo. i went to waterloo, and they are not better by any stretch of the imagination in fact they tended to be quite a bit below average; they were however some of the most intellectually gifted women (which quite frankly does make them quite attractive) anywhere. that being said, the education at the university of waterloo is as good as it gets. too lazy to sign in aladdin1@netvigator.com
i think a moderator needs to give a reply on why a comment like this one shouldn't be viewed by people. even if the person that submited this is wrong.... it's still their right to post it. i would like to read comments to this, but most people won't ever f*ck'n see it.
i'll tell you want flamebait is, it's moderators with their heads up their ASS!!!
look at www.cs.southern.edu
I do however, believe that some sort of education is going to become neccessary in the near future (say 5 years).
Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
Speaking of which, shouldn't there be some sort of punctuation between "though" and "OK"?
(I wouldnt know fer sure cuz I doesnt have no fancy edumacation)
Which UNC School are we talking about here?
UNC Pembroke? UNC Asheville? UNC Charlotte?
I wouldn't worry about it -- probably somebody whom either:
- had trouble there as an undergrad (a large number of the undergrads do)
- was rejected
- couldn't get along with their advisor when they went (there have been a couple I could name over the course of the last few years... though not many)
I work with and know fairly well just about every grad student in the CS department and, while it has its ups and downs like any department (or work place, for that matter), I'd say that they're very, very happy with everything.
It may not be for some people because it's pretty small; however, it's very well-funded, there's a lot of advisor-advisee interaction, and you're fairly free to do as you please so long as you get some research done related to the group and are considered to be converging on an appropriate thesis topic. It's also a bit learning/AI-centric, but that's starting to balance out.
(BTW, it's good to see that you're still getting around, AR!)
- Lars (lars@cs.nwu.edu)
Hey now, Caltech is not boring. Sure right now it might be boring, but no one's there. It's definitely lively enough during the year, and everyone isn't as depressed as they are made out to be. And Caltech is good for any grad work, especially CS as they are just making that new building dedicated to "Ubiquitous Computing," There is the whole CNS and CDS department, which may be a little too theoretical for most people's taste, but it still rocks. Aside from that, it's a nice small school and the professors kick ass.
moller
moll@its.caltech.edu
oh, and one more thing...damn lloydies.
Check out www.monmouth.edu This school has had an established M.S.S.E. for over 10+ years. The program was developed jointly with industry leaders, such as Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, SEI, FAA Technical Center, U.S. Army Communications Command, etc.
WeRd G, Don't fo'get the fries and the AK-47z! Blast yo ass back to Squirrel Hill if you don't like it.
You can certainly apply to a couple top school like CMU or MIT but apply to backups if you're serious about going to grad school. Just like you applied to schools when in highschool. If your top picks don't accept you, make sure you have backups. I think the most important thing though is to apply to schools that are doing things that you are interested in. Having a well known school is definitely relevant in the sense that wherever you go afterwards, you'll always be known as coming from the last school you attended. Despite this, there are many great graduate programs at lesser known universities. But grad school isn't like being an undergrad. The expectations of grad students go up dramatically. I like to think of grad-school as a full time job (except you are paid really, really pooly :). You are given time to learn but you also are expected to produce results, publish papers, etc. If you really think you're that good... I encourage you to take a shot at it. In a couple months, I'll have completed my M.S. in EE from one of the two universities listed at the top of this message and I think there is a real need to get more motivated, smart students into grad schools. Good luck.
Most companies now are specifically looking for people with bachelor degrees. More degrees are nice, but in a LOT of cases actually hurts your chances of getting a good job.
The reason for this is two-fold. Companies are forced to pay PhDs and persons with masters degrees more for starting salary. Also companies like to put their employees through their own training programs. Companies like Dell, Inprise, Oracle, and IBM have very extensive training programs.
With the market still going strong right now I would recommend you get a good job NOW, and work on your masters degree later. A good company will even re-imburse you for your tuition. You can get paid while you are doing work coding and going to school on weekends, or nights.
A lot of high school team captain quarterbacks go to Harvard but they only need 3 of 'em.
It's not necessarily the greatest advice to pick a sub-field at age 20 and think that you'll be doing it your whole life. You still need exposure to a broad background of subjects in Computer Science and other areas of interest (like English and Science and Girls). What you find interesting now, you may later find to be unprofitable or boring. Unless you've got your whole life figured out up to the old folks home, don't commit to a graduate school based on your current interest; pick a good school that provides lots of different opportunities.
Also when considering Grad Schools you've got to consider that advanced degrees aren't necessary in the high-tech field. Unlike other fields, most computer geeks are emminently employable *BEFORE* they graduate. Even if you want to go later, you might want to work for a couple of years in the real world first.
And don't think that your education ends at graduation, you'll learn more at work than you did in school.
BTW, It's sunny and warm and inexpensive and a young person's town in Austin. The University of Texas is the place!
It all depends on what you are interested in. Moreover, if you are looking at PhD programs, choose school based on potential advisors rather than overall school reputation.
You didn't give enough information for me to say much about which tier of school you should be looking at. To have a strong chance at the top-tier schools, you should have a strong research record. Preferably published papers (or even techreports), but a recommendation from a Prof. saying that you worked for them is probably good enough.
Here are a few very top schools in the US in each field (from memory -- sorry for any omissions)It is certainly worth your while to visit the schools you are interested in and to walk down the corridors and talk to the graduate students. Step inside the labs and ask them to show you what they are working on.
Students will generally tell you both the good and bad things about a place. Be sure to ask them (off the record) about the professors and their personalities. Graduate school isn't about reading books/papers and hacking solo. It is about participating in an academic community and getting to see how experienced people think about new and interesting problems.
Finally, don't worry about the money. $16K per year is more than enough to pay rent, eat good food, make yearly IRA contributions, take a couple of plane trips every year, and even go out every now and then. Just try to avoid the money sink known as an automobile and you'll be fine.
On a similar thread.. Does anyone know of good graduate schools that are doing research into stuff like Nanotechnology, Cybernetics, Biocomputing or anything equally uber-hitech? Or do you know of any specific researchers at an institution doing this sort of thing? (I know thats probably not quite computer science... or even computer engineering... sorry). I just no idea where to even start looking for schools doing research in these areas...
2^5
Cornell's CS school used to be good. Now, the computer facilities are second rate -- MIT's creative writing students get access to better.
If you don't believe me, see this press release. Look for the quote from Robert Constable.
I've been curious what the graduate program is like at UNC. How is it? What do they specialize in? I've been looking to see what they have there, but I would like to hear the opinion of someone already there.
GATech is a nice school, but OhioState Univ has the oldest (and IMHO the best) graphics program. Besides, OSU's Supercomputing Centre has more power than GA Tech's :)
jason
I know we're talking about graduate schools here, but CMU doesn't even have an undergraduate computer engineering program. Computer Science, sure, but no Computer Engineering, a major which most other top tech schools now offer. Any ideas why?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Beware. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
Here's something I wrote late one night after a few years of grad school:
Keep in mind that I'm not a CS grad student. I'm a semiconductor engineer in EE, where IMHO a Ph.D. makes a lot more sense than it does in CS.
To get a Comp Sci perspective one might ask Philip Greenspun, MIT Ph.D. [emphasis mine]:
If you do go to grad school in CS, stop with the M.S.. There are only two good reasons to get a Ph.D.:
In my field, there are many jobs like this. In CS, I'm not so sure. Bill Gates does just fine with his high school diploma.
I went to grad school because I had fuzzy dreams of being a professor, and because I was intrigued by "the challenge". I was nuts. Now I can only wonder what I might have done if I had gotten some hard-edged advice in time.
-- Mike
P.S. Cornell has a great CS school. Look me up if you come here. With my luck, I'll probably still be writing my thesis.
Oops.
So much for my little joke.
I tried to plug my alma mater. I really did. But that quote is devastating.
Well, I think you'll find that most of the good advice people are giving about choosing a CS program also applies to choosing a math program.
One thing to be careful of, which no one seems to have mentioned yet : in math, at least, you generally don't select an advisor until 1-2 years into things. It would be a shame to spend 2 years jumping through hoops, only to approach your desired advisor and have them turn you down. The moral of this is two-fold:
1. Never choose a school because you assume you're going to be able to work Dr. Whatsisname -- if they're a big name, they probably already have a full docket of students. So make sure that, wherever you decide to go, there's more than one person you'd like to work with.
2. Your first few semesters are the time to shine. The better you do then, and the more faculty who get a good opinion of you, the better your chances are of getting the advisor you want. Everyone knows who the hot new first-years are.
One other thing -- don't go into grad school for math unless you're absolutely positive its what you want to do. If you can't work up a real passion about anything you've learned so far, don't expect it to come along in grad school. The life of any grad student sucks -- it means at least four more years of eaking out a living with barely enough cash for room and board, while all your undergraduate cohorts are making 5 times your graduate stipend. And it doesn't get any better once you graduate and start looking for a postdoc.
JRaven
Can you validate your figures? Or did you just make that up?
/. is an American based web-site, with a large amount of American content. Consequently I wouldn't be suprised if the majority of readers were American. But I'm not going to make any made-up claims.
I didn't go to an American university, I wasn't rich, but I work in America as a software engineer: my BSc Comp Sci seems to have been of higher quality than most of my co-workers.
This is not the right place for me to bore people with war stories but I must say this do not even think of considering the University of South Carolina!
The experience described in the posting to which I am replying (being left out to dry) is far from unique at both the grad and undergrad level.
I would not enter grad school without a lawyer at my side from day one.
I guess then that the greater moral to this story is that no matter what school one chooses, be very careful.
At least at the U. of South Carolina (probably elsewhere too), it is explicitly stated (in fine print) that the catalog is not authorative and that nothing your advisor says is binding upon the University.
As far as I was ever able to tell, there is no written document that is authorative with regards to graduation requirements for the U. of South Carolina. The awarding of degrees is purely discretionary at the whim of a committee. All of this information I learned personally and the hard way.
While you are entering into a contractual agreement, the obligations are purely on the side of the student. I am being quite honest and factual here: my kids will have their relevant college materials reviewed by my lawyer. Caveat emptor...
What many people will tell you is that your supervisor is the most important reason to choose a school. You have to respect the work this person does and how they do it. You also have to get along with them in some way. What "get along" means is of course different for everyone.
If you are not in a hurry, then I would suggest doing a master's first. Then the first choice of school and supervisor is not so crucial. Plus, it gives you a chance to figure out exactly what you really want to do. Reading many papers and going to conferences is the only way to determine exactly what you want to do. As an undergrad not many people have an opportunity to do those things.
Doing a masters and then possibly switching means 5+ years whereas a direct PhD can be done in 3, so this route is not for everyone. But, having done a Masters first lets you discover who is doing the most exciting work in the area you love most. So, choose a good, braod, fun school to do a Masters and while doing it decide who to work on a PhD under, then just go wherever they are.
Definately UT Austin. I did the undergrad CS program and loved it. I mean, you might as well go to a top school that also resides in one of the largest high tech communities.
Given a choice between NYU and Columbia, I'd say go for NYU.
More money, better neighborhood, better departmental politics, generally happier faculty and students. Columbia is a good place to be an undergrad, but I've met very few happy Columbia grad students in *any* department.
Fox: "What are you working on?"
Rabbit: "My thesis."
Fox: "Hmmmmm. What is it about?"
Rabbit: "Oh, I'm writing about how rabbits eat foxes."
(incredulous pause)
Fox: "That's ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat foxes!"
Rabbit: "Come with me and I'll show you!"
They both disappear into the rabbit's burrow. After a few minutes, gnawing on a fox bone, the rabbit returns to his lap top and resumes typing. Soon a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hard working rabbit. (Tippy-tap, tippy-tap, tippy-tippy-tap).
Wolf: "What's that you are writing?"
Rabbit: "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eats wolves."
(loud guffaws).
Wolf: "You don't expect to get such rubbish published, do you?"
Rabbit: "No problem. Do you want to see why?"
The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow, and again the rabbit returns by himself. This time he is patting his stomach. He goes back to his typing. (Tippy-tap, tippy-tap, tippy-tippy-tap).
Finally a bear comes along and asks, "What are you doing?"
Rabbit: "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eats bears."
Bear: "Well that's absurd!"
Rabbit: "Come into my home and I'll show you."
SCENE: Inside the rabbit's burrow. In one corner, there is a pile of fox bones. In another corner is a pile of wolf bones. On the other side of the room a huge lion is belching and picking his teeth.
MORAL:
What matters is who you have for a thesis advisor.
I didn't write it, but it does have some truths in it (but do try to choose a subject that interest you...)
Liran.
It really doesn't matter that much where you go.
:)
Ok, I didn't have much choice when I started, all I knew was that I wanted to do electronics and CS, and I wanted to become an engineer.
Well, that left me with two choices here in Denmark.
Anyway, after my first year, my interests had moved completely away from electronics, and it was CS all the way.
However, I became rather dissatisfied with the CS department (at least with some of it), and numerics and _real_ computing has been my interest for the last years.
My point is, even though I've known ``exactly'' what I wanted since primary school, even CS is such a wide area, and you don't know what your real interests are going to be, before you found some subjects that weren't it.
If it's CS, find a university that does CS. Any university that does CS. You will end up doing stuff you didn't dream about anyway.
You have to get disappointed before you can be really happy. You have to hate subjects, before you can find the ones you love.
(Shit I sound old.
In undergrad, you're expected to just learn to do something, but in grad school, you're likely to do some research, and you're expected to contribute something new to the sum total of human knowledge. I say go somewhere that the research interests you.
That, and CMU rules. Actually, the CS school. if top notch. Sorry for the shameless plug. You should really also consider the city, ie whether or not you're going to hate living there.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
You may want to look at the distance learning thing. I work full time, but attend grad school part time (6 credits a term) via the NTU (www.ntu.edu) satellite network. They get classes from MIT, U of I, U Mass, University of Arizona, Purdue, etc. Lots of schools. You get some of the best instructors from some of the best schools.
:-) ... and found that I acually like it. You can get the classes taped and watch when you want, or go live on some of them. The don't do phd, only masters, but it's something else to think about. Lets you work full time and make some decent money while going to school.
I was pretty skeptical at first, but tried it (cause lockmart is paying for it
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
I think you are probably correct. I know that they have an option to do a thesis or just more courses. (whatever it's called, I can't remember now ...) I always, for some undefined reason, thought that if you took the thesis option you were OK, but if you didn't you were screwed for a phd. I'm probably wrong.
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Pick it on the basis of subject matter, assuming that you already know what interests you. If you're only vaguely sure of the latter, then choose on the basis of an existing multi-student and well-funded research project, so that you don't have to build all your tools from scratch.
On the other hand, you learn a lot when you have to do it all yourself. Er, well, I did, anyway.
Wherever you go though, it'll be fun, and your ultimate success will depend on you and only you. Good luck!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If you are interested to do your graduate studies in Europe, you should check out Turku centre for computer science in Finland. Everything is in English (of course as 50% of the students come frm outside Finland). You can get full financial support for the studies and living costs. I have been doing research in wavelet image compression there for one year and can fully recommend the school. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Vaadin - the best open source framework for building web applications in Java - no plug
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part. I don't know if I'd want to stay hear for as long as some grad students I know have. Personally, I'd favor Stanford, if you have the means and ability. They have the most top notch faculty around, although after the retirement of some big names (Knuth, McCarthey), that's somewhat less the case. That said, I have no intention of going to grad school anytime soon, but that's me.
You make some good points about WHY you should stay in school - and I think it comes down to if you are planning a career IN acadamia - then a Phd is the cost of entry. If you are going to be a working stiff - then the graduate degree is indeed a waste of time. It never pays for itself. I was told when I was starting out in industry than an MS degree was worth maybe an extra 5K to start - and the difference between my income an the guy with the MS degree would disappear at 5 years out. Turned out to be true. I've worked with LOTS of Phds over the last 20 years. As for choice jobs - well they were doing the same stuff I was ;-) VERY VERY FEW Phds do research in industry (CS and EE that is.) Mostly you do development cause companies are more intrested in product. The R part of R&D doesn't show up very often in this industry from my observation. Thus the advanced degree doesn't help. My two cents worth - after taking inflation into account - not even worth that.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part.
True enough. I spent six years there (but my graduate work was on the other side of campus -- in microbiology). You know UC is a dull place when Waterloo, Ontario (which even Canadians consider dull) seems interesting in comparison.
Um, don't believe your government's propaganda -- going to a public university as an undergrad in the US is extremely cheap (I paid my own tuition from working a low paying part-time job; frankly the idea of someone in the US not being able to afford college is absurd) and graduate school (at least for doctoral programs in the sciences) is better than free -- students get paid.
Medical school isn't cheap, true. But in a land without socialized medicine, physicans earn extremely high salaries. It isn't too unreasonable to ask medicial students to take out some loans. (And student loans are easily obtainable)
But your suggestion of going to another country is not bad. I'm doing a postdoc in Canada now.
If you want to do the power-education, do anything
and go anywhere route, then location probably won't
be too important to you.
On the other hand, whatever school you choose
will also determine what city you live in for the next
couple of years. As a guy from a small Oregon
town who went to MIT for my undergrad work, I
realised that the fast paced East Coast way of
life just isn't for me. Oregon isn't exactly a CS
powerhouse, but it's in a beautiful location, and
it's close to my family. I've been able to have
a family and raise my children close to their
grandparents while I persue my degree.
But, my choices would DEFINITELY be different
if I wanted to get a PhD and go into academia,
rather than getting a MS and working for a
Portland area company. The "prestige" of the
school you go to is much more important if you
plan on being an academic researcher. If you
want to go straight into industry after you graduate,
then you can afford to consider quality of life issues
a bit more when you make your decision.
-- Bret
I too, have heard this; it should be common knowledge. The advice I received from a grad student in my undergrad TA'ing days was to get both. That way, when you work on your resume, you can legitimately omit the fact you have a PhD, and only divulge it if asked.
UC Berkeley is a great place to go to school. Fun town, lots of really interesting and intelligent people. SF and Silicon valley are real close. Lots happening and phenomenal professors. Undergrad was a blast. If I could get into grad there I would be stoked...
-doog
Here was me thinking that /. was news for nerds on an international scale. This very american centric and totally unrelavent article seems to be totally out of place. Not that its ever stopped anyone before...
Well.... (You're not very clued in about real world jobs I see. No insult intended, but you're in for a hell of a shock.) If little lame mid-manager jobs is what you are after, then you go ahead and take them. Mid-manager jobs are the quickest way to wasting all the education you have worked so hard to get. Soon, you'll be stuck with all kinds of non-technical issues like making little charts about how all the real workers on your team are spending their time, stuck in eternal meetings about ridiculous topics, etc. Within a year, you'll be so far out of touch with the real technology that all you'll be is the butt of "pointy haired idiot" jokes.
Clue in: If you go into a managerial role, you do NOT get to play with the technology much, and you begin the downward spiral to incompetence.
I've been there, done that. It sucks.
Pursue a career path along the lines of "technical leadership" not "managerial leadership". It's a bit more of a challenge, as a lot of companies are just waking up to the concept and really don't know how to implement it.
What you want to be, if you are truely the "Way-SmartGuy" you say you are, is to be the technical leader - the guy who (1) works on the toughest coding problems, (2) is the person who all the "less gifted" come to with technical questions, and (3) who the pointy-hairs consult with to sanity-check their charts and graphs and time commitments. (Oh yah, and the technical leader is generally paid better, more respected, and considered more indispensable, than any of the pointy-hairs... Who do you really want to be??)
Being stuck with managerial responsibility really sucks rocks for those with true technical talent. Those with true technical talent generally don't need the advanced degrees. Face it, the best, most motivated people in the industry usually don't even have bachelor degrees! More power to you if you think you need an MS or PhD, but in the IT industry (as opposed to most other fields) going for the advanced degree is like keeping the training wheels on your bicycle well into puberty - it just ain't needed and in fact will bring you a lot of ridicule. Some dork with a PhD who thinks he's hot shit will cause the resident alpha engineer to spit in his general direction.
(Wow, that was a fun rant :) )
Well, I liked Northwestern as an Undergraduate. Just left this past June. None of the graduate students I knew ever complained so strongly about things...
Anyone know of anything in particular that's bad?
AR Schleicher
ars@iag.net (ars@nwu.edu is still active)
One thing to note is that you will probably be funded off of grant money; your research will be in support of some specific project. Therefore, in most cases you will not have the totally flexibility to pick any research topic of your choosing. Therefore, it is important to check out what work the profs are doing now, not ten years ago. What direction is their work leading to in the future? Remember that most journal articles indicate work done about two to three years ago; hence, check out conference proceedings for the latest stuff (or talk to your profs). It is likely that work that you will be doing has not even been funded yet; your future adviser may be writing the proposal at this moment.
Also keep in mind that profs only have a finite amount of grant money to support their grad students. This usually means the "good" ones have more money, more projects, and hence, more students. This could be good and bad.
My personal experience. I picked a school that had a fairly young and relatively small faculty that were on the rise up in terms of their careers. My adviser was just starting out but had already established a very good scientific reputation. Ppl told me that he also a very nice guy, honest, and easy to work with. My working for him turned out to be a good decision. It also turned out that my fellow grad students were great; we studied hard, played hard, and are friends for life.
The thing is it's called Electrical And Computer Engineering. The program here at CMU (I am a junior in ECE, doing the computer engineering side of things) is extremely flexible. The way the program works is this:
You have one intro course (18-100), and two core courses (Fundamentals of EE, and Fundamentals of CE). After that, you pretty much get to choose what area you want to do (electrical, computer, or both). If you want to learn more about the program, check out these two links:
The CMU ECE Home Page
Overview of the B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at CMU
My experience here in the ECE program has been great. The program is nop-notch, and very flexible. Anyway, check the links if you want the details of how the program works.
That said, UT Austin is a decent, and very inexpensive (in terms of tuition) university, with an above-average CS department.
And yes, Austin as a town is a lot of fun.
I believe that it is, "I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Recently, it's hard to beat Stanford's reputation in graphics, but MIT is coming from behind with a lot of talent and interesting work. Watch out! :-)
And yes, I am a GaTech grad. (MSCS '99)
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
The only real way to know where you will go to grad school is to GO TO WORK for a while - get some real world experience first, then you will discover what you want to do in this big science that we know as CS (and getting bigger all the time!) ... plus, you may have the added benefit of having your employer pay for your school!
As far as schools, I would put in a vote for CMU. Simply based on the results that the school is producing in the CS fields lately.
There have really been some excellent suggestions among the slashdotters on this topic -- obviously, quite a few grad students read the postings. Let me second the opinion that you should really choose your grad school based on the topics you wish to study -- every grad school will have its specialty, and if you wind up missing on that target, you will have a hard time advancing. Of course, the big (n) schools will make this easier on you (e.g. Stanford and MIT do research in everything), but they are also harder to get into and larger, so it may not be what you are looking for.
Let me suggest my undergraduate alma mater: The University of Rochester. They have done seminal work on parallel computation, vision, robotics, AI (mostly NL understanding), cognitive science, and theory. They are a PhD-centric department, and very small (about 50 grad students, and 25 faculty. They are very well endowed, and I think highly of the faculty there. I think this would be ideal for the prospective student that wanted a small, intimate department. For more info: http://www.cs.rochester.edu.
A lot of the comments so far suggest figuring out what specific CS field one is interested in and then look for a school that's good within that field. Well, I've figured out mine: Architecturing, designing and constructing object-oriented software. Anyone have any suggestions as to what schools are good at that?
Well, Sir, thy supposition dost be false. Actually, I'm Swedish and I generally agree with what you say. I normally use more formal and more correct English in writing than I do in speaking (partly because when I write I have time to really think through what I'm saying, when I speak I'm fully occupied just trying to get the other end to understand me) but I have to admit that my involvement in MUDs and IRC has tainted that a bit.
But I'm shocked, good Sir! For pronounciation, surely you must turn to Oxford's "The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English" rather than the standard dictionary?
If your primary interests are mathematics or theory, you still cannot beat Moscow State University
Not for the grad school. It is nonexistent - in the way Americans expect it. I have got my diploma from the Physics department there. It is a good equivalent of MS degree here. In the grad school you just write your thesis and hardly get any additional education except for your narrow field. I would claim it is impossible after american style college. Moscow State is the best place to get your undergraduate in Physics or Math. You actually learn something...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
It is foggy and girls are all pierced and ugly. Cross the bay.. ;)
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
It sounds like a legitimate comment to me.
The fact is no one will hire you (at least not for any decent pay) if you don't have a degree of some sort. You have to invest money in a degree whether you actually need to learn anything or not. It's a lie it's a joke but that's the way the world works-- get used to it my friend. If you don't work with the system you'll get stuck taking orders from morons the rest of your life.
Unfortunately, top tier doesn't really apply to CS grad schools as it does to undergraduate education. As an undergraduate, you study computer science. As a PhD tracked graduate student your areas of interest will be much more particular. So now, this "top tier" applies only to individual fields inside computer science. For example, if you think that you would like to do research in MITs media labs, then that is one of the best places in the world to do so. However, if you want to do research in networks and group communications, look at JHU or Cornell where they have established research centers and EXCELLENT faculty that work in those areas.
Sounds to me like you have a lot of research to do. Also, don't hesitate to fly out to a school to check it out (small investment in the big picture). If the faculty member you are interested in working with is not receptive, you can make a big part of you decision based on that and the environment you see there.
I actually am pursuing my PhD at the school I attended for my BS and my MSE. I knew the environemtn here and knew that it was right for me and what I want to research.
Good luck in your decisions.
Then I worked at another company doing support and maintenance of their lousy code. Often times it was screaming at me to fix it, but if it wasn't on the list of bugs we were supposed to fix, I couldn't. Some of it was so ugly and I just wanted to improve it, but it was considered too much of a risk.
At Rice I had so much fun because even though I was coding something I was asked to do, I had considerable freedom in the coding itself and could actually talk to other people about what I was doing. Now I spend so much of my time wishing that I could work on this or that dream program of mine. Usually I want to write it to illustrate some kind of principle I have devised. I would get a big kick out of writing detailed documents explaining exactly what my theory is. That's exactly what research is.
I have begun a new job teaching CS at a local community college. Tomorrow is my first day teaching. The salary cut doesn't bother me, despite what some have said above. I have to be doing what I enjoy. If the teaching works out, I think that's a sure sign I need to go back to school. As for GRE scores, I recently trained with the Princeton Review to teach their GRE course. Not a problem. The only thing I'm concerned about is finding faculty recommendations. I might need to take a couple of classes to get to know some more professors.
hmm lets see where is the money ?
lets face it people talk of MIT, Stanford etc
but pray tell where is the most recogised Uni or gets more research money CAMBRIDGE !
no not the fake one
just trying to make a point if you go do research somewhere else in the world people think you are better. You experance more being in a differant place. You might as well because if you live any distance from home you have to get on a plane !
so why not cross some water ?
do the reserach that you want to not just go to the place you want to ! it makes a big differance if your prof is into the same things as you.
Japan is cool UK is good so are the germans hell travel and get sponsered (if you can get a sponsor they help out with food, traveling improves your chances of geting one)
but LIVE
john jones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
I opted for a Master's over a Ph.D. partly because I want to switch topics (and get a Ph.D. elsewhere) but also because of the politics in the environment--I just want to get of there for a while.
Getting a Ph.D. puts you in the heart of highly political academia, and since some fields are pretty much Ph.D.-only, like science, the subjugates can't avoid it.
In my frustration with the political nature of science, I started "The Open Lab", which applies the Open Source Software model to science (the former was modeled after the ideal of the latter; but we ought to strive for that ideal):
http://theopenlab.uml.edu/
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
HAL9000
I agree here. MIT or Stanford will just burn you out. Besides, we have such notable things as NCSA, and the birthplace of graphical web browsing. And as was noted before, the grad school (and the CS department, in particular) are top-notch.
When I got my MSCS from UW/Madison (1979-1981), I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code: compilers, interpreters, a database management system, even mock operating systems and device drivers. I believe it immensely strengthened my programming skills.
Interesting thing about MSCS programs: they have (or had at the time) huge numbers of students with BS (or even BA) degrees in fields other than computer science. (I started with a BS in Physics and an MS in Mathematics.) The non-CS majors weren't coddled; there were a couple of senior level classes we could take for graduate credit to "catch up", but we were expected to learn C and Unix based on a couple of one hour (each) supplemental lectures.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Where does that leave the rest of the world? What do you think: that they don't have any graduate schools? Why not suggest some fscking non-american graduate school instead of bitching and whining?
Read the original article...
Now perhaps it just happens that most of the posters here are American, ergo all the suggestions for US schools.
University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada!
I graduated 2 years ago with a CIS degree and walked into the head IT position (WAY over my head and still am ;) at a private company.The experience I have gained handling people/budgets/owners is worth more than any prefix. I am not knocking MS and pHD's because I fully intend to continue my edu "some day". What I am getting @ is it will always be the bean counters that rule business, you need to learn what you will eventually have to face.
DEI, FIEF
I went back there the other day. Was very depressed to see how quiet it was. Not like back in my day, when men were men, and the sheep were scared.
Now its like a graveyard
Good advice. Also:
Send at least one application each to a school of the first rank, a school of the second rank, and a school of the third rank. Send additional applications to schools of the rank that you think you can get in.
The above scheme is intended to ensure that you do get into something, but don't have to settle for less than the best that you can get in to.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ok, so I'm an undergraduate, but I thought I'd add my comments anyways from what I've seen/heard and know about the faculty.
If you're into theory/algorithms, it's a pretty hard core place. Sedgewick, Tarjan, and their buddies can compete with anybody out there in the field (IMHO, Donald Knuth would be an exception to that statement). A lot of the folks on this side of the department say that the best CS grad student was a math undergrad student.
There's also a new program in applied and computational computing which looks really promising. It's all about integrating CS and other fields that require intensive computer modeling, and they're putting some very cool folks in the program.
Also a pretty strong program in computer/network security, but I don't find that stuff so interesting, so I couldn't tell you much (except that Ed Felten, the government's tech guy in the MS case is involved in that program).
So, basically, I think I agree with the overwhelming sentiment of the others here today: the school you choose should depend on what you want to do.
Purdue has some amazing equipment for that TNT program, but that last time I checked (I graduated Purdue CS '97) you can't get a master's out of the Technology program, so the point is moot.
Anyways, CPT (computer technology) was the CS washout program when I was there. Heh.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
Or are we going to be strictly midwestern (UofI, Purdue, CMU...) and left-coast (CalTech, Stanford, UCB...) biased?
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
mooo!
Jilles
IMHO I would try MIT, Cal Tech., e.g. all those dream schools. Don't worry about money, because with most grad schools they are looking for good students that will make their school look good. So if you have a clue and can show you have a clue money will come knocking at your door. IMNSHO I say check out The University of Cincinnati, Engineering School, they have a good engineering reputation and the computer department is still young so you get "A LOT" of freedom, and they are the ones that started the co-op program. GO UC!!
:P
Any ways in the end you have to find a school that fits your character, and no matter what don't worry about money[1] because it will only stop you from taking chances, and maybe getting lucky.
1. After Y2K every thing will be barter
Just your average Farmer
If you aren't sure that you want to get a Ph.D. get some experience first. I knew that I wanted to get a Master's but wasn't sure if I would get in to, or wanted to deal with the hassles of applying to a "top-tier" school. So, I looked for employment at a place that already had a close relationship with one of those schools (MIT Lincoln Lab). Now they pay my tutition and my regular salary with only a one year "stay with us" clause. It turned out to be a great job anyway.
According to MIT's Graduate Admissions Page, "an applicant must have received a Bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical school of acceptable standing." Another place to contact is MIT's Internation Student Office. If English is not your primary language will almost certainly need to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foriegn Language). If you are asking about undergraduate admission you should be aware that financial aid for ugrad foreign students is almost unheard of in the US. I would say that any international (non-american) student would have a better-than-average chance of getting accepted to a US school since "diversity" has now become quantizable statistic used to rank US schools.
A few years ago I ran into this paper about how
.Z extension). To get the paper: .Z'
m l m l . crossroads]
. html t ml
to be a CS grad student, and how to choose a grad
school. I wish I had read it before I chose my
(EE) grad school.
10/5/98
Some years ago now, I wrote a paper called "How to Succeed in Graduate
School: A Guide for Students and Advisors," that is publicly available
on the net. (The original version of the paper was called, "How to Be
a Good Graduate Student / Advisor.") It contains a lot of suggestions
on finding an advisor and a thesis topic, doing research, writing the
thesis, and establishing a research network, among other things.
Pointers to HTML, postscript, and latex versions of the paper are
available at my home page (http://www.erg.sri.com/people/marie/), and
listed below.
The latest version of the paper is also available by ftp at
ftp.erg.sri.com. There is a latex file (advice.tex.Z), with four
additional input files (advice.bib.Z, the BibTeX bibliography,
fullpage.sty.Z, a style file to make the text portion of the page
larger, named.sty.Z and named.bst.Z, bibliography style files),
and a postscript version (advice.ps.Z). All of the files are
compressed
(hence the
ftp to ftp.erg.sri.com, login as anonymous, and give your
e-mail address as the password
'cd pub/ITAD/advice'
type 'bin' to the ftp prompt to turn on binary file retrieval mode
use the 'get' command to take whichever files you want.
To uncompress the files, just do 'uncompress
To generate the latex output, copy the first three files, run
'latex advice,' then 'bibtex advice,' then latex twice more
to incorporate all of the references.
The paper was published in two parts in issues 1.2 and 1.3 of
Crossroads, the online ACM student magazine, available at:
http://info.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-2/advice1.ht
http://info.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-3/advice2.ht
The Crossroads home page is at
http://info.acm.org/crossroads/
gopher://info.acm.org/11[the_files.pubs.magazines
ftp://info.acm.org/pubs/magazines/crossroads/
HTML versions of the original paper can be found at:
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/www/graduate/advice/advice
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html
U. Indiana's "What Every New Grad Student Should Know," which points
to this HTML version as well as Phil Agre's networking paper and other
useful resources, is at:
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/grad.stuff.h
The paper was also reprinted in the Winter 1995 issue of the IAPPP
(International Amateur-Professional Photoelectric Photometry)
Communications, and in a shorter form in Vivek, an India-based
quarterly in AI.
Some of the references in the paper are incomplete (or possibly
incorrect). If anyone has more complete bibligraphic information for
any of the references, I'd appreciate it if you would send it to me.
Comments and feedback on the paper are also very welcome.
Marie
P.S. Another useful web page is Dave Burrell's "Getting In: An
Applicant's Guide to Graduate School Admissions," at
http://mail.h-net.msu.edu/~burrell/guide/ . A mailing list that
may be of interest to female graduate students is the systers-students
mailing list (see http://www-anw.cs.umass.edu/~amy/systers.html ).
I find this discussion very interesting, since
I am planing on going to the U.S. next year
myself, to study C.S. at the undergraduate
level.
I'm planning on applying to at least the University of Maryland (www.umd.edu), and
South Carolina State University as a backup, plus
two more I haven't selected yet.
I chose UMD because they seem to
* have many courses that interests me
* they don't brag about their "Macs and PC:s" (meaning MacOS and Windows)[1].
* are just about within my financial range
(around $22k total per year, for an international
student, including residency).
* they claim to have a highly ranked C.S.
department
Am I making a misstake? Does anyone know more about UMD (or SCSU for that matter)?
[1] I honestly can't take a C.S. department seriously if all they do is teach students how to use Microsoft products and click around in MacOS.
And I also want to learn more about Unix (because
I'm far from being an expert, even if I love Linux).
/ Peter Schuller
--
peter.schuller@infidyne.com
http://www.scode.org
I agree, but would suggest a further step--find a good supervisor. I'm a CS grad student now and can assure you that your supervisor makes or breaks your experience.
Go to the school and talk to some of the people in your area and find someone you can work well with.
Don't be sucked in by a big name researcher either. You're going to be working with this person closely and the shine of having a well known supervisor will wear off quickly.
You're not going to get shot, but... there's not such a bad chance that you'll get knifed
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Why not try U of Illinois? It's one of the top grad schools in engineering, and it's damned cheap compared to places like MIT and Stanford.
Colin Winters
Some of these comments I see on here really make me sick. The idea that some schools are "second-tier" and are therefore just full of unimaginative, uncreative, boring people. What kind of elitist attitudes are these "first-tier" schools fostering?
Academia should be about learning and sharing that knowledge with others, not about who goes to the most expensive school with the most prestige.
It's a damn good thing I don't intend to go further than M.S in CS (perhaps not even past B.S.) I certainly don't want to deal with this level of idiocy and elitism.
It all depends on what you want to do ...
Are you looking to get a more focused education in some area of CS?
If so, which area?
If not, then you're in it for the money?
If you want money in CS then (short term) get the job, screw grad school, or (long term) get a masters from just about anywhere (ok, ok, upper tier schools can open upper tier jobs, but it's not the only way) while getting job experience (intern/co-op).
Figure out why you want the degree (for "the challenge" is not that good a reason, you might be happier with a challenging job instead). Check US News Online and see where the good schools are. Ask your professors where they went, what they think, what they'd do different.
Good luck.
(for the record, I'm a PhD student studying graphics at UNC Chapel Hill)
I love Tucson, and the university has a good reputation (much better than mine, AZ State), but their CS program is really new. I remember wanting to go there in the late 80s for my bachelor's, and they didn't have an undergrad CS program yet. You had to do EE. Then again, what do I know, I went to ASU. Don't even consider ASU.
Being a graduate student in computer science is an ascetic experience. In order to succeed, you will be called upon by the elders of your order (professors) to forsake the temptations of big IT salaries and stock options, to labor and toil as a peon with virtually no status whatsoever. In the end, you are supposed to emerge as an enwizened practitioner. That's the theory at least.
Seriously though, if you decide to go to graduate school, you will help yourself greatly by doing the following:
1) Talk to graduate students from any of the schools that you are considering attending. They will be able to tell you the real deal about their school. You might also be able to judge how bright a department's grads are when you talk to them. A lot of smart grads is usually a good sign.
2) Find out something about the school's location. Even though you will be involved with classes and research most of the time, you want to make sure that when you actually have free time, that there's something to do.
3) Make sure that the school's aid package is enough to pay the rent and eat. That is, unless you are your parents are rich. Make sure that you know exactly what your expenses are, e.g., tuition, fees and health insurance. Any good Ph.D. program will pay most of these for you. Don't be shy asking about the size of stipends or fellowships. And make sure that you'll be funded throughout your tenure as a student.
4) Know exactly why you're going to graduate school. You will get depressed and start doubting your decision to go to graduate school. Especially when your friend's make $10,000,000 when their stock vests. It's good to be able to reassure yourself that you made the right choice when this happens.
5) Visit Ron Azuma's guide to being a PhD student.
Hope this helps.
EvilKevin
I would suggest that it is important to get to know your field of interest, and the key players in that field before embarking on your path to a decision. For example, is there a school with a concentration of people who could be considered pioneers, or is there just one person who may not be able to give you the amount of time that you deserve, because they are simply over burdened.
It's often hard as an undergrad to know who is doing what, so you should try to find articles which could be considered "suveys" of the field, as these will often point to other researchers with a small summary of what they have contributed. Keep in mind that grad school is focussed mostly on research, not taking classes. Therefore, any snooping you do in the field will only help you later on.
Once you are armed with references to people, find them on the web and see where they teach. You may be surprised. For example, Tarjan, one of the leaders in data structure research, is at Princeton, although people don't often think of Princeton as a computer science school. Terzopolis (biologically based modelling/animation) is at University of Toronto (also where Cook proved the first NP complete problem!). Although going to a big name school can be enticing, you may be much happier at a smaller (name) school where you can really focus on your research and can actually find your advisor.
As a final comment, I would suggest you not limit your search to the United States. Although they do have strong schools, other countries have equally strong schools, if not stronger. This will become evident to you as you peruse the publications in your field.
Eric
Finding somebody willing to pay you for the amount of education you have is only the first problem. Asssuming that you do, you're going to be expected to work even more hellish hours than people with BS's in CS.
And if you don't care about that, and salary is paramount, then you could very easily train yourself up to that pay grade in non-traditional ways, without having to pay back any more student loans.
My $.02
Your comments are dead on. Traditional academia is about being a highly specialized expert in a very particular field. The internet is not about specialism. It's about putting the cumulative power of those specialists into the hands of the world. You are right now where you want to be: having the time to read this comment and retaining the ability to direct your own course of action. Dedicating your life to scientific discovery or some highly technical computer feat is not only exhausting, but expensive, and in many ways not the reward people idealize it to be. But academia demands this for years on end. Its a little disillusioning when you get to grad. school or your post-doc and find out that "the experts" are scrabbling Wall Street players like the rest of the world. If the universities are merely intent upon changing the world, know that you can do that more efficiently without them.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
The fact that, as chrismaeda said, CMU is "so far from the action" turns out to be a good thing: people actually stick around and finish their degrees. One of the biggest problems at schools like Stanford and MIT is that students often get job offers before they finish. It's a really nice community that puts a lot of effort into being a community. There's so much stuff going on (theory, AI, robotics, systems, ....) that the interactions are great. I got a PhD there and loved it. One of CMU's odder problems is convincing students to actually graduate and leave... They like it too much.
I've always thought of the american schoolsystem
as incredibly unfair (medicalsystem too)
It makes no sense that you have to have rich
parents or work your ass off to be able to
get a good education.
In Norway you can get a great education
for _free_. And everyone has the option of
cheap financing, for living expences.
If your primary interests are mathematics or theory, you still cannot beat Moscow State University, if you have the Russian tongue under your belt, and the guts to go there.
For data communication, there is little more impressive than many Canadian universities, particularly U. of Waterloo. (Though that may be in dispute after layoffs and golden handshakes there, as of late.)
If you have interests in parallel and distributed processing, Australia is definantly the way to go (particularly Sydney), and like Canada, there is no english language barrier.
In general, for hardware and technics, Japan is the way to go. If you want to go hardcore in hardware, go all the way and join the US Army. Other than that, go with Japan.
For up-and-coming university names, try Scotland and Ireland, with a free higher education system they are compounding quite rapidly, and will likely emerge as leaders in various fields in the next few years.
You might find various universities throughout the US and Mexico, but I find they are less worthy of mention than the laboratories. If your primary interests are in research, check Argonne National Labs, and Palo Alto Research Centre, and the other few familiar facilities throughout the US.
If you don't know what you're looking for, I suggest you examine your marks. Go with what you do best in, but take into account the life experiences that accompany a post-graduate decision, and for the sake of diversity, try and displace geographically as much as possible, for the sake of posterity, do what you do that blends best between enjoyment and payoffs.
Pascal was a horrible philosopher, and a great mathematician. We remember him for what he did, not for what he enjoyed. We do not historically, only in works of fiction and various extracts of past legacies, take the pleasures of Men and Mice under our belt as memorable.
My advice would be to apply to a range of schools and choose the best one that offers you a fellowship/assistantship which includes paying your tuition. US schools are dying to admit good US students so aim high. A high GPA and a high GRE including a high score in the subject GRE test (the special GRE in CS) will get you a long, long ways. If a school sees high numbers here, the reference letters are pretty much ignored. The other way to get attention is to demonstrate research capability (e.g., co-author on some conference paper). The top schools (MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley) are highly competitive and very picky, so don't put all your hopes on getting into these schools. Also send your application to slightly lower tier schools (e.g., UCLA and most other UC schools, Purdue and most other Big 10 schools, and Harvard, Yale, and most other Ivy schools).
If you're going for a Ph.D., your choice of advisor is probably more important than your choice of school. Get familiar with the research literature in the areas that interest you. Find several researchers you'd like to work with. Find out if they are good mentors for their students, are able to take on a new graduate student, are good at getting funding for their students, etc. Then apply to the schools where your best prospective graduate advisors are.
> Software Engineering
[list of schools snipped - all US based]
The Computing Laboratory at Oxford University does an MSc course in Computation that has a software engineering strand.
If you're interested in the more theoretical end of software engineering (formal methods, Z notation, abstraction machine notation/B method, automated proof checking...) then you could certainly do a LOT worse. see Oxford Univ. Computing Lab home page.
The Comlab is also strong on reconfigurable hardware and hardware compilation, distributed/parallel computing etc.
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
You get a Ph.D. because you enjoy research and like being out on the edge where finding the right question is more important than finding the answer. 90% of the competent workers in a field can answer any given question, but far fewer can pose the right question. Getting a Ph.D. is about learning to ask new questions and creating knowledge in a field.
If you don't have a desire to do research or contribute to knowledge, then getting a Ph.D. is not for you. Get an M.S. instead. You'll be challenged and learn a lot of interesting stuff. And, if getting a job is the main reason you are in school, an M.S. will get you on the market in 1 to 2 years instead of 4 to 7 years.
If everyone with a tale or seven to tell about their advisor responded to this, it would be a good stress test for slashdot.
Choosing the right advisor is an important factor to successful completion of a Ph.D.
Consider the following attributes of a prospective advisor, listed in my perceived order of importance:
it really depends on the branch of mathematics you are interested in (of course)... I'm personally into Analysis, so I was looking at (and continue to look at)
University of British Columbia
Johns Hopkins
Columbia
though keep in mind that there are other schools that do Analysis well, these are just the top schools on my radar.
also note: last time I checked, the market for a PhD in Mathematics was abyssmal. my senior year of undergrad I was on the search committee for _one_ tenure-track position at a small (but good) school. we had to wade through ~1000 serious applicants, and I've heard that other job postings are similiarly competitive. this is why I am still in private industry...
- mark
Enjoy!
P.S. Plus with the advances of Optical Sciences and Optical Engineering in the Computing Industry, Tucson, Arizona looks to be the next home to data storage, due to the fact of the monopoly it has in Optical Engieering. (Some free food for thought.)
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
GUE Tech! Yes, GUE Tech provides REAL challenges for the graduate student. Why just study when you can study and run the risk of being eaten by grues?
-- The Sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. --Lao Tzu
If you are interested/able to enroll in a PhD level program, the "expense" of a school like MIT/Stanford/CMU will not play a factor. All of the top-tier (and I'm sure most programs in general) institutions will guarantee your financial status. Some (such as MIT) are unwilling to put down their guarantees on paper, but the de facto policy is that as long as you remain on track for your degree, you will not have difficulties paying for your education (as in full tuition paid as well as a reasonable $12,000-20,000 stipend per year). You might have to work as a TA or RA, depending on the school, to qualify for such funding, but it is almost always available.
There are a lot of lower-tier graduate schools that are excellent in everything else. If you don't think you can get in the top-tier, apply for Princeton or Harvard. They have (more than) acceptable graduate programs, and you have the advantage of a nice looking line on your resume.
One final comment, STANFORD APPLICATIONS ARE DUE EARLY!! If you only knew how many people didn't even bother applying because it's hard to meet their deadline (early December)...
Ok, I'm starting my freshman year monday here (undergrad), but for me it came down to CMU and IIT. CMU kept putting me on the waiting list and kept not responding, and IIT gave me money. {g}
Anyways, I know IIT is one of the top engineering and computer schools in the country (ok, so its not extremely well known, bite me {g}), I'm not sure how it ranks in graduate though. Its one to look into, IMHO, though if CMU accepts you, go for it!
At least there's one thing I can tell you. The atmosphere is far different then any college I saw. The main campus is all engineers, so there's a lot of 'mutual respect' in attitude. The frats aren't drunken raves, more like a club of close friends. Its a lot nicer to work in. My brother went to CMU (physics, he's no doing grad. bio-physics at Stonybrook), and he kept telling me that CMU wasn't as great as I thought...
PS. Just because IIT gave me $ doesn't detract from their qualiy (if the idea of scholorships means they need to entice you beause there lower quality). I had two other high ranking colleges doing the same, just didn't like them as much. Even before I knew whether CMU was going to let me in or not, I had a hard time picking between the two.
PSS. IIT, aka Illinois Tech, is Illinois Institute of Technology (now really a University).
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
In case you are not aware of it, you will most likely be funded as a Teaching Assistant or Research Assistant at any decent school (often a few terms of TA but mostly RA). Some of the posts talk about whether a school is "worth the money", generally that's irrelevant.
Pick the right employer, and they'll pay for grad school. Sounds like a pain in the butt, but you can (1) save big bucks, and (2) earn some cash and (3) gain some industry experience.
I once worked for United Technologies. I'm not going to advocate them as an employer, but they have a kick-ass deal for those who want to go to school: Work full time, they give you some time off for classes, they pay for 100% of all course fees and books up-front even if those classes (or your major) aren't job-related. And for each degree you earn (Bach., Master, or Doctor), they give you 200 shares of company stock (at $60+/share, that's $12000+.)
Of course, the tough part is part-time grad school... it'll take longer, and to be honest, I doubt that a part-time academic experience is as good as a full-time experience.
But hey, after the $12k, quit and go back to school full-time. You'll loose some time, but you'll gain some industry experience and $.
Sorry, didn't answer your question.
One thing that will definitely help you is to get known by the professor(s) you want to work with when you get to grad school. Send them email, explain you intestest. If you can meet with them.
It is not like the undergraduate application process. If there is a professor who wants you and they have funding for you, you WILL be accepted. Guranteed.
In any case, if you have some one who recognizes your name and is willing to pull for you in the admission discussions it will help you get in.
If you haven't talked to people in the department, it can become a real crap shoot. In academics, relationships (s/relationships/politics/g) can be an important, unavoidable (although annoying) factor. Realizing this early can save headaches later and help you get in to the program you want to attend.
I don't know how it is in CS but in some fields, it is MUCH easier to get funded as a Ph.D. student than as a masters student. It can also be easier to get on a research grant rather than TAing. The research will probably be much more interesting than teaching lab sections and grading.
SO even if you only want a masters, it may be better to apply to the Ph.D. program and then opt out with a masters (which has been paid for) rather than paying for a masters yourself.
If the department is very well funded (which I assume top tier CS departments are), this may be a moot point.
I think it's capped now at about 16-18k but I've heard of engineering grad students making up to 20K.
I'm a 6th year PhD student at CMU. Nearly done...
:-). Personally, when I came to CMU I did not have a clue that some of these areas even existed, and it would have been a big mistake for me to have cut down my options prematurely. Of course, some people come to school knowing exactly what they're going to do and they do it --- that's fine.
:-) ).
... get an MS at most, then get to work.
Some people are saying that you should figure out what you want to do before you choose a school. I don't think that's necessary, IF you can get into some of the tier 1 schools. In particular, at CMU the system is set up to expose you to a lot of different areas of CS. You may think you like network protocols but end up hacking soccer-playing dog robots. Maybe you could even find a way to combine those interests
A PhD is definitely not for everyone. Many people start and drop out after a few years because they find it's not for them. That's fine. However, the job market for PhD graduates is RED HOT right now. There are loads of good positions available in academia and industrial research --- industry is crazy for people, so hiring any professors they can get their hands on, and the universities are trying to grow at the same time. MSR's growth in particular is really putting the squeeze on (but you don't have to go there
For getting into grad school, I'd second other people's suggestions that letters of recommendation from people whose names are known are key. Experience on a researchy project also really helps, if it looks like you did something interesting.
Go and do a PhD if you like to do cool things with computers that are too far out for a company to believe in. Especially do a PhD if you think you'd like someone to pay you to do that for the rest of your life. Don't do a PhD for the money
As for choosing grad schools, I love CMU CS and I could explain why at length, but that's not really appropriate for this forum. Send email to roc@cs.cmu.edu if anyone wants to know more...
PS, why are there so many CMU students on Slashdot? GET BACK TO WORK!
Rob
don't waste your time there for grad work
Well, well, well. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. "But Zach, there's nothing to do here at Purdue." People that can't find anything to do at Purdue either are socially inept or they have a very small interest area (i.e. underwater basket weaving and nothing else). First of all, there are an endless number of parties with a lot of them being actually fun (unless you go thinking that you will have a bad time). Secondly, if your not into parties, then join a club. Countless clubs ranging from Skydiving (my personal favorite) to the PLUG (Purdue LUG) to snowboarding. There's also your standard sport clubs and political clubs. So let's say clubs aren't your deal. Well, we have excellent football, men's basketball, women's basketball, and women's volleyball teams among others. Hate sports and everything else I've mentioned? Then sit in your room and watch great movies on boiler TV for free. Surf the Internet on your ethernet or ADSL connection. Drive to Indianapolis, or Chicago, or Detroit for a weekend and enjoy all three of these big cities without having the hassels of living in one. Don't have a car? Take the bus. Don't have any money? Get a job. But please, don't say there is nothing to do at Purdue.
2 thumbs up for the TNT program here at Purdue. There are very few schools that can offer such a wide variety of computer interests, with a top notch faculty, and a tuition price that beats the heck out of Stanford. It is true that the department is leaning towards the evil empire, but there is a lot of excellent concepts discussed and implemented. Besides, what school isn't on board with MS? Very few any more. Professors are frequently available, and enjoy helping students. If your a Jedi programmer, then CS is probably where you should be. If you are at all interested in being in the Information systems or networking field along with some programming, then TNT is the way to go. Either way, Purdue is a superb school with one great benefit. No $60,000 student loans to pay off like a Standford or Rose-Hullman student would have.
Stanford doesn't have a program called "Computer Engineering." MIT lumps Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the same department. At Rice you can also only get an Electrical Engineering degree. I'm sure the situation is the same at other private (and maybe public) universities. Just because there's no major called "Computer Engineering" does not mean the relevant coursework isn't avaliable. It is.
Here's an alternative viewpoint on the merits of graduate school for computer science. I think it's very telling.
Reading academic journals is a good way to get immersed in that ultra-dry writing style.
Even though your school doesn't offer graduate-level programs, your profs had to have taken some at a point in their scholastic history. Find a good one -- as many other people pointed out and I missed, a good advisor is worth their weight in gold -- and look into doing an independent study with them and learning the advanced versions of some topics.
Perhaps if you can find a project on which a professor is working and you can help out, perhaps you'll be able to get to help out on writing the final article, and being published is a great thing when you're applying to grad schools.
Good luck to you, Kurtz!
Sam Jooky
sapienza@holly.colostate.edu
Grad Schools are really competitive, so right now while you have plenty of time left as an undergrad, start improving your chances of getting in. You can do this in lots of ways.
Remember, though, that grad schools really pay attention to letters of references from past professors that show how well you can do work (and possibly research). Meet a professor in your department who is doing research on something you find interesting and offer them your services. Learn a little bit about CS research.
When you get up to senior-status, talk to some professors about taking on a class as a non-teaching TA. Profs and GTAs always appreciate all the help you can offer. TA one of the introductory CS classes with 100 people.
Both of these things will help you get better letters of recommendation, and at the same time, you will get a much better idea of whether or not the grad student life is for you.
Also, when you start to get into the higher-level courses, take some graduate-level courses. Most schools won't let you take the higher-level grad courses, but the introductory ones should be accessible. This will help prepare for the amount of reading and work that your classes will involve in grad school.
If I think of other helpful tips, I'll respond to my message again. :)
Sam Jooky
sapienza@holly.colostate.edu
When you're selecting a grad school don't just put a bunch of school names on a dartboard and throw a dart to choose. Figure out what interests you in CS. Which subfield makes you cream your jeans? AI? Parallel Processing? Computer Graphics? You need to have a semi-narrow choice.
Once you've figured that part out, then start looking at grad schools. Don't go pick a school and then figure out what you want to study. That's a recipe for unhappiness.
Most CS departments list on their webpages which fields they specialize in. Find the profs at the school who teach your interest and email them about the sort of program of study they offer.
And don't forget to use the profs at your current school. They're in the field and can probably point you in a good direction for a good school, and if not, they're in a better position than you to find out where the best [insert your interest here] school is located.
Talk to the grad students at your school, too. They've been through this process before and can probably offer you good advice.
In short, don't just jump into a CS grad program because you like the school -- make sure they'll teach you what you want to learn.
And if you're interested in AI, Software Engineering or Parallel and Distributed Computation, come out to Colorado State University! :)
Hope this was semi-helpful and not totally redundant.
Sam Jooky
your advisor is the key to getting through grad school intact.
you're going to end up working in your advisor's research group, doing work that your advisor finds interesting... it is therefore best if you find your advisor's interests, well, interesting. this may seems obvious, now, but it wasn't to me when i was looking.
if you select a school, get in, and _then_ start looking around for an advisor (like i did... whooops) the chances are much higher that you are going to end up either:
a) doing work that you are not really all that interested in.
b) not being able to find an advisor that has any interest in what you find interesting.
neither is good. so......
narrow your list of schools down to 10 or fewer.
check the faculty bios in the catalogues from those schools
(which should include their research interests).
identify a batch of likely suspects.
then search online for papers that they have published
(preferably with one of their students as a second author).
your first few papers will probably have you as the second author, no matter what fraction of the work you actually do yourself, so papers like this are a good indication of what kind of work the Research Assistants under the prof's wings are actually doing.
rank the schools by which have the most and most desirable of such profs. order your application efforts, and your final decision accordingly.
happy hunting!
:jeff
This is tempting to think. Certainly a starting salary for a graduate degree is higher than the starting salary for a bachelor's degree. However, that's not really a fair comparison. More interesting than that is taking into account how long it takes to get a Masters or a Ph.D. And whether or not that time is better spent gaining experience.
I've been in the work place for 7 years with a bachelor's degree in CS. After only 3 years in the market place, my salary had doubled. By that point, I had already surpassed the starting salary of some of the candidates with Ph.D's.
In my current position where I am responsible for hiring people, I can tell you that real world experience counts for a *LOT* more than education. In fact, we look for competance in the areas that we need much more than educational background. Some of the most successful people I've hired have no college degree at all.
Now, if you're thinking that employees with graduate degrees advance their salaries quicker than those without, you'd better think again. Once you're in the salary pool, you are competing with everyone around you based on your performance only . The helps you with two things and only two things:
To get the interview - but experience counts for more than education.
To help determine the starting salary of your first job out of school.
I'm sorry to say this, but the only thing that I can think of that a Masters or a Ph.D are good for are going into teaching. Currently, IT is experiencing negative unemployment. Until that changes, experience will count for more than education.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
If you're looking into gradshool, there are basically three things you want to consider
1) Are you going to get in.
2) What is their reputation in the field
3) Which professor do you want to work with.
#3 is VERY important if you're doing a Ph.D., and less important in some schools (like mine (Ga Tech)) if you're going for a masters.
MIT, CMU, Berkley all have great reputations in CS as gradschools, however many of the profs at those schools have been doing their thing for a long time- you might lose a bit of the flexibility that you'd get from another "lesser" institution. Ga Tech is currently ranked somewhere around 12th in CS as a whole, but it contains the GVU (Graphics Visualization + Usability), which is known throughout the industry (its a very good rep).
Now, I'm an undergrad, so I havn't had nearly as much firsthand expierene as the gradstudents here, however I've been working with them since I got here (I've been doing research though I'm an undergrad) as I'm on the gradschool track.
So, get to know the profs at each of the schools.. reading a few of their papers is HIGHLY recommended- it gives you some ideas on what you might want to do, and it looks impressive on the application when you know what you want to do, and with whom (this is what the profs say. Trust it. =) ).
Best of luck, and I'll be joining you soon!!
Read the rabbit story - it tells all about grad school - I know - I am in CS grad school right now. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~gajski/rabbitJoke.html
CMU all the way.
awc
IMO, there's little reason to get a PHD if you don't want to do research and/or teach at the college level. If you do want a PHD, be warned it's lots of years of hard work for very little pay (when I was in school, TAs & RAs were paid on a scale that capped out under $13k/year!). You really need to be a True Believer to go this route.
Also, you might go into industry and work on a graduate degree part time. But then you have the problem of coding 40 hours a week (probably more, unless you're very lucky) before even starting school work -- it's easy to get burned out fast.
Bottom line: your career (if it's going to be successful long-term) is going to be a process of continuing education, and an MS is a good way to start off, even though it does mean a few more years before you have a salary that doesn't suck.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
And obviously I don't deserve it based on ;-)
grammar and memory...
I meant to say "from THE University of
Southern California."
My Ph.D. is from University of Southern Carolina.
But if you are planning on a Ph.D. (Most of the
top schools will actually pay you to geta Ph.D.
getting funding at the masters level is usually
improbably or impossible.) My advice would be
that your selection of advisor is as, or more,
important than your selection of school.
You can go to the best school with the fanciest
labs but if the professor in charge of the
lab isn't your advisor chances are you aren't
ever going to see that lab except for maybe
course work.
Your advisor also determines the topics of
research that you work on. You'll start by
doing work related to their interest, not yours
(Its what you get paid for.) This will ultimately
lead to your Dissertation topic.
So the advisor has an extreme amount of inffluence
on what you have access to and what your topics
will be.
I would also suggest trying to pick an advisor
that already has tenure. I didn't and my
advisor picked up in the middle of my dissertation
and switched schools leaving me without a lot of
fundamental support. And the school didn't have
any protocol for what to do with a fifth year
grad. student with a thesis topic and no advisor
so I felt I was left out to dry. I think a
professor with tenure and a well established lab
is less likely to leave you hanging.
my $0.02
I'm actually in the same boat as you. I am going back to school in the Spring to pursue a graduate degree in Computer Science. I just recently got my EE degree but my computer alterego seems to be more than I can handle.
In regards to your inquiry, everyone wants to go to MIT or Caltech but what you really should be asking is will this help me in the job market; a subject I get mixed replies about. I've read that companies want young, brilliant miracle workers they can mold into commercial drones who will preach the Microsoft pragma. Others say the more education the better which will allow you to start out in a Technical Lead position. If being practical is not in the cards for you disregard this comment.
In respons to all this stuff about American places, how about the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh? Beautiful cities that you're not going to get shot in, with beautiful old universities, great departments, and a good education.
Okay, so I do go to Glasgow Uni =o)
Try Univ Maryland, Baltimore County in Catonsville , Maryland. I am an under-grad there, and from what I hear, we are on par with MIT. Even UMCP (College Park, also just known as Univ Maryland) admits UMBC has a better program and advises Comp Sci people go there. Plus they bought the world's best chess team!
Enough random advice. Here are some books and URLs:
As usual, I've run on and on, so I'll close with a wish for your success and one last thought: grad school was the most fun thing I ever did!
The University of Pittsburgh has one of the oldest computer science departments in the US, and has both excellent grad and undergrad programs. Plus, Pitt students can take classes from CMU, and vice versa.
Hail to Pitt!
Bistromath
Disclaimer: I'm arguably biased, being at CMU...
Seriously. While the oft-quoted top four (MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley) are all good, it depends upon your intended focus. In certain areas, other schools are also superb choices. Graphics? From what I hear, GA Tech ain't bad at that... And so forth...
It also depends on peculiarities, like: Do you mind having to TA? Do you want to be right inside a major city? And so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Warning:
At some schools, you apply as a graduate student and only after admissions do you attempt Ph.D. candidacy status; essentially, you have the option of going for either when you arrive.
At others, you're admitted directly to a specific M.S. or Ph.D. program, and switching may be problematic (although Ph.D. -> M.S. can perhaps be done if you meet requirements and specifically petition for it...).
M.S. programs are far less likely to guarantee funding for you, while some Ph.D. programs will (for everybody). OTOH, you might be there for 6-7 years in the latter case...
The job doors opened up by the degrees may vary.
Keep that all in mind if you're not sure. You may not want to burn your bridges...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Choose the school that is strong in your field of- ----------------------
interest. A first tier school may definitely be
nice, but it is not necessary.
-------------------------------------
I asked the same question in 1978. The answer depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to be a propeller-head PHD and fight the academic wars, then go for a first tier school. If (like me) you're just interested in getting a little bit of an edge on your contemporaries, then it really doesn't frigging matter. Yes, I have an MS in CS. That's as far as I went, and as far as I wanted to go. You see, academics and The Patronage System drive me nuts. If I have to suck someone's dick to get somewhere, I at least want to be well paid. In Academia, they expect you to suck dick...and be grateful for the "learning experience." Expecially if your Patron, er, "advisor" is a Big Name. Be prepared to have some of your best work have his name attached to it.
Don't get me wrong. It ain't much better in the Real World. But at least you'll be driving a late model car instead of a 1983 Nova. All depends on your value system.
Good Luck
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
You guys are frickin crazy ! UCSD is the greatest.
Univeristy of Waterloo baby...
produce the top CS.cats in the world...
and the women are hot. meow.
And I here they're getting a new building to replace the two WW I era ones they have now!
And if you go to Pitt, join The Zets!
As another poster said, you will want to go to a school that has a group that is doing interesting work in an area that you're excited about. This is true, but there are a lot of other factors.
It is important to not only be excited about the reserach, but also to get along with the professor(s) who run the group. Many professors are not good managers - it's important to realize this early on. A big department can be an advantage since there's a better chance that there are other profs doing research that you're interested in if you decide that you can't work with the advisor with whom you originally wanted to work.
If you have two years of undergrad study left, there is a lot you can do to help figure out what you want to do in grad school, and to increase your chances of getting in. First of all, try to take a couple of graduate level CS classes in areas that you're interested in. See if you like them, and if you're comfortable with the workload. Second, you should definitely try to work for a professor in your current department. There are two ways that undergrads can be compensated for their work: money and credit hours. You will end up doing grunt work for a research group, but it's a great way to get to know the professors and grad students, and to start to understand how research works.
Read _A PhD is Not Enough_ by Peter Feibelman.
The cost of applying to a grad school is the application fee plus the time it takes to fill out the forms, have GREs and transcripts sent, get letters of recommendation, etc. Apply to as many schools as possible, given these costs. I know a little bit about how admission committees work, and there is a fair amount of randomness - hedge your bets.
Think about why you want to go to grad school. Remember that after a few years of grad school, your stock option loaded ex-undergrad-classmates will be laughing at you.
This is a good time to be applying to grad school in CS. The job market is great, so grad schools are competing for students. Will this still be true in two years? Probably so, but keep an eye out.
After you get accepted at a number of schools, talk to your professors about the schools, and talk on the phone or email professors at the other schools. Visit the ones whose offers you are seriously considering accepting. Go out to lunch with some grad students there, and learn some dirt about the department. It would be a mistake to enter a department without visiting first.
Be sure to read Olin Shivers's advice to graduate students. Also check out my reading list for computer scientists.
I agree -- it is probably best to decide based on what SPECIFICALLY you want to do. I know that in general, as a starting point the top schools are MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UIUC (no particular order).
I go to UCB, undergrad, and I haven't spoken to too many EECS grad students, but those I have talked to are very excited about the resources the school has. The faculty at UCB (and in collaboration with some other good schools) are responsible for things like RISC, RAID, and distributed web servers. Kinda neat. =)
--Gabe
Before I start my rant, here's the link for the CS department at Purdue University:
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/
Sounds like you were one of the people who couldn't cut the mustard in CS at Purdue, eh? Don't take too much offense, I got dropped from CS, as well as a few of my friends.
Purdue isn't THAT big, either. Geographically speaking, it's a fairly compact campus! There are quite a few students, but from my personal experience it isn't too difficult to get ahold of your profs during their office hours. They will remember you if you make the attempt to talk to them.
Lastly, thank you for your opinion on how Purdue's campus looks! I've been to a few other universities, and I have to say that although Purdue's brick buildings do start to look the same after a while, the campus is well laid out and the grounds crew does a decent job of keeping it clean.
I am no longer a student at Purdue, but I still live in Lafayette and work in West Lafayette, for Purdue University.
Col., I've thinking about grad school, too. Since I live in rural America, I've been looking at non-traditional programs, i.e. computer-based with limited on-site requirements.
The University of Pheonix has some pretty compelling curriculums (spcifically, MBA / Technology Management and MS / MIS), and based on my research they seem to be well accredited and respected.
gnerd
*to each his own*
-raj jr
ps: the smallest bit of 'non-advice' on this page
Don't forget to check out Cornell. It has great (and very highly ranked) CS and engineering departments. However, for a top 5 school has gets
surprisingly little attention. Go to the best school you get into (calibrated by your field).
I went to a graduate school to avoid getting a real job and ended up putting myself in a big hole carreer-wise. Make up your mind what kind of job you want and what field you like. Talk to engineers in that field in that position and ask them what path you should take. Knowledge is power here: talk to as many people as you can. For instance: if you are interested in DSP applications, UT Austin has a big pipeline to TI. Whether or not that school has a good "reputation" may not be important for you. Find out what schools have good recruitment connections with what companies. Good luck!
www.mcs.drexel.edu
[ truth-in-advertising: I'm a graduate student in CS at the University
h tml
:-) Visit as many schools as you can. The grad schools are
of Washington (in Seattle, WA). I've been here two years, and i was in
grad school at UC-Berkeley for a year before that. The following is
random, biased opinion based only on going through the
grad-school-picking exercise twice. BTW, i love both the University of Washington and UC-Berkeley. ]
o First, read this page on "Choosing Graduate School in Computer Science":
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rap/grads.html
This page was put together by Rachel Pottinger, also at the University of
Washington.
o Next, find a list of CS grad programs. usnews.com is one place to
start. Another is:
http://www.cra.org/statistics/nrcstudy2/rankcs.
o Surf the web to find out about the programs that seem most
interesting to you, based at first on their location and ranking. Look
at what kind of research is going on, how big the department is, and
for faculty whose interests match your own. Be aware that research
project web sites are often a year or two out of date; they tend to be
made at the beginning of research projects and fall out of date as the
research progresses. The list of publications on the project home page
or grad student home pages tends to be far more indicative of what
(and how much) is going on than the rhetoric at the top of project
home pages.
o You don't need to necessarily shoot for the very top programs, but
from the schools that seem interesting to you, pick a dozen or so and
write for applications in September of your senior year.
o Pick a set of at least 5-6 of the best schools that you think you
have a shot at. Rankings aren't everything, but for better or worse,
departmental reputations are real, and you do want smart, fun
officemates with whom to collaborate and hang out, a good advisor that
knows something about how to do research, and a department with lots
of interesting things going on.
o In December, apply to at least 5-6 schools. You never know how many
you'll get into, or which ones they'll be, so apply to a few you
aren't sure if you'll get into; you may be pleasantly surprised. When
possible, you may want to wait until fall semester/quarter is over
before applying, since doing the applications can be time
consuming. But remember to get transcripts and recommendations done in
time.
o In February, March, and April you should get several admission
offers, and hopefully a rejection letter or two, if you picked schools
well!
picking up the tab, so you may as well take advantage of it! Even for
schools where you think there's only a small chance you'd end up
there, you'll learn a lot about grad school and hot research topics by
talking with grad students and professors. These are going to be
colleagues that you'll be seeing at conferences and whose papers
you'll be reading; visiting grad schools is a great way to meet them
and get 30 minutes of great one-on-one time with them.
o Pick the school where you feel most at home; the school where you
hit it off with at least a few professors doing research you think is
interesting, you get along with the grad students, you like the
campus, and you like the city where the campus is located. Remember,
you may be there for 5-7 years if you go for a PhD, so you want to
know that you'll enjoy the whole environment for a long period of
time.
o When picking schools, don't sweat the money stuff. Nearly all decent
grad students at nearly all decent CS departments have no problems
finding funding, be it with TA-ships or research assistantships. You
may have to TA your first year or longer, but that's a good experience
in and of itself.
o Remember that in the end, the school only matters so much. One thing
i learned from transferring between grad schools is that what you do
and how you spend your time has far more to do with your grad school
experience than where you go. You'll want to pick a grad program with
good people and good tools, but in the end, it's up to you!
Hope that helps,
Neal
The right way to plan graduate school is NOT to pick a school and try to fit in but rather to pick the professor/project you wish to work with and then choose the school where s/he/it is.
I know that UT was probably not even in your mind, but I have heard really good things about the Comp Sci program there, and it's supposed to be one of the best in the nation.
this guy seems to be talking out of his _ss....hey accept it man!...in the longer run the graduate degree does pay much much more than what a bachelor could ever think of..and who says that a MS or PhD doesnt know how to solve coding problems and other technical shit..u think only BS guys spend nites on MFC, QT and pico screens! ..wake up pal!
Just a reminder, the people who started the study of computational complexity theory are still here at Cornell University. How can you possibly make a mistake of putting those second-rated schools ahead of Cornell? Where do you get these damn information from, anyway? US News and World Report!? Or are you too inspired by Carl Sagan and start smoking weed these days? (by the way, Sagan is also from Cornell)
You should be searching for a professor you
want to work with and do research under.
Read up on what profs are doing what in your
field of interest.
If you used a style of writing that wasn't so lazy then people might have less difficulty understanding you. Writing in a manner similar to the way you speak isn't a good idea: people speak English differently all over the word (normally more in line with the British than Americans), and a lot of detail that is conveyed in speech is lost. But I don't need to tell you that.
;)
As an American - a supposition on my part - you don't have any right to tell somebody how to speak English. English being the language of the English, the people from England. See the Oxford English Dictionary (British Edition) for any queries concerning the language, including pronunciation.
Blime' guv'nor! I'm a pompous twat tonight, in-I?!
(Biases: I spent my undergraduate and graduate years at one of the big-name
schools, getting a PhD in C.S. from MIT about 3 years ago.)
If you're interested in cutting-edge computer science, I'd encourage you to try
for one of the big-name schools. Here's why:
Graduate study, at least at the PhD level, is much less about classwork than
about research. Often for undergraduate classwork the same textbooks and
curricula are used in many schools, and a smart and diligent student can learn
as well at one place as another. But graduate research is different.
Most PhD students spend years exploring different areas trying to find a niche
that they enjoy and excel in. It's harder than you think: there are so many
avenues for exploration in computer science, and so many people working in the
field, that it's easy to end up working on problems that famous people solved 50
years ago, or that to be properly solved demand skills you don't have, or that
are so obviously the next step that every Tom, Dick and Harry will be writing
exactly the same code as you. It takes time to become aware of this and to
learn to judge what work is worthy of sustained investigation.
In my opinion, the biggest advantage that top-tier schools offer is that the
people around you, professors and (more importantly) students, provide examples
of what kinds of problems are worth pursuing, and help evaluate your own ideas.
At smaller schools, or schools where few students are capable or driven enough
to participate in leading research, you're much less likely to find excited
people who can fairly evaluate your own ideas, and who can explicitly or
implicitly guide you to interesting topics. (For this reason, when choosing
schools I would pay more attention to the caliber and interests of your fellow
students than to measures like the breadth of class offerings.)
The difference between different schools' students is often glaringly apparent
at conferences. Relative to the students from the big-name schools, students
from the small-name schools tend to submit work that isn't bad per se, but is
often out of date or subsumed by more general results others have produced. I
feel this is more a reflection of a poor environment around them than their own
capabilities.
Best of chances, regardless.
On a sidenote, does anyone have any experience
with undergraduate CS studies in Edinburgh?
(i.e. University of Edinburgh or University of
Heriot-Watt). I'm planning on studying there
from next year, so if anyone has any comments/experiences
from there, I'd appreciate if they reply'd or mail me.
Øystein Eftevaag
-------
Don't fear the penguins.
Don't automatically rule out MIT, CMU or others. If you're going to be spending about 400 bucks on applications, you might as well try for a couple 1st tier schools.
If you're a "good" undergraduate student, there's no reason why you wouldn't be accepted in schools ranked from 50 down to 20...you have a slightly better shot if you're going for a Ph.D. and you're in a better position to get funded.
Don't be fooled by prestige, however. Try to find a school that excels in your interest area. For example, Purdue is number one in security (or was when I visited), but has virtually nothing in AI. Even among subfields, such as AI, you have to look for schools that have specifically what you want, such as natural language processing, robotics, etc.
If you're not sure what you want to do, then by all means, take geography into account. If you like living in a large city, then it doesn't really matter if you're in a great program if you're surrounded by cow pastures (ahem Purdue). Also consider the requirements for the program, especially qualifiers. Find out how many you have to pass, and how many opportunities you have.
Remember, once you get into grad school, you can always transfer, and if your grades are good enough, you may be able to get into a better school (if you don't start out in one already).
A Doctoral degree can be worthwhile for other than financial reasons.
You may want to think about trying for one to see if you can do it - to see whether you made of the stuff that can make a "significant contribution to the field".
You may want to think about trying for one because you have a topic you passionately believe in and want a chance to show the world you're right.
Don't automatically rule a PhD out because you could probably make more money taking your B.S. (B.A. or B.Sc.) to industry directly.
S.