Masters funding at top 10 programs?

[marmotee]

How hard is it to get full tuition waiver+TAships/stipends for *masters programs* at top 10 CS schools? When I was applying for grad school this past year, I didn't realize masters programs were ever funded (it looks like some people on these forums have gotten full funding from places like Cornell and Princeton), so I only applied to PhD programs.

And I managed to get into some top 10 PhD programs, but I'm not as absolutely in love with them as I thought I would be (the advisors I had in mind weren't as good a fit as I thought, didn't meet any other students at the visitings days with the same interests as mine), and in retrospect there were a bunch of programs that I should have applied to but didn't.

So I'm wondering if, instead of going to a school I don't think I'll be happy at, I should try applying for masters programs next year (and I'll hopefully be able to boost my application when doing the masters, and then apply for a PhD again).

Any thoughts?

[blankslate]

I applied to many of the top ten programs and received admits to Stanford (no funding), Princeton (full funding), UIUC (no funding), and Cornell (awaiting information). My initial belief was that it would be impossible to receive funding for masters in CS, so it was quite the shock when Princeton offered the tuition waiver + TAship. My belief is that Princeton accepts very few students (past few years only have like 3-5 people in each year) because they tend to help fund the ones they accept.

If you're not satisfied with the programs you got into, a masters could be worth considering, but I really would not expect to get funding from the top programs. Worst case though is you could go to a far less expensive but still great program at a public university.

Good luck!

[dangerousdave]

I have admits from Berkeley, Stanford, UIUC, UCSD. No funding offers at all from any of these . Guess I lucked out.

[explorer-c]

How hard is it to get full tuition waiver+TAships/stipends for *masters programs* at top 10 CS schools? When I was applying for grad school this past year, I didn't realize masters programs were ever funded (it looks like some people on these forums have gotten full funding from places like Cornell and Princeton), so I only applied to PhD programs.

And I managed to get into some top 10 PhD programs, but I'm not as absolutely in love with them as I thought I would be (the advisors I had in mind weren't as good a fit as I thought, didn't meet any other students at the visitings days with the same interests as mine), and in retrospect there were a bunch of programs that I should have applied to but didn't.

So I'm wondering if, instead of going to a school I don't think I'll be happy at, I should try applying for masters programs next year (and I'll hopefully be able to boost my application when doing the masters, and then apply for a PhD again).

Any thoughts?

If you don't like your current programs, then by all means reapply next year. But if you want funding I suggest that you still reapply for a PhD rather than master because a funded MS is very rare. In fact, I don't know any other top program other than Princeton that offers funding for an MS student.

Edited March 22, 2010 by explorer-c

[blue6]

I have admits from Berkeley, Stanford, UIUC, UCSD. No funding offers at all from any of these . Guess I lucked out.

I think that UCSD doesn't usually offer M.S. students guaranteed funding initially, it says somewhere on the website that you can apply for TA positions after accepting the admission offer.