ac/dc

Hey Alexpap, Kinda late reply but I remembered about this thread as I joined Brown! See you around!

Hey Alexpap, Thanks for the detailed outlook for both of the universities. Yes it's kinda different picture if you are doing a PhD. You would be really focused about your interests and would be able to match them better with the professors at both the universities. Couple of things I would like to add are that I am from India, and I know that there are many Indians as well at SB. So it's not really going to be much of a problem. Yes SB's location does seems to be little boring, and Brown's environment would be better hands down. But I guess I would do okay at both the places. Another thing would be I would not be much concerned about getting funds if I am at SB as it is really cheap i.e. I would be ready to word under a prof w/o funding for a sem or two if it's good enough at SB. I would confirm if it is really difficult to get RA at SB as well. And as I said, there are around 10 masters students working under the three profs I mentioned. I could not find any masters under the theory profs at Brown. May be I guess the pages are not updated. But the theory page itself doesn't list any masters student as well. The peers at both the school are going to vastly different which bothers me as well. Anyway, I would think a bit more on these points before taking the final decision by this weekend. Thanks again!

Hi TGC, I have received admits from Brown U, Stony Brook U, UC Irvine and USC for MS CS (all unfunded). I don't have much research experience from my bachelors. But I have worked for around two years in the columnar database field. My main interests lie in Algorithms and Theory because I am good at logic and problem solving. But as I said, I have not done much research before, I am not sure how good I will stand at the same. I want to use Masters as a platform to gain some research experience to evaluate myself and also see if I would be interested in PhD later. From what I heard, it is very difficult to get into the theory group at Brown for someone without prior research experience. I would have to take courses and impress the profs there and still I would have little chance of getting to do something worthwhile under the prof. But according to my discussions with the seniors there, I would stand a good chance in the applied theory specially in computation biology as it is well funded there. On the other hand, I am pretty impressed by the works of Prof Skienna, Bender and Joseph Mitchell at Stony Brook and I think I would like to work with them. The path here would be similar taking courses -> impress the profs -> work with them. But the difference here is there are around 10 masters students working with them currently. So I think this is relatively easy compared to Brown. Although the batch size is pretty intimidating at Stony Brook (last year there were around 120 masters students) compared to Brown (~20-30 masters students). Also Brown is pretty much better university in every other aspect except the fees.Also there are better chances of getting RA/TA at SB after the 1st semester. Also RA/TA positions don't get any fee waivers at Brown. So the Stony Brook would be cheaper by around $25-30k. I am okay with taking the loan of that amount. The only real factor is I think I have better chance of working closely with the profs at SB than at Brown. How much should I weigh the reputation of Brown compared to SB while making the decision? Also in the factor if I don't quite get working in the area of Algo and Theory, would Brown be better school compared to SB because of the diverse research areas? Thanks.

I am having admit for Sc. M. as well. And I am also an international applicant. I spoke with a senior there who sounded very positive about the university. By the way, how much are the fees in total? I did not get a clear idea from their site.

Is anyone else still waiting for UMCP MS CS? My status on testudo says 'Pending decision'. And is Purdue done with giving out all the MS CS admits? Saw 3/4 admits early in this week. I guess they would mass reject the remaining candidates now?

I got an admit for the master program in CS at Brown yesterday. They have mentioned that the expenses should be around $65K! Also, they have not mentioned whether these are total expenses or per year. I can not certainly afford in the latter case I am waiting to hear from UIUC, Purdue, UC Irvine and UMD.