zep

Research? Publications?

1. Why does this hypothetical software engineer have to be a "he?" 2. I'm not sure that having an MS would radically change how human resources departments perceive your job application. 3. Even if having an MS would get you an on-site interview at any company, HR screenings aren't really a big deal. 4. If you plan to spent only 20 hours per week on school, your grades will be so awful that putting your MS GPA on your resume might actually hurt your job applications. (I know you don't care about the quality of your research, so I won't go there.)

Maybe it's meant as a graceful exit for people who made a lot of progress on their dissertation but stopped before defending/depositing the dissertation. Most places wouldn't give you more than a "normal" masters for this.

Is it new for 2012 that UC Berkeley requires CS PhD applicants to take a subject test? Quoting from the Berkeley CS PhD online application: Applicants must take the GRE General Test. Applicants must take a GRE Subject Test. The following GRE subject tests are accepted: Computer Science Mathematics Physics

Does anyone have a list of which CS PhD programs require a subject test? UC Berkeley is the only such school that I've encountered so far.

Each UIUC HCI professor has his or her own research group. Each of these professors seems to have a fairly specific sub-field of HCI in which they work. It's not uncommon for an HCI grad student to be advised by more than one professor, though.

All of my UIUC CS friends who are MS or PhD students have at least at TA if not an RA position. It is pretty common for MS students to get RA positions. The things I said about funding are only true if you're doing research during your MS or PhD. There is a loophole that allows you can get a UIUC CS masters without doing a thesis (I believe it's called the "Professional Master's"). The professional masters program only has a few students, and these students are rarely if ever funded.

That's unfortunate, but I believe it. Thanks for telling me this. Good point. I'm interested in becoming a professor, so I suppose doing my PhD with the nation's top CS faculty would be beneficial (both in terms of research quality and in terms of connections).

thegurubase, Our department has roughly five HCI professors, some of whom are also involved in vision or graphics. HCI is a very broad field, and even the best professors generally specialize in a relatively small subset of the topics that fall into the category of HCI. I recommend looking carefully at the websites for each of the HCI professors at UIUC and at UMD. If you have specific HCI areas or topics that you want to study, see if you can find a professor at UIUC or UMD who shares your specific interests. I am very happy with my experience at UIUC, and much of my satisfaction comes from finding faculty who share my research interests. If you're equally intrigued with the projects and advisors at UIUC and at UMD, then I suggest going with UIUC (I'm biased though). If you see some projects or professors at UMD that are very exciting to you, then UMD will likely be a good choice.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your specific interests? I attend UIUC, and I have a couple of collaborators at UMD, so I might be able to help if I know your specific research area.

I’m a Junior in computer science at University of Illinois, and I'm planning to apply for Fall 2012 admission to CS PhD programs. My research interests include theory and algorithms as well as the theoretical side of systems (e.g. scheduling theory). There are several professors and research groups at Berkeley and Stanford that appeal to me. I have family in Central California, I'm somewhat entrepreneurial, and my fiancée was just accepted to a postdoc in the Bay Area. Needless to say, I have a strong preference for doing my PhD in or around Silicon Valley. Based on what I've read on GradCafe and elsewhere, I have a reasonable chance of being accepted to Berkeley and/or Stanford. However, if I'm not accepted to either of these schools, I'm wondering if I should consider attending UC Santa Cruz or UC Davis. How big of a "step down" would it be to go to Santa Cruz or Davis instead of a top 5 CS grad school? Thanks, Zep

Thanks for your help, everyone! I agree that implementation is important. I think that industry software developers are traditionally more implementation focused than researchers are. Sometimes it's hard to determine the point a researcher should say "We've fleshed out the research-y part of this idea. Let's publish it and see if Microsoft implements a version of our idea and launches it in a future product." Good point!

Pawn, Good point. I think I need to get out of the CS systems bubble.

I’m an undergraduate in computer science at University of Illinois. I am very passionate about answering unsolved research questions, and I’m am easily exasperated with wheel-reinventions that claim to be research. I’ve been fortunate to find good advisors who have helped me to develop and contribute a few theoretical approaches that apply to a broad variety of applications. However, a huge volume of computer science journal/conference papers solely discuss implementation details and contribute little that generalizes beyond the specific application. If much of the CS research community is focused on implementation and if I have to fight to find “real research questions” to study, is this a warning sign? Should I go be a mathematician or physicist, or am I not seeing the big picture of CS research? If I stay in CS, what strategies can I use for finding a dissertation advisor (ideally at Berkeley, CMU, Stanford, et al.) who will be willing to focus on the big picture instead of on how I can connect software A with technology B to get a performance improvement on system C?