stopcallinmesqrlboy

That's interesting. To be honest I've had a change of heart since I visited Stony Brook yesterday; I strongly advise a visit to meet the dept and ask questions. In addition to having to work even harder towards the MS to impress top schools it seems the students pursuing a Masters at Stony Brook don't get nearly as much attention as the PhD students do and they almost never get funded (even after being a student there for a semester or so). I'm not sure what the Materials Science and Engineering program is like but the dept. chair told me that the CS program has 200 Masters students which is an overwhelming amount for the faculty. It seems I would have to be really persistent if I wanted to work with a professor and publish a couple papers. To say the least, I'm glad I visited. If anyone is interested I'll post an update after my visit to Santa Barbara.

Agreed, thanks for the input. Also, it should be known that my undergrad institution's CS dept is relatively unknown and the university itself isn't ranked well. I feel like a MS degree from Stony Brook or RPI would legitimize my application to a better grad program.

I suppose I am biased towards going for a MS at this point. I just want to make sure it will help me rather than hurt me. I really appreciate the input, though. Thank you pawn, scyrus and Amogh. Anyone else want to put in their 2 cents?

I understand and I'm not at all worried about time. What I'm worried about is settling for a single PhD program when I could have had more options if I chose to do a MS first. For instance, I was rejected from UMass Amherst but would like to reapply after a MS to get into either the autonomous learning, vision, or perceptual robotics labs. I'm sorry if I made it seem like MIT was the only choice, it's not. The problem here is that my only real choice for a PhD right now is UCSB. As an undergraduate I feel I might not have enough research experience to know that I want to commit to that program and maybe pursuing a MS first would shed some light on where I really want to be.

Right, I'm considering a MS at Stony Brook because they do a lot of visual computing/HCI research and they've been recognized as a top CS grad program for many years. They also have a thesis option for their Masters program. Yea, I definitely agree. The problem is a lot of the cutting edge research is being done at the top institutions. There are some cool things going on at Santa Barbara, but I mean not as interesting as some of the stuff in the Media Lab or other universities. I'm not sure if I plan on being a professor in a top school, although, I do enjoy teaching. I do know I want to be a researcher, so this might be in either industry or academia.

Hi GC, I'm having trouble deciding between getting a Masters first or a PhD. The idea is if I went for a MS I could get into a top 5 PhD program. However, I've heard getting a MS first doesn't guarantee getting into a better graduate program because some top schools like to get BS students. If I went for a MS I've also heard that it's expected to have top journal publications, best grades, etc or I otherwise might hurt my chances. But then again, the UCLA site says they would rather have MS students apply to their PhD program than BS students. Confusing. I've recently been accepted to UC Santa Barbara for a PhD in CS fully funded for 5 years. I feel it's slightly superficial, but the new NRC rankings came out and UCSB has been placed among the top 10 for CS Grad programs. I also like the HCI lab that UCSB has, which is what I'd want to research (along with machine learning and other forms of AI). However, I have a few problems: - The stipend is barely enough to live off at Santa Barbara alone. A lot of UCSB students live with roommates which is something I'm done with after 4 years of roommates as an UG. - I'm not sure, but it seems like they don't offer an MS along the way. This is something I need to clear up with them, however. - A dream of mine is to get into the media lab at MIT. A few research groups there are doing amazing stuff. (e.g. affective computing) I have applied to MS programs, and got accepted to Stony Brook; UConn, which looks like it would be funded; Rensselaer Polytechnic, but I'm waiting to hear about funding. Still waiting to hear back from the HCI program at IA State. Can anyone cast some insight on this situation? Is it worth it to give up an opportunity at a fully funded, top PhD program so I can live the dream? Or am I truly just dreaming?