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naijaba

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    Fall 2013 CS Master's Applicants

    in Waiting it Out

    Posted

    Congratuations naijaba! What would you like to do afterwards? It's quite a hard decision - both are great universities. Life in Boston in meant to be great if you're the academic sort - there are TONNES of similar minded people around. I've no idea how true this is in San Diego. 

     

    Also, the weather is a pretty serious consideration. A friend who goes to UCSD says the weather there is the best he's ever lived in (and he used to live in Singapore). Boston can be pretty harsh in winter I hear.

     

    Just to clarify - is the program you've been admitted to the one year course in CSE? It depends what your goals are afterwards. If I wanted to continue on into academia, I'd probably pick the two year UCSD program over the one year Harvard one - more choice, more opportunities to get research experience.

     

    (Actually, I see that you have the option of moving into the two year course at the end of your year. I guess then it boils down to what your academic interests are - whether you'd be a better fit at UCSD or Harvard.)

     

    Thanks for the advice ssk2! I'm actually a medical student taking some time off to pursue this degree. Afterwards, my plan is to finish medical school and residency, and then conduct academic research and/or start a medical informatics business. Lofty long-term goals  : )

     

    Both UCSD and Harvard are big medical research institutions (Harvard Medical School is #1 and UCSD is #3 for Biomedical engineering).

     

    I'm aware of the stark weather difference as I was born and raised in Southern California and I'm currently living on the East Coast. As a California resident I get in-state tuition, which makes UCSD roughly 3.5x cheaper than Harvard! Also, I'm not guaranteed admission into the two-year degree at Harvard, but I may have an increased chance of being admitted after completing the first year. The major benefits of the Harvard program are 1) It's Harvard, 2) It's 1/2 applied math and 1/2 computer science, and 3) I *may* get an RAship. Interestingly my undergraduate advisor, who is an accomplished mathematician at a school comparable to UCSD, advised me to go to Harvard.

     

    At this point I think if I secure the RAship, I'll go to Harvard, and if I don't, I *may* go to Harvard : )

    Fall 2013 CS Master's Applicants

    in Waiting it Out

    Posted

    @DFitz - There were a few people with economics backgrounds, but most of them had been working in industry for a while. They mentioned that they allow entering CS&E students to take one undergraduate upper-division course to prepare them for the CS&E courses. They were debating whether to allow students to take more prep courses, but I sensed that they wanted students who would be able to maintain the heavy computational course load from the get-go. I think that may have influenced their decision to accept more technically oriented individuals.

    Fall 2013 CS Master's Applicants

    in Waiting it Out

    Posted

    So I went to the accepted-student revisit for Harvard's new CS&E program. They paid for two nights at a local hotel, but not our flights to Boston. I assume most schools don't pay anything for master's students to revisit, so it was a nice opportunity. There were roughly 40 accepted students to the CS&E program (including those who couldn't attend the revisit), no idea how many applicants, and they didn't tell us any admissions statistics. The entire engineering department got 1,938 applicants and accepted 185 in 2012. That means the CS&E program alone accepted 21% as many applicants as the entire SEAS did last year. The accepted applicants themselves generally did not have CS backgrounds. Instead they had a broad sampling of applied mathematics, applied physics, electrical engineering, and individuals who had worked in industry for several years. A few students were cross-admits to other MS and PhD programs. I'm not sure what their expected yield is, but roughly 67% of the students I met were intent on enrolling at Harvard. It does seem that they are relying on the Harvard name to lure students, as there are quite a few "computational science" programs now: http://www.siam.org/students/resources/cse_programs.php

     

    @ssk2 - I asked about their regular CS master's program - they are actually trying to downsize it (sorry!). They said that they don't have a dedicated person to advise CS master's students. The CS&E program has a dedicated person (Daniel Weinstock), who is rather nice. I heard back from the CS&E program on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14th).

    Fall 2013 CS Master's Applicants

    in Waiting it Out

    Posted

    Hi ssk2,

     

    Thanks for making this thread.  I was recently admitted to the Computational Science & Engineering S.M. at Harvard. You mentioned that the regular computer science master's degree only admits 5 people each year? Was that from this data:

     

    http://www.seas.harvard.edu/audiences/prospective-graduates/grad_data

     

    It's hard to believe that Harvard SEAS has only 17 masters students *total* in its three programs (computer science, electrical engineering, and environmental science and engineering). Assuming that these programs are 1-2 years long, that's < 5 incoming students in each program per year. I assume the rest of my classmates would be undergraduates and PhD students?

     

    Also, I was rejected from Princeton's M.S. program and have not heard back from others. I assume UCSD is a rejection because there have already been a few admits?

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