jyyhope

Yes，I know. Not all the cs research need programming. But as I said, "many" of them do.

Have some introduction courses is really good suggestion to find interest. But not deep enough. I think talking to CS graduates, discussing different research fields in CS will help you more. Doing some programming will help you find out whether it is suitable for you.Programming is the basic of many sub-field in CS and tool of research. However many of CS students think programming is painful. As you mentioned, you want to become a good computer scientist. Then good math foundation will help. But criteria varies a lot in different field of research of CS. About lack creative thinking, I do not think it will be a big problem. And the ability to collect info is great. In research, you might read lots of papers to have background knowledge of a specific area. Through reading, you will find out what do you want to do. And I think the hard part of cs research is not about a general idea, but about hard work. For example, in computer graphics research, a person may easily come up with an idea: transform a photo to a sketch or oil painting is fun (this is some labs' research focus currently). It could be a research topic, easy to find, but needs tons of work to realize. Again, talking to a CS student who really doing research now will help figure out the way to good CS scientist. Only post is not enough.

Trying to contact ML profs in Wisconsion might help. If any of your interested prof say s/he can give you RA funding after the first year or so, it might help you decide.

I have an offer of cs PHD, but not from the top schools you listed. I applied PHD directly in my 4th year undergraduate. It is hard. I cannot answer that much questions. But about applying PHD, I have three suggestions. 1. trying to know what is the research of a certain field actually do, and most importantly, whether you like it (both the field and the research life itself). It helps you find your research interest early, and begin to accumulate knowledge of it. You can trying to attend some class, like AI. After knowing the basics from the class, go to a lab's website, reading papers. You may find different labs doing different aspect of, for example AI research. Papers can help you get some ideas of what is research, but not the whole thing. Attend a research lab and doing some research, even write a paper yourself may surly help you figure out whether PHD is a suitable choice for you. 2. maintain great GPA, and other stuff. PHD application is quite competitive. I see you mentioned google intern. Company experience helps you in many ways, like coding, which is important to cs research. But sometime, industrial experience is different to research. And I think no one will assure you that if you do something, then you can get a top school PHD offer. Application results are affected by too many things, even the profs' funding. Great GPA, language score, recommendation, research experience, even top papers can only give you plus, not assurance. Of course, if you can do well in most of these aspects, then you get a high chance. 3.about MS. it is easier to get into a top school's MS. If someone do well in MS, s/he get familiar with research of certain field and may have top papers. That will help. But if this person do not make great progress in MS, or even have low grade, it will hurt. That is only my opinion. But knowing more about field you interested (class+research) is always a good thing to do. Only imagining what field is interesting or research is cool is not enough. Many of my friend who claimed to apply PHD change their ideas after truly get into a lab and doing research, because they find out that research is not exactly as they thought and just not suitable for them.

hi~I am also been admitted to u iowa, cs, PHD. And my research interests is also graphics. It is so glad to find you guys. A month past since your last posts. Are you making your decision whether going to Iowa? Can you tell me your contact number?

I am not sure about the details of UNC. In general, computer graphics has a lot of research topics, including motion tracking, animation, etc. Many of them are used in places like animation industry and disconnected to interaction. Computer graphic(CG) and human-computer interaction(HCI) are two mainstream research areas, and I don't heard about the "graphics: user interaction" you mentioned. In UNC's web, you can find they have these two research areas: CG and HCI. But there is no sign of "graphics: user interaction". I think it might be a subarea of CG, or a lab's specific research topic combining the CG and HCI. Ask administrators of UNC might be a better choice. I hope my answer could help you.