McGill Information Study vs Simon Fraser SIAT

[HaoJu]

Well, the decision deadline is coming really soon but I'm still hesitating...

I currently have 2 offers, one from School of Information Studies, McGill, and the other from Interactive arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University. Both have supervisors appointed. More details are listed below.

A. McGill Information Studies:

Supervisor: Karyn Moffatt, Canadian research chair, 

https://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?user=FYdnVc0AAAAJ&hl=zh-CN&oi=ao

Human Computer Interaction/Accessibility/Design for Older Adults 

citation 968, h-index 15

Advantages:

a. Well, the main advantage is, McGill is McGill... I've been there as an intern, and I love the life there. Also I suppose the reputation is better? After all it's the 1st tier school in Canada...

b. It's a non thesis, project based programme, somewhere halfway between the industry and the academia. After the project I spent a whole 6 months on had a horrible clash with MSR and went unpublishable, I don't really think I want to step into the academia now... I'm always the engineer and I just enjoy the process crafting things to solve the problem, but not coming up with a question...

c. Course options for cs related courses, e.g.Database, Information Retrieval, Data Mining, etc... It seems a bit easier to land in a job taking this programme. (My favourite is hardware prototyping, which is what Wolfgang wants me to do... but job chances are more limited doing what I love  

Disadvantages:

a. Soooo little funding. I only received a 4750 CAD entering award, and nothing else. I have enough savings to pay the tuition and all living expenses, but I have to admit I felt a bit hesitant if I should really spend all my savings for the last 5 years on that...

b. Karyn is the more "hands off" sort of guy. Bringing up my own ideas is not such an enjoyable process to me, so I don't think I really fit her workstyle...

 

B. Wolfgang Stuerzlinger

https://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?user=78KBaPsAAAAJ&hl=zh-CN&oi=ao

3D User Interfaces, Immersive Analytics, Virtual Reality, Human-Computer Interaction

citation 5887, h index 40

Advantages:

a. Ohhhhhh seriously, he's almost perfect, except for my love for McGill. Many of our ideas regarding research fits perfectly, like, either submitting to the best conference or don't submit it at all. He did have a relatively mature topic for me to work on once I start my master study, and it's about haptics, something I love but seldom have a chance to get my hands on. Also, he is, relatively speaking, a little bit pushy, which is something I think I do need (someone to be there kickin' my butt, lol

b. SFU SIAT has a good reputation in HCI research... But I don't know if that, too, applies when coming to the industry.

c. A scholarship of 22k CAD each year, 6k CAD of entering award, and a separate funding for the project I'm going to work on.(Whereas Karyn said, most of the students didn't do what they wrote on their research proposal in the end, so I guess she might not consider my idea to be good enough

Disadvantages:

Well the main problem is the reputation... Would there be situations like, McGill is in the target school list whilst SFU isn't, especially in terms of joining large corporates, i.e. Google, Microsoft, etc? Would the better supervisor overweigh the reputation gap between a tier 2 university and one of the best?

 

Hope to hear from you guys, thx!!!

Edited April 30, 2019 by HaoJu
added more details

[Guest najo]

Employability aside, it sounds like McGill is making you sacrifice on two fronts - money, and research fit. Sounds like Wolfgang is a supervisor you'd get on better with than Karyn, as well. If I were you, I'd choose SFU. 

My bet is SFU is more known along the US west coast, anyway, especially at the two FAANG corps based in Seattle.

[HaoJu]

Thanks for your suggestions! Currently my major concern is about employability, as my fiance is in UCSB doing his PhD in CS, and I plan to join him after I graduate... So I was wondering would SFU have any advantage/disadvantage compared with McGill, when it comes to job seeking on the west coast (assuming the performance at school -- GPA to be exact-- to be similar)?

Also I was wondering if anyone might know about the employment situation in Vancouver/Toronto? Like, which one would be more intern-friendly when talking about being a software engineer? Thanks a lot!