UT Austin MS CS Thesis

[nobody2008]

Hi,

I have been accepted to UT Austin for MS CS. I plan to pursue PhD later. In the acceptance letter from the department, they state that students normally take from one year to one and half years to complete their Masters. 1.5 years seems too short a time to do any significant research. It'll be nice if any senior could shed light on the thesis route from UT Austin.

[nobody2008]

Hi,

I have been accepted to UT Austin for MS CS. I plan to pursue PhD later. In the acceptance letter from the department, they state that students normally take from one year to one and half years to complete their Masters. 1.5 years seems too short a time to do any significant research. It'll be nice if any senior could shed light on the thesis route from UT Austin.

anyone from UT Austin or who did his Master's thesis in 1.5 years can shed some light?

[Amogh]

anyone from UT Austin or who did his Master's thesis in 1.5 years can shed some light?

remember that is an average not an ultimatum.. you could choose to go the thesis route and always take a bit longer why not? if you start working on some research project while there, you can stay around and finish up even after you finish your MS. nobody will stop you. and if you are concerned about the cost of it, im quite sure you will be paid a stipend for your research work as long as profs are impressed with your work.

[nobody2008]

remember that is an average not an ultimatum.. you could choose to go the thesis route and always take a bit longer why not? if you start working on some research project while there, you can stay around and finish up even after you finish your MS. nobody will stop you. and if you are concerned about the cost of it, im quite sure you will be paid a stipend for your research work as long as profs are impressed with your work.

Thanks Amogh. The fact that they specified 1 to 1.5 years scared me a little because I find hard to believe that an average student can do significant research as well as course work in that time. But you are very right, there is freedom to stay on if you like. Are you studying or did you study at UT Austin?

[nvseal]

I will (most likely, haven't made it official yet) be going to UT this fall and will be doing the MS Thesis. I was also concerned about this, especially since professors don't usually let people into their labs until they have worked with them in a class. With a one year program, it would be essentially impossible to get lab work and LORs after one semester of classes (which, if applying for phds, is how it would work out). But I believe that Amogh is correct, these are just average numbers. While looking through grad students web pages at UT yesterday I found a masters student who finished the masters program in two years, so the one to one and a half year range is by no means a cutoff.

[Amogh]

Thanks Amogh. The fact that they specified 1 to 1.5 years scared me a little because I find hard to believe that an average student can do significant research as well as course work in that time. But you are very right, there is freedom to stay on if you like. Are you studying or did you study at UT Austin?

Hey erm no.. I'm still in my junior year