njwilson Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 I am trying to decide between three schools for an MS in Computer Science: UCLA, UT Austin, and University of Michigan (I'm still waiting to hear back from Michigan, but I'm hopeful). I am primarily interested in machine learning. I plan to do a master's thesis and hope to work for one of the top software companies after graduation. I have been spending a lot of time digging through each school's website, but I am curious what people think of these schools. Any advice on which school is better in machine learning, or which school might have a better reputation among top companies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nvseal Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 I'm currently a masters student at UT Austin doing the thesis option and focusing on machine learning. I can't really speak to UMichigan but I do think UCLA is a well respected school and has good brand name. That said, UT has a top ten ranking in both CS and AI which UCLA does not. UT also has a good reputation with top companies like Facebook and Google, both of which recruit here, among others. In my personal experience, I've done pretty good getting interviews as a first year masters student which I didn't get before coming here (Yelp, Google, etc.). I don't have a particularly amazing resume either (just one prior internship beyond freelance work) so being a student at UT has been a major contributing factor in getting employers to take notice. I think that having a degree from UT, doing decently, and adding in a bit of research experience will probably just about guarantee you an interview anywhere that fits reasonably with your background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spark1989 Posted March 27, 2012 Share Posted March 27, 2012 UCLA is not strong in ML (weak imo), as UT is. Unless you want to do RL, go for UT; otherwise you may prefer Michigan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pauli Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 That's funny what you mentioned about UCLA having a weaker ML program than UT. Isn't at least one professor in the UT program (Dr. Miikulainnen?) a UCLA graduate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spark1989 Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 That's funny what you mentioned about UCLA having a weaker ML program than UT. Isn't at least one professor in the UT program (Dr. Miikulainnen?) a UCLA graduate? He was an NLP guy at UCLA, turned into a ML (NN to be precise) at UT only. So no worries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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