MS in CS: Thesis vs. Course Track?

[NVP12345]

Hey everyone,

I'm starting a Masters program next year at either UCLA or Columbia, and their programs differ pretty significantly. UCLA requires either a Thesis or a "Comprehensive Examination" which is just like a thesis with slightly lower standards. Columbia, on the other hand, mostly consists of courses in specialized tracks with no extra requirement (just like undergrad, pass your courses and you get your degree), though they also offer the option to do a thesis.

I'm likely looking to make a Masters my terminal degree, and am more interested in industry than in research. On the other hand, I feel that I may learn more by opting to do the thesis, and that I could impress interviewers with my research when the time comes to hunt for jobs. It might also be nice to keep open the option to work in research or come back for a PhD. However, the open-endedness of doing a thesis is daunting to me, particularly because I was not a CS major as an undergrad and only have been doing CS coursework for a little over a year. I worry that I may struggle to come up with a good topic, or hit a wall and end up staying in school longer than I hope.

So, would it be worth it to suck it up and go for the thesis? Would it be much more rewarding and fulfilling, or tiring and frustrating? Which do employers value more in an MS program, if either?

Thanks for your input, and please share helpful comments and insight below!

[Pauli]

Recently, industry has been pushing the requirement to having a master's in order to be hired for positions that used to require only a bachelor's due to factors such as more candidates having bachelor's and positions requiring wider skill sets and experience. Recruiters have also told me that with the masters being the new bachelors, this has shifted the masters w/ thesis to be the new masters (w/o thesis). Food for thought.

[jjsakurai]

@Pauli: Could you give examples? AFAIK (and this corresponds with the experience of my friends), there's no such push. You don't for instance require an MS to find tech job at the big tech firms nor at startups. This is true both in theory and in practice. For my class, the only difference b/w MS and BSc was that the starting salary of people with MS was $5-10K higher.

[Pauli]

@Pauli: Could you give examples? AFAIK (and this corresponds with the experience of my friends), there's no such push. You don't for instance require an MS to find tech job at the big tech firms nor at startups. This is true both in theory and in practice. For my class, the only difference b/w MS and BSc was that the starting salary of people with MS was $5-10K higher.

Let's say you're a recruiter that is hiring for a program manager or software engineer, etc.. You have two candidates: one has a masters, one has a bachelors. From that information alone, who has the advantage? This is how recruiters felt whenever they visit university campuses. I just had that same conversation recently with a batch of recruiting representatives from various tech companies. And the anecdote about masters being the new bachelors and that master's with thesis is the new master's? That's not my words, but the words from Google recruiting reps.

I'm not saying this from information that I picked up from hearsay or from a course, but from actual recruiters and friends who work in those tech firms.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Pauli

[psycho_killer]

I don't doubt that you were told that, but it seems hard to believe in general that recruiters will care much whether you wrote a thesis or not, given that the industry is still one in which people without college degrees at all can find meaningful work. A very research-oriented company that normally hires PhDs might look at an MS student who wrote a thesis before one who didn't (and certain areas of Google would qualify here), but otherwise, I doubt it.

[jjsakurai]

@Pauli: Fair enough although my & my friends' experiences differ greatly. After getting the initial interview (the chances of which showed no bias towards MS students), the only thing that seemed to matter was your background in the area you were looking to work in and how well you did your interview.

Edited April 8, 2012 by jjsakurai

[Pauli]

I don't doubt that you were told that, but it seems hard to believe in general that recruiters will care much whether you wrote a thesis or not, given that the industry is still one in which people without college degrees at all can find meaningful work.

It's not that they care about whether you wrote a thesis or not, but the fact that it's a core differentiating factor that distinguishes masters students. As there are more masters students applying, recruiters are now using thesis vs. non-thesis to separate the two. It should also be noted that non-thesis masters can generally fulfill the degree from solely coursework, while a thesis masters has to be reviewed by a committee of qualified faculty with strong credentials to determine whether the student can earn the degree. From the eyes of a recruiter, the masters with thesis looks much better for the sake of the thesis masters going through a more rigourous route to earn the graduate credentials.

@Pauli: Fair enough although my & my friends' experiences differ greatly. After getting the initial interview (the chances of which showed no bias towards MS students), the only thing that seemed to matter was your background in the area you were looking to work in and how well you did your interview.

What you're saying makes sense for less competitive positions or for internships, but it does not hold for the general case of more competitive positions. In other words: what if you had two candidates that had simiarly strong background in the area and simiarly strong showing in the interview for a single opening? For more competitive positions where there is a field of strong candidates, there will be some criteria where recruiters may need to differentiate between the applicants. Before, it was a bachelors. It's getting to be a masters nowadays. Now recruiters are expecting it to be a masters with thesis. I've personally seen this trend firsthand as more of my grad student classmates are switching from non-thesis to thesis due to increasing requirements.

EDIT: It's important that people see this through the eyes of the recruiters, and to understand why recruiters are starting to put more focus on applicants that have masters with thesis, just because there's a growing trend of more masters applicants applying and the need to differentiate from the pack.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Pauli

[jjsakurai]

It's not that they care about whether you wrote a thesis or not, but the fact that it's a core differentiating factor that distinguishes masters students. As there are more masters students applying, recruiters are now using thesis vs. non-thesis to separate the two. It should also be noted that non-thesis masters can generally fulfill the degree from solely coursework, while a thesis masters has to be reviewed by a committee of qualified faculty with strong credentials to determine whether the student can earn the degree. From the eyes of a recruiter, the masters with thesis looks much better for the sake of the thesis masters going through a more rigourous route to earn the graduate credentials.

What you're saying makes sense for less competitive positions or for internships, but it does not hold for the general case of more competitive positions. In other words: what if you had two candidates that had simiarly strong background in the area and simiarly strong showing in the interview for a single opening? For more competitive positions where there is a field of strong candidates, there will be some criteria where recruiters may need to differentiate between the applicants. Before, it was a bachelors. It's getting to be a masters nowadays. Now recruiters are expecting it to be a masters with thesis. I've personally seen this trend firsthand as more of my grad student classmates are switching from non-thesis to thesis due to increasing requirements.

EDIT: It's important that people see this through the eyes of the recruiters, and to understand why recruiters are starting to put more focus on applicants that have masters with thesis, just because there's a growing trend of more masters applicants applying and the need to differentiate from the pack.

While I understand that an MS is something that can be used to differentiate from the pack and all things being equal, a recruiter will pick an MS over just a BSc. But all things are not equal. The background between different candidates is usually very different. In terms of interviews, you'll rarely find two candidates who're exactly the same. Also places like Google also filter based on the GPA and what university one went too. In addition, especially for tech startups, even having a degree is not as important as it used to be compared to your past experience (unless the startup is doing some serious engineering), much less an MS.

Edited April 8, 2012 by jjsakurai

[HassE]

I'm in the engineering field, but given that my research interests span across Engineering/Statistics/Computer Science, i'm going to give my opinon and advice on this one. As a quick background, I'm in a PhD for ECE however am electing to do a master's first as a "safety net".I was making the decision myself whether to acquire a MS coursework (also need to take a comprehensive test) or if I should do the MS-thesis. I was contemplating on doing a MS-Thesis just because if anything were to happen and I felt like I might have to relocate to another PhD school that I would be more qualified.

I elected to contact my very good family friend. He got his MS/PhD at MIT, went on to teach at GeorgiaTech, opened his own biomedical startup company, and then still ended up getting his JD (law) degree. So he knows research and industry about as good as anyone.

I was shocked with his response, but it definitely makes sense. Like he mentioned to me, when we get out of school with an MS, we will be having the option to make easily 65k-70k. An MS-thesis is a degree that does not entirely depend on you when you graduate, it depends on your research adviser when he feels your qualified enough to graduate. Thus, if your adviser doesn't want you to graduate, you won't graduate it's as simple as that. By doing an MS non-thesis, you will graduate in about 2 - 3 semesters for most schools. On average an MS-thesis will take AT LEAST 4 semesters (not including summer semesters) and this is on a minimum basis, some MS-thesis could take 6 semesters to finish if things don't get well.

Now as my friend mentioned to me, even if you have to wait an additional 1-2 semesters (about 6-8 months), you will end up LOSING about 30-40 thousand dollars by completing and finishing your thesis when instead you could be working getting 70k a year if you opted to take the non-coursework option. Remember, you control your destiny, not your adviser.

I mean people, were talking about a masters at the end of the day, it's not like were comparing a MS to a PhD. At the end of the day, yes I absolutely would agree, a MS-thesis might look good. However, if your research has very little to do with the work being performed at that company (and there's a good chance it most likely won't have anything to do with it since an MS-thesis is somewhat specific) then a MS thesis most likely will have very little effect. This is one of those things were both candidates have an MS it's going to come down to their past experience and work they've done, and ultimately who they like better.

Bottom line, an irrelevant MS thesis to the company is going to have little effect on them hiring you, only thing that would result is if you ended up losing 40k.

Now if you get funded for doing an MS thesis, then this is a completely different discussion, but i'll assume for right now it doesn't. Also, you said your not really interested in research, however in case you ever did want to get your PhD, and it'd look good on your resume, i'd think about voluntarily working for a professor doing research/work for him. You get some research experience, maybe you can publish a few papers, and it looks good for you during an interview, gives you something to talk about. Best of both worlds, doing research while completing an MS-coursework.

Edited April 8, 2012 by HassE

[psycho_killer]

@Pauli: I understand the theoretical reasoning; I just think it's much less prevalent than you are saying. I also think the hypothetical situation you describe of two identical candidates where one completed a thesis option and the other didn't is impossible, because the one who didn't do a thesis would have had to take more courses instead, and would therefore have additional (or at least different) knowledge. Is there some set of employers out there who make this distinction? I'm sure there is. Is it large enough to concern yourself with? I don't think so. However you are free to disagree, and I respect that.

Edited April 8, 2012 by psycho_killer

[Adamah]

I know someone that never went to college, but instead worked his way up in industry over 10 or 15 years. He just finished interviewing with all the top companies in Silicon Valley and landed a lead engineering job working on a top secret project. They couldn't even tell him what it was until after he accepted. My point is, formal education really doesn't matter as much as you might think when it comes to software engineering. It might matter for your first job, but after that it's pretty irrelevant.

That said, I'd think the thesis option is superior to the non-thesis. I have very little to base this on, but I suspect that having a thesis would give someone a concrete example of your work. It shows that you are capable of taking on a serious project independently, and rather than judge you based on abstract A's and B's on your transcript, they can see first-hand in your thesis report just how good you are.

[psycho_killer]

I suspect that having a thesis would give someone a concrete example of your work. It shows that you are capable of taking on a serious project independently, and rather than judge you based on abstract A's and B's on your transcript, they can see first-hand in your thesis report just how good you are.

Perhaps, but I think an even better way to do that would be to develop something on your own time, as an example of your programming skills that you can show off, or contribute to an open source project. Again, if you're looking to *do research* after school and are for some reason getting an MS and not a PhD, then sure you'd best put some time into a research effort and a thesis would be great. If you don't really care so much about research, and you have the option of taking several extra classes instead of writing a thesis, I'd do the former and learn some extra things you're interested in rather than spending time writing a paper that no one will ever read for the sake of saying you did so. So in the end - just do what you want to do and don't worry about what other people will think about it. =)

[Pauli]

EDIT: tl;dr Meh, thesis helps, lol.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Pauli

[victor.s.andrei]

You don't for instance require an MS to find tech job at the big tech firms nor at startups.

Startups and small businesses don't care in general. Big companies, however, do. Some do have positions that are only open to candidates with relevant master's degrees, and many others prefer advanced degrees. Of course, it also depends on the sort of job you are looking for.