Research Oriented vs Professional Masters Programs

[snit]

I'm interested in going to a top US Masters program, but I have very little interest in research.

I created a profile evaluation topic and was encouraged to aim for Princeton, Stanford, CMU, and UIUC, with safety's as well.

What I'm looking to gain from grad school other than education is experience and exposure to industry, particularly start ups. I'm not very interested in doing research. Do top tier schools expect their applicants to do some amount of research, or express desire to do research? Does the fact that I don't want to do research hurt me or change the list of top schools for me?

[ktel]

It completely changes what programs you should apply to. You should only be applying to professional masters programs, research based degrees won't even take you if you don't want to do research (obviously)

[snit]

From the Stanford webpage:

The MS program is excellent preparation for a career as a computer professional, or for future entry into a Ph.D. program at Stanford or elsewhere. Individual programs can be structured to consist entirely of coursework or to involve some research.

So it seems that at Stanford they accept and can accommodate the needs of both applicants interested in research and applicants more professionally focused. My questions are: Is this the case at other top schools? Are there any schools that excel at terminal masters, but not so much at research based masters or vice versa? And though schools like Stanford claim their program would work for none-research oriented students, is a lack of desire to do research a negative? Is it interpreted as a lack of interested in the field?

[ANDS!]

The research comment is probably there to accommodate individuals continuing on into a PhD.

[victor.s.andrei]

...but I have very little interest in research.

You may not have interest in doing academic research yourself, but you should be following the latest and greatest since many things that start out in academia eventually make their way into industry.

Also, some programs offer the option to do a project rather than a thesis.

What I'm looking to gain from grad school other than education is experience and exposure to industry, particularly start ups.

Then you may be barking up the wrong tree, figuratively speaking. If you want to get directly involved in start ups, move to a city like San Francisco, Seattle, Cambridge, Mass., or Austin, get a job with a start up, and jump on in. Now, if you want to attend a top school in the hopes of finding like-minded people who might want to team up to start a technology business, that's all fine and dandy, but you might not want to tell that directly to the adcoms of research-oriented programs. Actually, if that's your goal, you may want to look for ranked business programs in entrepreneurship, specifically technology entrepreneurship.

[Pauli]

Then you may be barking up the wrong tree, figuratively speaking. If you want to get directly involved in start ups, move to a city like San Francisco, Seattle, Cambridge, Mass., or Austin, get a job with a start up, and jump on in.

Yep, I agree as well. Very sound advice.