UW-Madison vs. UCSD vs. GaTech vs. UBC CS Master

[fetcher11]

Hello, guys. I got to decide among the UW-Madison, UBC, UCSD and GaTech for CS Master. The first two offer funding for me while the latter two have none. My information: international applicant, prone to work after graduation but also interested in machine learning and computer vision research, perhaps decide after some research experiences in graduate school.

 

Please help me with my decision with analysis both from the outlook of research and work.

 

My feelings are:

 

UW-Madison: pros: reputation for research, no difference compared to PhDs, funding!

                       cons: location, weather, relatively low chance of internship, famous for db and system(but not AI?)

 

UBC: pros: MS/Phd track offered, funding, beautiful campus, good AI group

         cons: don't know how it is academically recognized and living in Vancouver is expensive

 

UCSD: pros: good place for internship, weather, big public school with more TA opportunities, good AI group

            cons: no funding, expensive, a lot of MS ads(maybe I am biased)

 

GaTech: not familiar. higher rank, low chance of TA

 

Thanks! Any thoughts will be appreciate!

[cs_phd]

yes uw-madison is great for systems. AI is good in UW-M but not in top15 for AI in US. 

GA Tech's AI group is great. Within top 10 like most of the other groups in GATech.

 

I think you may need to consider the professors research interests and your interests as well in addition to funding because you also have inclination to do PhD.

I mean what exactly in vision and ML and how good the research is from the professors etc and how this matches your interests.

 

If funding is a significant criterion then you may select UW-M and UBC because both are good for AI. With UW-M brand you can get in to a good uni for PhD. Same with UBC. As far as I know most people in UW-M get good internships in west coast. Getting internships and jobs won't be a problem for UW-M people. From your cons, only weather applies.

 

UBC is well recognized academically and it is recognized in US also. waterloo, toronto and ubc and maybe even mcgill are the canadian unis recognized well.

[fetcher11]

yes uw-madison is great for systems. AI is good in UW-M but not in top15 for AI in US. 

GA Tech's AI group is great. Within top 10 like most of the other groups in GATech.

 

I think you may need to consider the professors research interests and your interests as well in addition to funding because you also have inclination to do PhD.

I mean what exactly in vision and ML and how good the research is from the professors etc and how this matches your interests.

 

If funding is a significant criterion then you may select UW-M and UBC because both are good for AI. With UW-M brand you can get in to a good uni for PhD. Same with UBC. As far as I know most people in UW-M get good internships in west coast. Getting internships and jobs won't be a problem for UW-M people. From your cons, only weather applies.

 

UBC is well recognized academically and it is recognized in US also. waterloo, toronto and ubc and maybe even mcgill are the canadian unis recognized well.

 

Hi, sd01. Thanks a lot! Do you know how AI group in UBC is compared to UWM? How about UCSD? GaTech is great but it seems to be

a lot of masters there, so is UCSD.

[cs_phd]

not sure about the comparison between ubc and uwm. But if you see the research page, ubc seems to have good research faculty in vision. I think you may have to ask people who are working in that area. May be email someone working in that area. Even UCSD AI is not in top-10 in US. 

[Chelsea_112]

And as far as location, Madison is a great city. It's fun, young, vibrant, safe, overall a great place to live. It's unfortunate that you feel you won't be able to find an internship; however, it's pretty centrally located, so looking for an internship postgrad in the twin cities, Milwaukee or Chicago wouldn't be difficult. Don't rule it out because of location, because that's a "con" that I truly think you'd forget about.

[purple_clang]

If you're really interested in doing machine learning research, I would suggest not attending UBC. I believe that all faculty doing research in that area have left in the last few years and ended up leaving their grad students behind. I'm not in the CS department at UBC, so I'm not sure what other areas of research are strong, though.

[fetcher11]

not sure about the comparison between ubc and uwm. But if you see the research page, ubc seems to have good research faculty in vision. I think you may have to ask people who are working in that area. May be email someone working in that area. Even UCSD AI is not in top-10 in US. 

 

Yes, thank you sd01, ubc is good but as purple_clang said, some of their faculties have left. I will try to talk some ML guy. Thanks!

 

And as far as location, Madison is a great city. It's fun, young, vibrant, safe, overall a great place to live. It's unfortunate that you feel you won't be able to find an internship; however, it's pretty centrally located, so looking for an internship postgrad in the twin cities, Milwaukee or Chicago wouldn't be difficult. Don't rule it out because of location, because that's a "con" that I truly think you'd forget about.

Emm... I am not American so not familiar about the cities (except the really famous ones). Glad to hear your opinion on Madison, I actually quite like UWM. Thanks, Chelsea_112.

 

If you're really interested in doing machine learning research, I would suggest not attending UBC. I believe that all faculty doing research in that area have left in the last few years and ended up leaving their grad students behind. I'm not in the CS department at UBC, so I'm not sure what other areas of research are strong, though.

 

purple_lang, Thank you for your info! I heard someone said the same thing. After checking their website, found that some of the faculties left and turned to be adjunct profs. Pity. Vancouver is a great city.