Yet Another Post on Graduate School Admissions
Disclaimer
I am by no means an expert on graduate school admissions and this post is not meant to provide a complete a guide on how the admission process works. Through this writing, I hope to share some insights on my personal graduate school admission journey and some of my personal learnings along the way.
# Background
I first began seriously thinking about graduate school during my third (junior) year. I had been working with a professor on some research projects for about a year at that point and was interested in venturing deeper into academia. At the start of my senior year, I decided to apply to nine schools in total for Computer Science Masters programs.
In the end, I was accepted to four schools: Berkeley, UIUC, Columbia and Michigan. Among these four choices, I decided to accept the offer from UIUC. In the rest of the post, I will summarize my application process and the learnings I made along the way.
# Motivation
A critical part of succeeding in higher education involves having strong motivation. Even in high school, the idea of senioritis already plagues students. In college, the mentality of C’s gets degrees is even stronger. Combined with the increase in difficulty and courseload, it is easy to lose focus. At times, you would have to make some sacrifices in your personal life to perform better academically.
Therefore an important lesson I learned is having a strong motivation behind attending graduate school. The process of applying to graduate schools start well ahead of senior year and brings many unforseen challenges along the way.
Finally, graduate admissions is only a very small part of the graduate school experience. If a student does not have the motivation to even go through the appliation process, they likily would not have the motivation to push through during the real hardships of graduate school.
# Masters vs Ph.D. Programs
Unlike the rest of the world, Masters programs in the United States usually aim to prepare students for the workforce and the amount of funding opportunities available is also very limited. In other countries such as Canada, many Masters programs are thesis based and offer full funding in order to prepare students for a career in academia. Among the nine schools I applied four, only two of the nine programs can be considered as fully researched based programs (UIUC and Princeton).
Therefore, if you are interested in research and academia. One option is to directly apply for Ph.D. programs without getting a Masters. In fact, in the United States, Ph.D. students typically obtain their masters during the first two years of their Ph.D. education. Here are links to additional information on this by Professor Shriram Krishnamurthi
# School Ranking and Selection
When it comes to higher education, rankings inevitably makes its way into every student’s decision. After doing a simple Google Search, students can probably find every ranking system under the sun that looks at different Universities and programs in a thousand different ways. I would be lying if I said I did not factor school ranking into my final decision. Here are some ranking websites I looked at while applying for programs.
However, it is important to state that rankings should have a relatively low priority when it comes to making the final decision. Factors such as advisor, opportunity, location and costs should all play a major role in the final decision making. At the end of the day, I am the one going through graduate school. While going to a higher ranking school can open doors, I am not going to graduate schools to impress others but rather for the reasons in the next section.
# Is graduate school something for me?
During my undergraduate studies and internships, almost everyone around me discouraged me from persuing a Masters without having a strong intention of continuing to a Ph.D. I personally believe this sentiment is sensible. For most tech jobs, having a Bachelor degree is usually more than enough (there are plenty of code camp developers who write awesome code).
However for me personally, there were three main reasons that I decided to continue into graduate school.
Exploration: I felt that there were many areas of Computer Science that I did not fully explore during my undergrad
Experience Academia: While this cannot be fully achieved with a U.S. Masters, I want to figure out whether I wish to persue a Ph.D. in the future
Open More Opportunities: While a Masters do not have a major effect in most cases, they can still open more oppurtunities in the future.
Final Thoughts
As a developer, I probably have decades of work ahead of me. Given my personality, I would probably get bored of it in a few years. Before then, I might as well take a detour and experience something new. At the end of the day, it is only two years of my life.