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 CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort
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knowthyself




PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:16 pm   Post subject: CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Hi,

I'm interested in getting some opinions on how the amount of required effort differs between Masters and Undergrad CS. I'm in my 4th year of CS (at Ryerson if it matters), and I'm considering applying for grad school. The caveat is that I'm a mature student who has worked through undergrad to support myself. I've been able to maintain roughly an A average while putting in 15-20 hrs per week at my job. In order to finance grad school, I'm pretty certain I would need to keep working. Though there may be funding during masters, I don't want to make any assumptions about that. So, should I expect that doing a masters degree (2 years at Ryerson for example, or mention your experience with your own universities) would require roughly the same effort, less effort, or more effort than undergrad?

I'm meeting the program director this week to discuss, but if anyone here can share their experience, that would be great too.

Thanks.
Jeff
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mirhagk




PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 8:33 pm   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

I think it'd be very dependent on the school, the type of grad studies, and your professor.

As I understand it some master degrees are course based master degrees, and some master degrees are research based. Last semester I was taking a 3rd year course, and there were several grad students taking the course for their masters, and the only difference is that they had to do an extra presentation at the end, so while I can't speak from personal experience it'd seem like the course based one isn't much more work than undergrad.

What I'm thinking of doing in my last year is to apply for grad schools and jobs at the same time. If I get a job that I really like, I'll just take that, if I don't get an awesome job but get into grad school, then I'll go there, otherwise I'll just take a non-awesome job or something.

If I may ask, why are you considering grad school? Is it because you're interested in research and research based jobs, or is it just to give yourself a competitive edge. I know government and unionized jobs often pay masters degree holders more, but not every job does.
knowthyself




PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:24 pm   Post subject: Re: CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Thanks for the reply @mirhagk.

You're welcome to ask why I'm considering it, but I may not have a very concise answer. Background: I'm a mature student (31 now), so this is very likely my last foray into extended post-secondary education. I think I'll have too many obligations (family, etc) to do extended schooling in the future, and also a masters degree may indeed give me a further competitive edge, though not in all companies / jobs, as you mention. If I was to "climb the ladder" in a larger organization, a masters degree may help. I'm not 100% certain that is my goal anyway, but I am certain that I enjoy computer science thoroughly, and I don't feel anxious to get back to 40hrs/week on the job -- I actually enjoy splitting my time between studies and work (though it is a hectic lifestyle); it keeps my life interesting. But I am also interested in research. Or maybe I should say, I like the *idea* of research, as I haven't actually done computer science research myself at this point. But I feel excited about the possibility of making a contribution, albeit a small one, to science.

So I guess in summary I want to do it for: competitive edge as well as personal growth/achievement.
rdrake




PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 11:08 pm   Post subject: Re: CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

In my experience grad school was more about communicating with others than anything else. It involved a lot of papers, presentations, group projects, etc. You are training to do independent research.

As for funding, I received a full TAship which worked out to be 8.24 hours/week, or 140 hours per term. Last year this translated into $4760 per term ($34/hour with undergrad degree x 140 hours/term). I also received an internal RAship funded by my supervisor's NSERC grant which amounted to $10000/year. Total it was about $19520 before taxes, union dues, etc. Tuition is also much more expensive for M.Sc. (about $10000/year).

If you have an ~A average you should be able to apply for an OGS (awarded internally) or NSERC (external, more difficult) award which is likely to give you more money. Each school also has internal scholarships.

You must enjoy writing or you will not have a fun time.
mirhagk




PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 9:53 am   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Apparently my university (McMaster) guarantees at least $16 500 for Masters students, and they'll top up NSERC and OGS awards such that if you get one of those you'll get at least a total of $30 000 for NSERC and $27 000 for OGS. source

I guess that'd really vary between schools but if you can get an OGS award, you should have more than enough money to get through the year.
knowthyself




PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 4:57 pm   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Thanks for the info guys. Its looking more promising now on the financial front. Even if the grants and so on don't cover all my expenses, my employer may offer enough flexibility that I work whatever hours I can. They've been pretty good that way for the past 3 years, so why not another 2 Smile.
Dan




PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:10 pm   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

I have been through a masters and I am now working on my PhD and I can tell you it is a significant amount of work and stress (particularly in the ABD stage). However, it is a very different kind of effort then you would have experienced during your undergraduate studies.

As rdrake mentioned, there is far less emphasis on traditional course based learning and far more on research, writing and discussion. Graduate courses focuses more on surveying the existing research literature, identifying open problems, writing papers about your literature review and occasionally a culminating project where you expand on theses papers and/or implement something from them. There are also normally a few graduate courses that are cross listed with the 4th year undergraduate courses (which are closer to what mirhagk described) which have you take the same course as the undergraduates but with the exam replaced with a project/paper which requires research into the current literature in the field. Most departments will limit how many cross listed courses you can take for credit (for my PhD it is at most one).

Most masters programs in CS come in either a course/project based or thesis based format. A course based masters will have you doing graduate courses for the two years as well as large project course that will be supervised by a faculty member. A thesis based masters will have you doing less courses (for me it was about 4) and a thesis + original research under the supervision of a faculty member.

The course based option is easier to do part time (some universities may not let you do a thesis part time) and requires far less writing and pain than the thesis route. However, if you want to go on to latter do a PhD, you should go the thesis route as it will introduce you to the kind of research you will need to be doing and give you a chance to publish some papers in your area (it also looks better on a PhD application).

I would be very wary about working any more than 10 hours a week while doing graduate studies. Unless you are doing your masters part time you should be working on your research and courses full time. It would be the amount of effort that is expected of you and some universities even have rules against full time graduate students being employed at the same time (or at least strong recommendations against it). As others have pointed out, the university will normally offer you funding in the from of a scholarship and a teaching assistantship (which would be your 10 hours a week of work) which should cover at least tuition and rent if you are frugal.

A note about external funding (OGS, NSERC, etc). While getting an external award will definitely help you financially (and it looks good on a CV), the university can count the amount you get externally as part of there guaranteed funding package, thus lowering the amount you would get from internal scholarships and any obligation your supervisor would have to fund you though an research assistantship (not the same thing as a teaching assistantship). So for example (just made up numbers) if you get $15,000 from OGS and your university was going to offer you $25,000 before you got the OGS, they might drop that down to $15,000, totaling $30,000 (still over the $25,000 guaranteed amount).

Finally, you should strongly consider if a masters is going to help you accomplish your goals and if it is worth the significant investment of your time and money. Graduate degrees often take more time to complete then they advertise or give you funding for. If you are not done by the end of 6 terms (2 years) they will not fund you for the next 3 terms your degree may take to complete. Also many companies will not care about graduate education and in some it could even hurt your chances (they would consider you over qualified and likely to quit as soon as a better job came around). If you want to get into the academia side of things, you often need to get a PhD and the job prospects right now are rather poor with far more PhDs than tenure track positions.

TL;DR: RUN! RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN AND DON'T LOOK BACK AT GRAD SCHOOL!
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mirhagk




PostPosted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 10:41 am   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

I kinda agree with Dan's TL;DR. If you're doing this to get ahead in the business world, don't do it. I'd only suggest doing it if your genuinely interested in getting into academia, and then you're expected to be the best of the best to get anywhere (and as a mature student, you'll probably retire by the time you get tenure)
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knowthyself




PostPosted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 5:10 pm   Post subject: Re: CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Don't do it for my career in industry because it won't help me get a job? Or, you're saying don't do it to help my career in industry because that would somehow be ingenuine (sp)?

I have (and have had) many colleagues/peers with masters degrees, doing the same work as myself. So does that mean that they were out of their element and in an inappropriate job, or could it mean that many companies are simply happy to hire candidates with masters degrees because they feel that they may enhance the team that much more? I think the latter. I'm sure plenty of people getting masters degrees (maybe even the majority) do not intend to continue to pursue a phd. I'm sure many see it as a leg-up over the competition, and as a result, the market has many candidates going into industry with masters degrees, thus causing bachelors degrees to become de-valued. I feel that this is the trend, and in the coming years and decades a bachelors degree will be bare minimum for industry jobs (I'm talking non-r&d), and masters will be preferred. Anyway, I don't have evidence in my hand but I'm sure you can google some articles for yourself about academic inflation, and masters becoming the new bachelors, etc.

But I might have misinterpreted your comment mirhagk about don't do it to get ahead in the business world.
mirhagk




PostPosted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 5:53 pm   Post subject: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

You didn't really misinterpret it. I meant it as you're not really going to get much out of a masters degree in terms of getting a job. You should get a masters out of interest, or to get into academia, not really to get a job.

Academic inflation is a result of people needing a leg up over other candidates in order to get their first job. It occurs mostly in programs where there are many bachelors degree holders, but few jobs (such is the case with art history, english, hr, etc). Computer science does NOT have this problem. In computer science you can go into job interviews with the purpose of interviewing the company, rather than the other way around.

Most companies realize that for non-research jobs, a masters degree doesn't really give you a good competitive edge. If I was to select a candidate, I'd take someone with bachelors+2 years experience over masters (assuming all else was unknown or equal).

Think about the opportunity +real cost of a getting a masters degree. 2-3 years at $50 000 opportunity (assuming a decent programming job) + $10 000 or so in tuition. I think you'd find that you're not going to make that $180 000 back very quickly just by having a masters.

I mention that strategy of applying for masters and jobs at the same time specifically for the reason of academic inflation. If for whatever reason you can't find a job (maybe you're in a small town and unwilling to move), then you can always pursue a masters if you think it'll help, but on the other hand if you can find a job that you kinda like, take it and use those 2-3 years getting experience to step up to a better job. Most CS jobs require degree + 5 years of experience, and many of them really don't give a crap about your degree, they only care that you have one. (most companies coming to job fairs explicitly tell students to not worry about marks unless they are super low, and instead do projects, get a github profile etc).

Computer science needs to overturn the requirement of a degree soon I believe. Sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture is the worst way to learn computer science. Wikipedia is honestly a better teacher than most profs, WAY more accurate, and WAY more digestible. Degrees are only useful for the piece of paper saying you passed a test. Even then most graduates still have trouble understanding basic concepts, so universities do an awful job of testing. Things like Udacity hopefully will turn the whole university scam on it's head (at least in computer science)
knowthyself




PostPosted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 6:22 pm   Post subject: Re: CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

Okay, thanks for clarifying your points. I agree that you don't need a masters degree to a get the job. Case in point: I worked successfully (fairly successfully anyway) as a software developer with a college diploma (in electrical engineering no less) for the better part of a decade. And I am also currently employed as a professional developer (for another company) part-time while I'm doing my degree. So you are quite right about that. I guess I didn't explain my reasons very clearly in a previous post, but that's not really the point of this thread, so I think I'll leave it at that.
CopperNerves




PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:44 pm   Post subject: Re: RE:CS Masters effort vs Undergrad -- amount of effort

knowthyself @ September 16th 2013 wrote:
Thanks for the info guys. Its looking more promising now on the financial front. Even if the grants and so on don't cover all my expenses, my employer may offer enough flexibility that I work whatever hours I can. They've been pretty good that way for the past 3 years, so why not another 2 Smile.


I'm sure this doesn't apply in all circumstances, but I know that some graduate programs do not allow outside employment without departmental approval. Even when approved it often has to be short-term and limited (5-15 hours/week). I would also look into your funding sources and make sure they don't have policies regarding this matter.
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