MIME-Version: 1.0 Server: CERN/3.0 Date: Monday, 06-Jan-97 22:51:16 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 10954 Last-Modified: Thursday, 19-Sep-96 22:17:08 GMT Advice for Graduate Students Back to the GRACS Home Page
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Advice and guidance to assist you in your quest for a Masters or PhD degree
in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas

Starting out

If you are considering attending graduate school, Advice for Undergraduates Considering Graduate School contains some good advice. A local copy (potentially out of date) is available in case that link is not active.

In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences published a report on the current state and future direction of graduate education in the U.S.

The UT Computer Science graduate school ranked seventh nationally in the latest NAS rankings.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Graduate Advisor (currently Bruce Porter) , email porter@cs.utexas.edu, has prepared a list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Course work

The graduate bulletin contains all of the information about course requirements. Other related administrative information is available too.

Masters Students: Thesis Option or Not?

Masters students have the option of taking fewer courses and doing a thesis, or of taking more courses and not doing a thesis. The non-thesis option is usually faster. You can do a Masters degree in 18 months under this option. The thesis option usually takes 2-3 years.

Students who like research, are thinking of doing a PhD, or who just want to stay in school a little longer should consider the thesis option. If you just want to get a degree and get a job, you probably want the non-thesis option.

Send us your comments or questions!

Approaching the PhD

The decision to do a PhD is a major decision. It will have a substantial affect on your life and career. As you start the PhD, take advantage of the hindsight provided by other graduate students. The collected wisdom of generations of grad students and advisors can be found below:

General advice

Advice specific to our department

Send us your comments or questions!

Advice for women

Women feeling overwhelmed by the male-dominated sciences may be interested in a group called Women in Computer Science. Ellen Spertus at MIT has collected a lot of information on gender-related issues in CS. Systers is another national organization catering to women in Computer Science. There are also local chapters of systers. Send mail to utcs-systers-request and austin-systers-request to get on the local mailing lists.


$$$$$ Funding $$$$$

Most PhD students in the department will be a TA for at least one or two semesters during their graduate career. TA positions are usually available to any PhD student. If there is a particular class you would like to be a TA for, go talk to the professor who teaches that class. If the professor requests you for a particular class, you are likely to get that class.

TA duties can range from simply grading homework (e.g. most graduate breadth courses) to teaching two classes (e.g. CS304p). This reporter found that teaching two CS304P courses required less time than grading a graduate-level course, but your experience may vary.

The hope, of course, is that your advisor will get a big research grant that will support you as an RA for your graduate career. This happens most, but not all, the time. You can help yourself by investigating research funding opportunities and learning how to write grant proposals. Also, apply for fellowships since they pay tuition while TA and RA positions do not include tuition waivers!

Send us your comments on funding!

The Thesis Proposal

The Dissertation

Getting a job

Being an advisee of someone who is an expert in their field will be a big help when looking for a job. This may affect your choice of a thesis advisor. So the first step is to ask your advisor whether she/he knows of any job openings. This works better for academic jobs. The main source of academic job listings is the December issue of CACM.

For industry jobs, try to meet people at conferences, or contact people who have written good papers in your area. It doesn't hurt to start making these contacts 2-3 years before graduation. The highest concentration of computer jobs is in Silicon Valley (San Jose - San Francisco), Boston, Austin, and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Other minor hotspots include Seattle, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Houston, Portland, and Detroit.

CRA runs a mailing list for job announcements. Here are the instructions, taken from their home page (http://www.cra.org):

*************************************************************
Anyone may subscribe to the Computing Research Association's jobs@cra.org list.
There is a cost associated with posting jobs announcements.

To Subscribe: Send the following mail message to listproc@cra.org:
                      subscribe jobs firstname lastname

Unsubscribe:  Send the following mail message to listproc@cra.org:
                      unsubscribe jobs

To Post:         Send announcement to jobs@cra.org.

Help:              Send the following mail message to listproc@cra.org:
                      help

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There are also many online job listings now. Check various newsgroups such as ba.jobs.offered, etc. See also: