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Advice for Graduate Students
Back to the GRACS Home Page
Back to the CS Department Home Page
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local copy (potentially out of date) is available in case that link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
- Get started on research early. Talk to several professors
during your first semester. Don't "wait until I get settled in".
- The social relationship with your advisor is crucial. If you
don't feel that your advisor is somewhat of a friend or supporter,
then the path to a PhD will be rough.
- Push yourself. Your advisor has no need to push you out.
You are doing valuable research for her/him. If you want
to graduate, you will need to put yourself in position to do so.
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
- Administrative Requirements (to come)
- Format
- Student comments on the dissertation process:
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
*************************************************************
There are also many online job listings now. Check various newsgroups
such as ba.jobs.offered, etc. See also: