Students must take 36 university units worth of elective courses, at least 24 of which are from graduate courses offered by the School of Computer Science (not just the Computer Science Department); the other 12 may be from graduate courses offered by the rest of the University. These graduate courses must be level 700 or above.
There is no explicit breadth or depth requirement. Students may use electives to gain additional depth of knowledge in the student's research area, e.g., to complement their directed research or to prepare them for choosing a thesis topic. Students may also use electives to gain additional breadth of knowledge in an area outside of the student's research area.
Though students typically take courses to satisfy the elective units requirement, there are three other means of passing these units: doing an internal project, carrying out an external project, or teaching a graduate course. For students in some areas such as Algorithms, it might make more sense to take advanced courses; for students in other areas such as Software Systems, it might make more sense to do a project. For those who like to reinforce knowledge by teaching, we provide the opportunity to obtain elective credit by being a teaching assistant.
We strongly advise students to choose electives in consultation with their advisor. The student and his or her advisor are both responsible for making sure that through these 36 elective units the student gains new knowledge, perhaps to fill gaps or to prepare for thesis research. They are also responsible for balancing how a student fulfills these units (through courses, projects, or teaching), taking into consideration the student's career goals, and the student's strengths and weaknesses in research, teaching, communication skills, and programming ability.
Students are free to take more than the required number of elective units.