<p>Planning on going to UIUC for Computer Science and Engineering, and taking a scientific concentration of operations research. Would I have a decent shot of getting into an operations research graduate program this way? What if I supplemented it with a minor in applied statistics?</p>
<p>I’ve known many people who’ve done CS as undergrads and OR as grad students. Taking classes such as linear algebra, probability, graph theory, algorithms (with an emphasis on graphs, the greedy method, and dynamic programming) are very helpful.</p>
<p>It’s best to look at some M.S./M.Eng Operations Research programs and probably some Industrial Engineering grad programs that have an O.R. emphasis on a school’s website. Don’t worry about the name/rank of school…you just want to look at the admission requirements.</p>
<p>For instance, here is the M.S.I.E with O.R. emphasis at Univ or Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Look at the degree requirements and then look at the course descriptions of the required graduate courses. The course description will give the U-Wisconsin’s prerequisite which you can match to a similar undergrad course at your school. What these above posters said is basically true. It would be good to take the following in your BACS program:</p>
<p>Linear Algebra (prereq for many of the O.R. courses)</p>
<p>Probability and Statistics (also prereq for many of the O.R. courses)</p>
<p>Optimization or Mathematical Programming - Whatever the course is called that covers linear programming (simplex, revised-simplex, duality and all that mess)</p>
<p>Operations Research - Some schools may even have separate Deterministic O.R. and Stochastic O.R. courses.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m a little biased (OK, I am), but in my experience, taking as much mathematics as possible during one’s undergraduate years usually makes getting into (and succeeding in) graduate school much easier. I tend to think this advice applies especially to someone majoring in a highly mathematical STEM field (CS) as an undergraduate and who aspires to go to graduate school in a different, highly mathematical STEM field (OR). Mathematics is the common bond.</p>
<p>That being said, I can second the recommendations made by yagottabelieve. Additionally, if you’re able to take any of the following courses (or more advanced versions of the same) while you’re an undergraduate at UIUC, you might consider it:</p>
<p>CS 357 Numerical methods I
CS 440 Artificial Intelligence
CS 446 Machine Learning
CS 450 Numerical Analysis
CS 457 Numerical Methods II
CS 473 Fundamental Algorithms
CS 481 Stochastic Processes and Applications
CS 482 Simulation</p>
<p>MATH 463 Statistics and Probability I
MATH 464 Statistics and Probability II
MATH 465 Analysis of Variance
MATH 468 Topics in Applied Statistics
MATH 469 Methods of Applied Mathematics
MATH 482 Linear Programming
MATH 484 Nonlinear Programming
MATH 493 Statistical Computing</p>
<p>IE 310 Operations Research
IE 311 Operations Research Lab
IE 410 Stochastic Processes & Applications
IE 411 Optimization of Large Systems
IE 412 OR Models of Mfg Systems
IE 413 Simulation</p>
<p>A statistics minor could only help a CS major hoping to get into OR. However, a formal minor might not be necessary. By the way, and sorry for diverging a little, but you are aware of the OR track at UIUC in the IE major, right? Is there any particular reason you decided to go with CS rather than with IE? If you’re trying to swing it a certain way, knowing that could only make it easier for us to give you better suggestions.</p>
<p>Aegrisomnia - I have to admit, until you brought up IE and I looked it up I had no idea what it was. I thought any other engineering degree meant learning how to build machines of some type or another, and I don’t have the aptitude or interest in work like that. IE actually looks really interesting, and probably the most sensible route for someone planning to get into OR. I’m going to seriously consider it.</p>
<p>The reason I’m planning for CS is really just because it’s the degree I’ve been planning to go for for a while, I just recently found out about OR.</p>
<p>Thank you Aegrisomnia!
Thanks everyone! Your advise has been really helpful.</p>
<p>No problem, man. It’s not often that I get a chance to give anybody useful advice on here. ;D</p>
<p>That being said, of course, I do recommend taking as much math/statistics/computer science as you can/want… that sort of stuff is useful, and it sounds like you’d be interested in it anyway.</p>
<p>I agree with everything said so far (especially taking supplemental math/cs/stats courses). My son is currently in a graduate OR program in an engineering school, after having done a BA in math undergraduate. What he discovered when applying is that OR has many “homes” - some in engineering, some in business schools, and some in standalone departments, often combined with statistics. No hard data on this, but there is probably some advantage to having an undergraduate engineering degree if applying to a graduate OR program in an engineering department. In his limited experience, there does appear to be an advantage to having a business degree if applying to a graduate OR program in a business school.</p>
<p>When I was in graduate school (in a CS department) I had a number of friends who worked with OR faculty in a different department for their dissertations. Many of the methods were common across the departments - it was more of the emphasis or the nature of the problems being attacked. These were numerical linear/nonlinear optimization folk for the most part.</p>