Trying to help my brother get the ball rolling for grad school, since he doesn’t know where to start and doesn’t use these forums.
He graduated a few years ago with a CS degree and a 3.0 GPA. He’s spent the past couple years working in industry but misses the intellectual side of CS. He wants to go back to grad school and eventually get a PhD. With his GPA and no undergrad research experience, he realizes that a master’s (thesis-based) is a necessary stepping stone. He’s interested in artificial intelligence. What would be some good schools with those background, interests, and goals?
First: You say that your brother misses the intellectual side of CS. What does that mean? I as because graduate degrees are a means to an end; you get a graduate degree because you need it to do a specific type of job. PhDs, in particular, are for people who want to do research in the field - either as university professors or in industry. They have some specific area of interest (more specific than artificial intelligence, which is very broad) that they want to fill some gaps of knowledge in.
There are lots of ways to satisfy one’s intellectual bent - take some classes as a non-degree student, sit in on lectures at local universities, read a lot, participate in discussion groups, volunteer teaching CS to kids, volunteering in a research lab part-time, etc. Does your brother want to go into a research career in CS? Does he have a burning desire to do that research and persist at it? Or does he simply miss talking about computer science topics in a high-minded way? Because there are other ways to fix the latter.
[U.S</a>. News](http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/artificial-intelligence-rankings) has a listing of the best AI programs in CS; I wouldn’t take the absolute rankings as the gospel, but as a group they probably represent the top in the field. With a 3.0 GPA, though, your brother is going to have to look at a range of MS programs across the gamut. Particularly if he wants a PhD, saving money by going to a local public university (unless he can get funding for the MS) might be a good bet.