Hi,
I am an undergraduate, currently pursuing a bachelors in Computer Engineering. I am planning to go to grad school. I have two areas of interest in ECE. One is Computer Networks and Security, while the other is Computer Architecture. I was wondering if graduate schools allow concentrating in two areas, or does it have to be just one?
Thanks
If you are doing a Ph.D. then you will have a thesis project andit will be in a specific area. It is really not possible to to a thesis in two areas. If you are doing a professional Masters is is often the case that you will have a specialization and this will require a certain number of courses. Having a second specialization will probably not be an option because of the additional coursework.
It totally depends on the field and the program. I’m a social scientist, so I specialized in two areas - social psychology and public health. All of my coursework and exams and research were in both areas, and I did a dissertation that married the two areas well. Both of my departments were really big on interdisciplinary work, so it was very common for students to work on research in more than one area or research that combined two different areas into something unique.
But, this may be something that is less possible in engineering/STEM sciences - not sure.
Shoot, even in engineering a typical thesis project may have a sizable overlap between multiple areas. I can’t say for certain whether any exist in the areas mentioned by the OP, but I wouldn’t count the possibility out right away. The key would be finding an advisor somewhere whose research is at the intersection of those two topics.
Doing research in an interdiscilinary field is not a problem and it happens all the time. however, takeing two full sets of specialization courses is not really a good idea when doing a Ph.D. The goal is research not a bunch of courses…