I did relatively well in high school, but not well enough to get into a top college for undergraduate. I might be over thinking, but I want to start preparing for graduate school during my undergraduate years, or even between senior year of high school and start of college.
I’ll most likely be attending Stony Brook (Honors College if that counts for anything?) and major in CS.
Any advice on a minor?
Any advice in general? Like track down professors, etc. (and how do you ask a professor anything?)
How important is the GRE, gpa, and internship, and research?
Ok, and I’m stupid, but how exactly do you do research in Computer science that in some way will contribute to the chances of being admitted to a top grad school?
and how should I begin studying for the GREs? Is it something like this? http://csns.calstatela.edu/download.html?fileId=2731320
I’m sorry if I seem very naive, I’m just worried. Any advice/tips? ( in CS/undergrad/or life in general helps!)
It is quite premature to plan all of this out. In your first year at SUNY, you will get to know the faculty who will be able to advise you on what to do in order to achieve your long-term goals. If you ask them about volunteering in their research groups, you will gain the experience that you need to decide if graduate school is what you really should pursue immediately after graduation.
You don't really need a minor, but a minor could be selected based upon what you want to use the computer science for. For example, if you are interested in bioinformatics, you might minor in biology. If you were interested in computational neuroscience, you might minor in neuroscience or psychology. Math is another good minor in general, or statistics if Stony Brook has that.
You ask a professor something just like you ask any other human being :) First, you establish a connection in some way. Take a class or approach that professor during their office hours. A polite email works, too.
Your GPA and research are very important; GRE is less so, but necessary. Internships might be important for professional programs and jobs but not necessarily for grad school. Keep your GPA up. After you have taken some introductory CS classes, you can explore the potential to do some research in CS.
Usually undergrads assist a professor in their research in their lab. You need some intro classes first to be useful in the lab, which is why most people start their sophomore year at the earliest, but after your freshman year you can start to take note of which professors in your department have research that seems interesting to you and investigate the possibility of volunteering in their lab. Some professors have formal processes (like an application) and others have less formal processes (you just ask). When the time is right you can find out by sending a polite email or approaching them during office hours and asking.
Oh god, please don't start studying for the GRE yet. Way too early. You don't know enough to prepare for the CS GRE anyway, and there's no need to prepare for the general GRE. Wait until your junior year.
My advice: Stop worrying about graduate school and enjoy your freshman year of college! The best thing you can do right now is do well in your intro and GE classes and start to explore your interests a bit. There is plenty of time to worry about grad school later. (And there’s pretty much nothing you can do between now and the beginning of college to prepare for graduate school, so relax! Stony Brook is a great school.)
I agree with @juilet on all of her points. I should just mention that the CS GRE was discontinued.
I can add that you do not have to go to grad school for CS. Depending on your goals it may be a better move to go to work. Especially if you come from a strong CS program and Stony Brook seems to have a strong reputation. Your parents are right. There are lots of situations where the work experience is as valuable as the MS. Or your time doing an MS will be better spent after working, when and if you have a CS focus you have identified that you like to work in. Or your employer will pay your MS later. Getting a PhD has some of the same considerations. I’m just saying to keep an open mind. But it will only help you to be prepared should you want to do grad school and getting involved in research is important.
Some early work my dd did was just crunching numbers and preparing data for use by grad students for research. That kind of work can just get you familiar with the kind of projects there are and getting some background on what CS research is, the kind of problem they are working on. Some advanced research involved building a library that contained functions retrieved by other programs, then rewriting the library in a new software language she and her partner developed to make the library more efficient. Working on algorithms that will make the program run faster etc. This involved taking extra classes to understand the math involved.
I think a lot of things will be clearer to you in a year and I wouldn’t worry about these sorts of things for a good year. But I would read about the kind of things the professors and grad students are working on, read the dept webpages of the research groups and the webpages of the faculty.
Elsewhere you recently said you were interested in being a premed so if you mean that type of grad school, everything changes.
The CS GRE has been eliminated. It’s still possible to take the Math GRE, but that would only help if you’re interested in a theoretical field like algorithms or FLAT. Even then, a great Math Subject GRE score won’t mean nearly as much as research experience or LORs. It’s also an extremely difficult test and you should only take it if you were a Math major. Even if you became a Calculus expert (and most CS students I know do well in Calc 1 from high school knowledge, then take a B in Calc 2 because they find it too hard or just don’t care), and even if you took linear algebra (sometimes recommended for CS), discrete math, and probability, you probably wouldn’t be able to answer much more than half the questions. Unless you’re planning on learning subjects like topology, real analysis, complex analysis, and linear and abstract algebra very thoroughly, you’d be better off skipping the subject test. Pretty much everyone taking it is someone applying to Math Ph.D. programs.
You would probably need to outscore 80% of the test-takers for it to make a positive difference (for top schools – for lower-tier schools, it’d probably be easier to get in and the test score wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway). Also, GRE results are only good for 5 years. Don’t take it any earlier than your junior year.
Look for research experience, including summer REUs.
Haha good point @BrownParent and @mathandcs, the study manual I came across looked really old so I wasn’t sure!
I also totally agree that working might be a better idea for you. You might never need to get a graduate degree, but even if you get one, having some work experience prior to getting it can be really good for your career.
My parents both work with computers, and they took the GRE and went to grad school. But thank you, I didn’t know it was eliminated.
@BrownParent yeah, I’m also considering premed. Just trying to decide between CS and that though. Thank you for the advice on the work experience, I’m just afraid once I start actually working, I might not want to go back to school (as my dad puts it).
@mathandcs Thank you! I’ll be keeping REUs in mind.
@juillet Thank you for the advice (especially the last one)!