Master's in CS, help a lowly undergrad.

Graduate School
1

<p>My first post in over 2 years. And my account is still active. Who would have thought?</p>

<p>When I was in high school, I didn't take the whole college search process as seriously as I probably should have. I'm really happy with the way things turned out for me, but still. I want to be more informed when (if??) I apply to grad school. (Don't worry, I won't ask you to chance me.)</p>

<p>I will be a junior this fall. I'm an electrical engineering major (hopefully comp sci minor) at Tufts. My gpa is 3.45.</p>

<p>I was a TA for an introductory engineering class. I have a really nice job on campus where I use a CAD program to make Lego building instructions. They are used by K-12 educators to teach engineering. I am currently a full time summer intern in Connecticut. I have not done any research yet. </p>

<p>I am considering becoming a full time Master's student in comp sci after I graduate. My question is: What schools should I be looking at? Can anyone help me start a list of reaches, matches, and safeties? Sure I could make my own list (already started, in fact.) But I want advice from some folks with experience. U.S. News and World Report only goes so far. Apologies if I sound uninformed. It is still a bit early. Any advice is much appreciated.</p>

2

<p>What's your specialty area? </p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science#Fields_of_computer_science%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science#Fields_of_computer_science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Find out what you want to do, then that will help determine what department will be best for you. For graduate school, you won't be looking so much at the overall school rankings, but the department and labs that you want to join. Of course school ranking still matters, since you eventually want to be employed, but the schools you should be looking at are lot less straight forward. </p>

<p>BTW, even if you tell me what specialty area you are in, I won't be able to help you. It will be up to you to research what you want to study, and then pick the appropriate school and department.</p>