<p>Thanks all for the information. It’s such a hard decision!</p>
<p>boneh3ad, I am really considering the “non-committal” PhD path. I assume if my advisor can accept my decision to be “non-committal”, he is already assuming the worst that I bolt after my M.S. So probably shouldn’t be extremely harsh feelings if I go to industry after that?</p>
<p>On the back of my head I have a thought of doing the M.S thesis option too … will I need to start on the research right away after my B.S for this path? Is research for the M.S thesis and PhD dissertation on different topics? What’s the difference except for the documentation?</p>
<p>This “non-commital” option won’t work if your advisor already knows you are leaning towards not following through. In fact, in order to have it work the way you are envisioning, you will have to convince him that you intend to stay, otherwise he will treat you like any other M.S. student right from the start.</p>
<p>The thesis option really is the way to go in my opinion. Most likely you will start researching as soon as you have an advisor to research with, which is often right from the start. The thing is, you only take 2, maybe 3 classes a semester as a grad student. Research really isn’t that much of a burden. Plus, when you start out, your role in the lab is usually so small because you are just learning the ropes. It is easy to “concentrate on classes” while still fulfilling your duties in class. My research assistantship comes with the stipulation that I spend 20 hrs a week in the lab working to earn my keep. That is 4 hours per weekday. It really isn’t that bad at all. In fact, I work more like 30 hrs per week on top of classes and studying and I still have time to get my school work done. If you do the non-thesis option instead, you will probably have 3 to 4 classes a semester, maybe even 5 just like in undergrad, only, the classes are significantly harder. In other words, if you feel like you will be saving yourself some free time by doing non-thesis, you are wrong. You just fill your schedule other ways.</p>
<p>Research for an M.S. sometimes can be used towards a dissertation as well, and sometimes it can’t. It really just depends on the situation. Some people do their thesis and dissertation on almost wholly different topics within their field, some people do it on the exact same thing, just a different set of experiments. The biggest difference between a thesis and a dissertation is the scope. A dissertation is a much broader, more profound piece of work that shows that you have a deep understanding of the topic and that you can carry out a major research program independently. As such it is much longer than a thesis and often goes well over 100 pages.</p>
<p>'Most likely you will start researching as soon as you have an advisor to research with, which is often right from the start. '</p>
<p>but at UCLA it’s going to be heard to find that advisor to research with in the first place. However, I’ve heard of a few MS students who had to work on a research project as part of their non-thesis MS instead of the thesis-based MS, but still weren’t funded.</p>
<p>That makes me think you ought to broaden your search away from UCLA then. There are plenty of equal or better schools that are much easier to find funding. I am not dissing UCLA, but why would you go somewhere where you are likely to get kind of a raw deal.</p>
<p>Non commital route will work. But like boneh3ad mentioned, don’t expect your professor to be happy about leaving for workforce instead of finishing your PhD degree. Well I got my GRA assistantship 2nd semester coming to Georgia tech but that’s after taking my advisor’s class and convince him that I intend to stay by passing PhD prelim exam. But I am more toward “non commitment route.” </p>
<p>I respect UCLA as one of the great engineer school and I believe UCLA’s engineer ranking to be one of the few flaws in engineer school ranking in USNWR (UCLA > USC) just like how Cal Tech should be above Georgia Tech and UIUC but lower ranked due to the size of institution. Its interesting how you think of UCLA as Raw deal boneh3ad. UCLA will surely carry better name than Texas A&M in my hard opinion. </p>
<p>Your chance to get a GRA position will increase if you came in as PhD instead of master student status. For Gatech, if you show that you have interest in the research area by sending email to your professor, you will get your GRA position even if you are not PhD student status. But you should include in your email that you will pursue PhD to get into most of the GRA position. Some professor won’t give you GRA right away but see how you perform during your first semester in research lab and give you GRA next semester based on your performance. It really depends on school as well since the funding for research budget is greater for big research institute.</p>
<p>As far as thesis or non thesis option for master, take thesis option if you want the research position in the future. For industry, they don’t care whether its thesis or non thesis but having extensive research experience involve in numerous projects will give you advantage over other candidates.</p>
<p>Thanks all. It’s coming down to M.S thesis or PhD non-committal. My biggest concern is funding. At the same time I don’t know if I have the capabilities of doing the PhD research.
I won’t be able to afford grad school without funding … so I hope the M.S thesis option will give me some funding. I’ll have my meeting with my advisor next week … hopefully I will be able to make up my mind by then.</p>
<p>I said it’s a raw deal because of the way these guys are apparently saying it is nearly impossible to be funded. It isn’t even that hard to get funded at UIUC or GT, both of which I had funding lined up at an MS level and both of which are better than UCLA in your hallowed rankings.</p>
<p>The other thing is that at the PhD level, the school name doesn’t matter nearly as much as the name of your advisor. My advisor is one of the most renowned people in his field and a fellow of the NAE, AIAA, and ASME, so I am not losing a thing by going to “lowly” Texas A&M instead of UIUC. Stop attacking me. You know nothing about me.</p>
<p>All I am saying is that it’s a good idea to look beyond UCLA if funding is that scarce.</p>
<p>‘It isn’t even that hard to get funded at UIUC or GT, both of which I had funding lined up at an MS level and both of which are better than UCLA in your hallowed rankings.’</p>
<p>well that was a few years ago for you, right? the funding situation for MS students has probably changed since then. I just emailed some people at Rutgers and they said that professors only give out RA-ships to MS students because most if not all of them expect them to commit to the phD. I’ll soon send out emails to people at other schools. Also, the grad students and professors at UCLA told me that it’ll probably be just as hard to get funding at other schools.</p>
<p>That was pretty much exactly 1 year ago, so it was still right in the middle of the recession.</p>
<p>It just sounds to me like UCLA is being stingy with their money, much like the rest of the UC system. California is in the most financial trouble of any other state to my knowledge, and it is hitting the universities hard. I can tell you for a fact that based on what people have said on here, that UCLA is being stingier than most universities nationwide with funding right now. How accurate the reports on here are is a totally different story though.</p>
<p>The people you emailed at Rutgers are absolutely correct though. It is almost always the case that if a professor funds an MS student, it is because either they have a lot of money with their project and have open projects that only require a masters student, or because that student has demonstrated the potential to become a successful PhD candidate and they hope to convince them to go that way. Professors usually prefer PhD candidates because they get a lot more time with them and thus a lot more useful work. With the MS, a lot of people spend the first year or so just becoming useful, so they only get another year out of them of useful work, whereas they get 5ish years to mold a PhD candidate into a researching machine.</p>
<p>There are other schools where it is tough to get funding, but there aren’t many I have heard that are as bad as how some people have described UCLA in this thread.</p>
<p>If you have any way of demonstrating your worth through grades, test scores, references or just talking to a professor, then you can greatly increase your chances. At the schools you are interested in find a professor or two that you are interested in, do a little bit of background reading about what kind of stuff they do, and then email them and tell them you find it very interesting and would very much appreciate a chance to talk to them about their work and maybe even the possibility of working with them in the future if they have any openings in their group. You don’t even need to try and get funding right off the bat. Just see if they have any openings in their research group because you are interested and use that as a platform to then work for funding. If they say “yes we are looking to bring a student or two on next semester” then you have your foot in the door and even if you don’t get funded immediately, working in their group for a semester is the absolute best way to prove you are worth funding.</p>
<p>BoelterHall, upthread I told you how to get funding for your MS, I will restate it again.</p>
<p>APPLY BEFORE THE END OF NOVEMBER.</p>
<p>Seriously, that’s the trick. Apply for a fellowship before the end of November, and make sure your application has GRE scores attached. Most undergrads don’t know that you have to apply this early, or that GRE scores are needed, because applying for UCLA grad school without the fellowship has a much later deadline, and no GRE requirement. And very few of the undergrads seem to be aware of this, so they miss out on the $$.</p>
<p>I have been reading all of the UCLA Engineering newsletters, Messages from the Dean, and Announcements since 2004. And I haven’t read of any sudden “stinginess” in fellowship offers, so I don’t know where this rumor is coming from. My son hasn’t heard anything to that effect either, neither have his grad school friends in Boelter Hall.</p>
<p>‘You don’t even need to try and get funding right off the bat. Just see if they have any openings in their research group because you are interested and use that as a platform to then work for funding. If they say “yes we are looking to bring a student or two on next semester” then you have your foot in the door and even if you don’t get funded immediately, working in their group for a semester is the absolute best way to prove you are worth funding.’</p>
<p>But the earliest I can admitted to for the schools other than UCLA is for the winter 2011 term. I should contact them this early anyways? That seems like a good idea but I’m very concerned about the out-of-state tuition rates, since I live in CA. I checked UIUC and the out-of-state tuition is almost 3 times the in-state tuition at UCLA.</p>
<p>UIUC’s OoS tuition is notoriously high. That said, grad students almost always have their OoS tuition waived as part of their assistantship and get in-state tuition, then get that paid for by a professor. You may even be able some places to get the OoS portion waived without an assistantship, though I am not sure since I was never in that situation exactly.</p>
<p>@bonehead
Yeah… Sorry to dump this big news to you now but having PhD from what school matters boneh3ad. Having PhD from Gatech or Texas A&M matters when you trying to get a research position or prominent university professor position. It’s really amusing and tire to hear how you claim “I turned down higher ranking school for lower rank school PhD program.” And “my advisor is a NAE member and it doesn’t matter what school you receive PhD degree from as long as I have prominent professor as my advisor.” Stop lying to yourself about I got acceptance into Gatech and UIUC grad school and turned down the offer or don’t mention it at all. Its really tire to hear your lie on CC forum. </p>
<p>Like I mentioned, most university will give GRA position to someone who claims to go up to PhD. Email UIUC department professor and see if you can get GRA position after you send your application for grad admission.</p>
<p>Like I said, I don’t care if you don’t believe me. What matters is that you have about as much credibility on these boards as Sarah Palin does at a conference on evolution. I never said it didn’t matter where you got your degree from. What I said is that it matters more who you get your degree from.</p>
<p>Believe me when I tell you that prospective employers, including research universities, are going to be more impressed seeing you have a whole slew of published articles, carried out a major fundamental research project, and have the personal recommendation and guidance of a renowned professor than anything else. In academia, it all comes down to one thing: dollars. When evaluating a new candidate, the single most important question that a university asks is “can this person generate income for this school?” For a professor, that means can you carry out lots of meaningful research and bring in large grants. What school you came from says that you were good enough to get in and that you likely have a good advisor and have had good opportunities for publication, but the factors I said before are what absolutely prove that you have that high potential for benefiting the institution.</p>
<p>I know you need to think that Georgia Tech is the only place to go to get a good degree just to make yourself feel better, but seriously, stop kidding yourself and stop misleading everyone else on these boards. There are many, many paths one can take to get into industry, academia, government, or wherever else you can think of. If you go to a “top” school, do you have a better chance of getting into a top research position? Sure! Top schools attract top faculty, and top faculty have the industry connections and the notoriety to help get you into tenure-track positions. However, the idea that top faculty only reside at top schools is just pure hogwash. There are top professor even at a few “lowly” schools. If you get on with one of them even at a lower ranked school, you still have all sorts of options.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that your advisor is just as big of a bridge into future careers as your school is, if not bigger. If you have a well known advisor in your field, chances are you have at least a decent shot at getting a top position in your field regardless of what school you were at. You are just more likely to get a top advisor at a top school.</p>
Thanks for the fellowship information, I’ve read it. I’ve already been accepted for Fall 2010 so the fellowship would be for Fall 2011 if I apply in November. I am looking for funding next fall but appreciate your link.</p>
<p>'That was pretty much exactly 1 year ago, so it was still right in the middle of the recession… I can tell you for a fact that based on what people have said on here, that UCLA is being stingier than most universities nationwide with funding right now…</p>
<p>There are other schools where it is tough to get funding, but there aren’t many I have heard that are as bad as how some people have described UCLA in this thread.'</p>
<p>well I’ve now spoken to a few professors at SUNY-Buffalo, Texas-Austin, Maryland, Rutgers, and UIUC and they all said that its very unlikely that MS students can find RA-ships for their thesis. They said thats the case not just at their school but is becoming more common at all universities. So I guess 1 year makes that big a difference</p>
<p>I’ll weigh in on how much school rank matters with some numbers from a short, unscientific experiment. I found out where regular Stanford CS faculty, excluding emeritus and those who got their degrees at foreign institutions, got their Phd. 75% of Stanford CS faculty graduated from a top 5 grad program in CS. 100% of Stanford CS faculty graduated from a top 20 grad program in CS.
The results are as follows:
Total CS: 44
Stanford - 9
UC-Berkeley - 8
MIT - 7
Carnegie-Mellon - 6
Cornell - 3
Harvard - 2
UCLA - 2
Yale - 1
UNC - 1
UW-Madison - 1
University of Michigan - 1</p>