<p>I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've also asked many people and there seem to be many different opinions on the matter. Here is what I've gathered:</p>
<p>Don't go to grad school right away-</p>
<ol>
<li>Getting a graduate degree in CS in particular pretty much forces you to specialize. Right out of undergraduate, you may have no idea what you want to specialize in. </li>
<li>You don't get paid that much more, and you can offset it anyways by working for 2 years. Additionally, if you want to go to grad school later, there are many companies that will actually pay you to go. </li>
<li>You can get really awesome jobs without a graduate degree.</li>
</ol>
<p>Go to grad school right away-</p>
<ol>
<li>If you don't go right away, you won't want to go back. The people that say this also say that graduate school is pretty much mandatory. </li>
<li>There are some jobs that absolutely require a graduate degree (very specific ones though)</li>
</ol>
<p>My opinions: I feel that if you can't be bothered to go back in a few years, you probably don't appreciate the value of a graduate education to be going to begin with. </p>
<p>About me: I'm a CS Major (you probably figured that out) at UCSD. GPA right now is about a 3.0 cumulative, and a 3.2 or 3.3 for my major. I have no idea if this is good or not, but they are both going up. I just did incredibly poorly first quarter (I got a 2.2) and have been recovering ever since. I've been working for 3 years, first at an electrical company, and now at a defense contractor (doing actual important things, so I do have a bit of experience). I'm getting financial aid now, since my parents retired, so I'm going to attend school for an additional year. Since I'm not paying for it, why not milk the system and bolster my GPA, right?</p>
<p>Anyways, what do you think about graduate school for CS? I'm going to take the GRE and apply to places anyways, but I really have no idea what to do.</p>
<p>Here’s an observation. At my college, the only computer science majors who have gone straight to graduate school in recent years were getting PhDs or were international students with work & visa issues. </p>
<p>International-student-issues aside, I think graduate school makes sense if you want a PhD or a job that requires more specialized training (e.g. in network security or game design). Otherwise, like you say, there are enough interesting jobs out there for applicants with a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in general computer science (with graduate-level versions of your algorithms and compilers courses) won’t add to your employability or salary.</p>
<p>It’s really dependent upon your needs, wants, and aptitude when you leave school. Plenty of people go back to school after working 2, 5, even 10 years - so the wisdom that if you don’t go immediately, you’ll never go back is false. It depends on the individual person’s drive and desire.</p>
<p>There are really two questions here: one, should you go to graduate school at all, and two, whether you should go directly after college if you do go. The first one is based upon what you want to do. Do the jobs you want require an MS or PhD in computer science? (Few will require the PhD, unless you want to be a professor or do some specialized kind of research.) What kinds of degrees or experiences do the people in the kinds of jobs you want have? Those questions should help you determine if you need a graduate degree in CS.</p>
<p>Whether or not you should go right after college depends, too. I went to graduate school (in a different field) directly after college, and I wish I had taken some time off. Working for a few years helps you focus your research and professional goals, gives you the opportunity to do the things you want to do (teaching abroad? traveling?) and allows you to save up some money. On the flip side, I’ll be 27 when I finish my PhD, and I’m not grappling with the issues of childbearing and other things the same way that many of my other female colleagues are. Besides, chances are in my field my starting salary would’ve been about the same as my graduate stipend anyway.</p>
<p>There are trade offs. Make a list of pros and cons for each decision, and decide which pros you like better and which cons you are willing to live with.</p>