<p>Hi guys,
Just wondering if anyone has seen any statistics on starting salaries for a masters degree in CS (not a fancy CS-wise school but top 15 overall.) No experience.</p>
<p>Any advice is appreciated. My undergrad is in BME.</p>
<p>It would be nice if you had some experience - like internships. It's going to highly depend on how well you do your Masters. You should apply to companies like Siemens, Stryker Medical, etc for BME internships. For CS, you should try to do some freelance work in webdesign, or try to win some competitions at TopCoder, or participate in IBM's Student Mainframe competition, etc. Anything you can put on your resume is game.</p>
<p>The "No experience" part is going to kill you because that's what employers want to see. You have to start somewhere, and I say you should start soon.</p>
<p>I do have research experience (bioinformatics mostly, writing code.) </p>
<p>And I want to combine my CS and BME knowledge together and I think that could be very valuable to a medical device/computer-based surgical tools company. I just wanted to get an idea of how valuable it would be before I jump in and apply for the Masters degree.</p>
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just wondering if anyone has seen any statistics on starting salaries for a masters degree in CS (not a fancy CS-wise school but top 15 overall.) No experience.
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<p>Here are the BLS overall 2005 numbers. Granted, they are for master's degrees in computer engineering, but those numbers should still give you some idea. </p>
<p>*According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, starting salary offers for graduates with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering averaged $52,464 in 2005; offers for those with a master’s degree averaged $60,354. Starting salary offers for graduates with a bachelor’s degree in computer science averaged $50,820. *</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm#earnings%5B/url%5D">http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm#earnings</a></p>
<p>Thanks. That's just what I was looking for.</p>
<p>The research experience is just the research experience and you shouldn't expect $60k salary with no experience and a MSCS, especially in the tech industry. Do internship or co-op and find some cs work. You need good work reference on your resume. If you get 2-3 yr experience, then you can get $60k.</p>
<p>You don't need 2-3 year work experience - that's ridiculous. My friend in EECS did a 6 month co-op and wound up with a full time job for $75k with just a Bachelor's. Other people I know did 1-2 summers interning and wound up with a similar salary.</p>
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The research experience is just the research experience and you shouldn't expect $60k salary with no experience and a MSCS, especially in the tech industry. Do internship or co-op and find some cs work. You need good work reference on your resume. If you get 2-3 yr experience, then you can get $60k.
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<p>Well, let me put it to you this way. According to the national figures, even those with just BSCS's make over 53k to start, and many (probably most) of them have no experience. So nabbing 60k with an MSCS without experience is quite reasonable. </p>
<p>As others have stated, internships and co-op will definitely put you in an advantageous position when applying for jobs. Try using your research experience as something to help you get a decent internship position, which in turn will help you land a nice job.</p>
<p>Anything bio related will pay a lot lower than pure software engineering, in general.</p>
<p>Why is that? Even if the individual has a strong background and combines both well?</p>
<p>I think steevee put it best: "Try using your research experience as something to help you get a decent internship position, which in turn will help you land a nice job."</p>
<p>While you do have some research experience, it is a good thing. It is something to discuss during the interviews, rather than how well you bagged someone elses groceries.</p>
<p>In a sense, merper68 is right, but not completely: "The research experience is just the research experience and you shouldn't expect $60k salary with no experience and a MSCS, especially in the tech industry."</p>
<p>More experience working for a company = more money at the end. But it is also possible to attain a decent salary (you put your figure here) as long as you can prove yourself.</p>
<p>Now you say: "I do have research experience (bioinformatics mostly, writing code.)"... is that writing code in Mathematica or R? Because if it is, I don't think that will take you far. I know BME's like to use those tools the most, rather than C/C++... and it makes sense completely. Programming in Mathematica won't do you much. I doubt you would have a strong understanding in object-oriented programming/design, software development, etc. if you only use Mathematica. But again, I'm assuming you don't use C/C++.</p>
<p>Yes, you must be careful if your only coding experience is for science applications. I work with physicists and mathematicians who use numerical analysis in their work - they even use C++ - and they know next to nothing about CS. It seems like they only learned just enough to make trivially simple functional programs compile and run. To succeed in the software industry, you must know how to solve computationally challenging problems (not mathematically or scientifically challenging problems, necessarily), and how to solve them well. Numerical analysis is certainly interesting, but it's not anything like real CS work.</p>
<p>All the coding was in Java and Perl. My BME focus in computational biology so I've taken Intro Programming, Data Structures, now taking Automata and Computation Theory, in the past I've taken Intro Perl Programming and Unix systems programming. I intend to take 15 more CS credits before finishing my BME degree, so I'm not clueless when it comes to CS/programming -- partly why I want to get a Masters in CS is because I feel like that is my strongest area.</p>
<p>You should be fine, then.</p>
<p>what you learned in school helps you some when you try to get a job, but that doesn't help you do the job. If you can get an entry-level job that pays $75k for 6 month experience, then.. well good for you. Also if you think you'll get $60k right after graduation.., well it's possible, but companies in dc area can find ppl with 2-3 yr experience for $50-60k, so I think what those websites say average ppl with 0 yr experience and a mscs get paid is true for some and untrue for most ppl. Professors and data researchers don't know much about the economy outside the school campus and they usually say to students that they'll make $60k, 70k, .., and etc. Do not believe what they and their papers and websites tell you, because after graduation, you are responsible for finding the job and no one really knows how much you get paid after graduation. Some ppl do well after school and some ppl just can't find the job they want.</p>
<p>"so I think what those websites say average ppl with 0 yr experience and a mscs get paid is true for some and untrue for most ppl." </p>
<p>what makes it the average then?</p>
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Also if you think you'll get $60k right after graduation.., well it's possible, but companies in dc area can find ppl with 2-3 yr experience for $50-60k, so I think what those websites say average ppl with 0 yr experience and a mscs get paid is true for some and untrue for most ppl.
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<p>I have to side with scorp on this one and ask what then makes up 'average data'. By definition, the average is the mean value of all of the figures in the sample. Hence, some people will obviously get less, but others will get more. </p>
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Professors and data researchers don't know much about the economy outside the school campus and they usually say to students that they'll make $60k, 70k
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<p>Uh, I'm not sure this is a relevant point. The reported figures have nothing to do with what professors or data researchers think. Rather, they are calculated from surveyed actual responses from actual graduating students. </p>
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Also if you think you'll get $60k right after graduation.., well it's possible, but companies in dc area can find ppl with 2-3 yr experience for $50-60k
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<p>Well, if you want to invoke DC, then I think it is fair for me to invoke Silicon Valley. The average starting salary for BSCS grads for 2006 from San Jose State University was over 60k. MSCS grads from San Jose State in 2006 made 77k. Remember, these are 2006 figures, hence they are already a year old. Furthermore, while SJSU is not a terrible school, it isn't exactly MIT or Stanford. </p>
<p>Granted, I don't know where scorp is located, and I don't know what kind of school he is thinking of attending (although he did mention a top 15 school, which would be mean a school better than SJSU). But, depending on where you are geographically, it is indeed quite possible to make 60k with an MSCS with no experience.</p>
<p>you should go to careerbuilder.com or monster.com and search entry-level CS job. You should see that most cs companies pay much less than $60k for someone with no experience and a mscs. You should also know that they can always outsource programming.</p>
<p>"you should go to careerbuilder.com or monster.com and search entry-level CS job. You should see that most cs companies pay much less than $60k for someone with no experience and a mscs. You should also know that they can always outsource programming."</p>
<p>Define "much" less. I doubt any company pays a MSCS less than 50-55 K right out of school.</p>
<p>And your post is a joke. People with a MSCS are not programmers and their roles cannot be outsourced. That's the point of getting an MSCS. Computer scientist and software engineer jobs could be outsourced, but they haven't been. But to fully debunk you would be hijacking this thread.</p>