A friend of mine over at JHU talked to the department secretary and it seems that I got in, even though I still did not get the official admission. However I still have no answer from USC and I still can't decide.
I want to get a PhD after MS degree but my concern is whether I want to be specialized in NLP after two years. Currently I'm working on an NLP project for my graduation, I find it quite enjoyable and it's actually going well, my advisor is positive that we can publish a paper about it. But what if my field of interest changes over time, what alternatives does that leave me afterwards?
USC's natural language group is really tempting:
The Natural Language Group at USC/ISI
USC offers a wide range of courses in Natural Language Processing and related subject areas.
The Natural Language Group at USC/ISI
Quote:
Current Degree Requirements and Course Descriptions are located on the CS Department website.
Computer Science
CSCI-544 Natural Language Processing
CSCI-562 Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
CSCI-561 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
CSCI-542 Neural Computation with Artificial Neural Networks
CSCI-567 Machine Learning
CSCI-596 Scientific Computing and Visualization
CSCI-599 Lexical Semantics
CSCI-645 Advanced Topics in Neural Computation and Statistical Learning
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However why "CSCI" and not "CS" ? Are they like a different course track? That got me confused a little bit.
However as it's said in the web site
Department Of Computer Science - USC
I don't have a free choice while selecting courses, for example I have to take Analysis Of Algorithms etc.
Department Of Computer Science - USC
The same thing is true for Johns Hopkins too.They have really tempting courses but I have to choose at least 2 courses from both analysis systems and applications areas.
However all the courses I am interested in are in applications area
http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~houlahan/programs/courseareas.htm
However in Brown I can choose between lots of courses. But the catch is that there are not many NLP courses in Brown, so actually I don't have such a great interest in the courses they offer.
Courses and Areas - PhD
And now the money issues, is it worth to give such kind of money to these three schools?
How are they treating to their master students? (Remember that I'm not looking for a job afterwards, but going to PhD
So I want to get my moneys worth in a good academic background)
JHU says
Quote:
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One advantage of our MSE program is that it is relatively small, so unlike some of the more well-known masters programs, you will be in classes of 20-30 students, not 200-300!
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JHU Department of Computer Science
Is that true?
Thanks for your help