Anyone know what UMich CS is like?

[dinobot]

Trying to decide between UMich, UCSD and Penn State for software/distributed systems CS PhD, any opinions on what CS at UMich is like would be appreciated. (Previous posts on Stony Brook v. Penn were real helpful - thanks to those who wrote!)

Not interested in rankings since they're similar among the 3, more interested in environment and camaraderie, i.e., heard UCSD is very open and faculty are friendly, lots of interdisciplinary work possible. Is UMich an ivory tower? My goals are just to learn more CS and eventually build systems, not to go into academia or anything else requiring spinning straw into gold or anything.

Cheers

[turing]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Quite an embarassment of riches you got here.I think it'll be a shoot out between UCSD and UMich.If i was in your position(I wish!!) I would have gone for UCSD.

[gforce]

I agree with turing...I would personally pick UCSD anyday! UCSD has a *huge* networks and distributed systems lab with more than 10 'top grade' professors.
PLEASE post your profile man...I've been waitlisted at UCSD and wanna know what it takes to get in.

[nistha]

I agree....UCSD is more favorable.....besides California is great. So unless u hav prticlar inclination towards Michigan(which u might have), u can go for UCSD.
Newhere u go, u'll enjoy it I m sure.

[dinobot]

new to the forum so unsure of format, but profile: GRE 780M/800V/5.5A, but pretty abysmal CS GRE: 700 (there's always hope so just apply! still pretty stunned it worked out anyway though), 4.0 undergrad GPA but from a small college (easier to know profs well), and 1 summer of CS research (have been told by an advisor research exp. is the biggest thing). also spent months on the essays though, which tried to sum up everything i knew re: distributed systems and believe "the future" holds.

thanks for your comments, reading professors' academic papers and random grad student blogs isn't really an easy way to decide

[Dan_E]

Oh goodness, I'm a failure of a CS major. I managed to type a huge reply and erase it before submitting. I'll try to remember what I wrote and rewrite it:

I just stumbled upon these forums today and happened upon this thread. I'm a current CS undergrad at UMich, and am in the process of deciding between Michigan and Georgia Tech for CS PhD for the fall. While I have more knowledge of UMich from the undergraduate level, I thought I'd share what I've seen:

The professors here on the whole are pretty approachable. There is of course the occasional professor to avoid, but you'll find that anywhere. I had no problem finding a professor to advise my undergraduate thesis, and I've had a number of professors contact me about graduate level research. While the professors are good, in my experience the department itself can be rather beaurocratic and annoying to deal with. It's the sort of thing you expect to deal with on the university-level, but hope would be less present on the department level.

As for interdisciplinary reserarch, I guess it depends on what disciplines you're talking about. Within CS it's certainly possible. And there's plenty of collaboration between CS, CE, and EE, and they're all housed in the same building (though I assume this will change when the new CSE building opens). And the professor I worked with had a joint appointment in Engineering, School of Information, and School of Education. His research overlapped all these areas. In general, however, I don't see that much collaboration between CS and areas outside of engineering. I haven't seen anything with, say, psychology or public policy which I had, for example, seen at Georgia Tech. In this regard, I'm sure it doesn't help that The College of Engineering and half of The School of Information (along with music and art) are on a campus seperate from the rest of the university.

On a side, note, I really love the city of Ann Arbor. The winters really suck, but the city itself (especially during the spring or summer) is great and has an identity distinct from the university. There's just a ton going on here. I live in the downtown area, and if I end up moving to Atlanta I will definitely miss having the grocery store, bars, clubs, restaurants, shopping, and the university all within walking distance.

Anyhow, I hope this is at least somewhat helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions about Michigan and I can do my best to answer them.

[dinobot]

Thanks for the inside story, lotta good info there Yeah, have heard Ann Arbor is pretty great and lots of bands play in Detroit too. Maybe the winters are better for stayin' put and hitting the books + code.

One big thing I'm wondering is whether you had any really important CS/Math courses that were just brutal. Usually the curves make it alright but I've heard from other kids at larger schools that there are usually one or two (sometimes really important ones like OS, Theory of Computation) that are just exercises in futility.

[Dan_E]

The only really absurd course I've had was an undergradute level theory course. It was a combination of extremely fast pace and very poor teaching. However, I've known other people who have had a different professor for the course and had no problems. Also, this course (EECS 376) is a strictly undergraduate course. You wouldn't have to deal with it.

All the upper-level undergraduate/intro graduate level courses I've had have been fairly reasonable. Operating Systems and Networks were a lot of work, but the grading was fair. AI and NLP were light loads, and Security was also on the light side. I hear the compilers courses are killer, but I never got around to taking it.

While I'm not sure whether it's also true of the higher level graduate courses, it's important to note that these courses will often rotate professors, making it "harder" or "easier" depending on which semester you take it. A lot also depends on the specific course. For example, on one extreme the OS course has a very set curriculum and is taught similarly no matter who's the professor. It has an automatic-grader for the projects so everything is graded very objectively. In the middle ground, the networks course has been around for a while, so it's got a fairly well defined range of topics, but the specifics vary depending on who's teaching. And it is hand-graded. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the security course I took was a pilot course and the topics and grading criteria were still being defined as the course was progressing.

I guess the short version is: certain courses have reputations as being harder than others, and you can find out which are which by asking any current student here. However, if you've managed to get into the PhD program, I don't think you'll have any problem getting through any of the courses if you're willing to put in the time.

[gforce]

@Dan_E:

Thanks for the superb insider information.

[dinobot]

I ended up choosing UCSD anyway b/c of everyone's comments here (thanks again) and because it's cheaper overall for CA residents - just in case some unlucky future semester turns my funding to mud.

Yeah, Dan_E, thanks so much for your comments, great insights. I've met people who hate operating systems issues because of the memory some sadistic course they took. It's sad when learning is too painful, and hard not to let one bad class determine whether you dislike an entire subfield.

Hope your GATech vs. UMich decision is sitting well with you right now too. Congrats!

Cheers