gradcubes

Have you (hopefully) told them you aren't going to be attending there? Open up your spots (in case we are waitlisted)! :-) Thanks

Has anyone heard one way or the other about CS PhD in April yet? I'm still waiting. If any of you are sitting on an offer (in the case that I'm waitlisted) please decline!!

The ranking themselves don't matter much. What matters is that the schools were given high ratings because they are respected by their peers and have good objective qualities. In other words, a highly respected school may give you more opportunities to publish and probably have a better track record for academic placement. If you're interested in academia at graduation I'd look at the alumni placement as well as faculty lists at various schools to see how the schools place their graduates. Really you have been accepted to 3 very good schools. Best of luck.

Don't quote me on this, but I would guess that a physicist, applied mathematician, statistician, or computer scientist may be more suited to do research regarding financial models as it is primarily a mathematical issue and not a financial one at some point. Part of an MS in FE is learning about the physical movement of money, transactions and such. While these are certainly important, their mechanics would not be entirely relevant to a quant on wall street focused on complex models.

paras: Interesting you should mention FE (that cubes in my user name is in reference to QQQ). One thing to note is that if you were to look at any job board that you would think would take master FE, they typically mention that a PhD in math, physics, or computer science are desired. Check out the job board at hedgefundcenter.com . I haven't looked at it in at least a year or so, but if you're interested in a job in that industry you should check it out and see what they require.

http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?DT=A&IN=University%20of%20Maryland%20-%20College%20Park&PL=Computer%20Science A handful of people have heard back. Sorry I can't help with anything else.

paras: To address mattsajay's point and give some perspective, let me tell you about my situation. I work at a very large (nearly 100k employees and one of the highest R&D budgets in the world) multinational medical diagnostics and pharma company. In my particular company you will rarely find an MBA any where near the top ranks (mainly in middle management). Many of the top managers have PhD's and it is nearly impossible to progress to a director or above position without a PhD. In this particular company's case, a PhD is the track to both the top science positions and the top management positions. This isn't necessarily the case in a lot of consulting, ibanking, p&e firms and such, but if you're interested in computational biology I doubt you care as much about those industries. You should go as far as you can in whatever topic you are most interested in. If thats business, get an MBA, if its science/engineering get a PhD, if its law or medicine, JD or MD.

Most of the PhD CS people I know gross >$100k a year. Anyways, if $ was the only thing I/we were interested in, I'd/we'd all just go be lawyers or doctors, eh?

One thing to take note of is that you will not likely find CompBio jobs on job sites (which indeed aggregates). After and during your PhD you will make many contacts in industry and academia via your research and conferences. This is primarily how these jobs are found as opposed to run of the mill job boards.

Not just the industry, but the job type as well. You mention Microsoft, but you're talking about line coders. Of course they don't care if you have an MS or PhD for those jobs, the ability to write quality code IS all you need. I know two people that work at Microsoft that were hired after summer internships and never even completed their BS. However, to perform research at Microsoft (a job that PhD would be more likely to want) you WILL need a PhD with few exceptions. You can see this page for more information: http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/jobs/fulltime/researcher.aspx You'll find this is the case with most research jobs in industry. Microsoft is but one example.

I'm guessing its simpler than it may seem (but I'll emphasize that I'm guessing). Most PhDs target jobs are in academia which is drastically and notoriously underpaid. The statistic is merely that for the average PhD's salary (whether they are a post-doc, assistant prof, or industry) and the average MS's salary (with very very few exceptions is in industry), the opportunity cost of the PhD was too high. If the MS comes out making $80k, the PhD would have to make up for $240-320k lost income. In academia that would be impossible as the MS's salary will start higher and increase faster. However, if you compared just PhD's who went and stayed in industry I believe you would see a different outcome that favored the PhD.

Of course if you're in a situation like me, every job that sounds interesting to you requires a PhD. While you may not necessarily pay off the opportunity cost, both make enough money and a PhD will likely enjoy their work more!

I think you are significantly simplifying the issue. While location is no doubt important, I think UIUC has a better rep than UCLA everywhere. UCLA isn't that close to the valley and most UIUC grads seem to head the coasts anyways. Also to be more specific about UIUC's achievements, according to wikipedia here are companies and technologies that have come out of UIUC and/or its alumni: Netscape Communications, AMD, PayPal, Playboy, the National Football League, Siebel Systems, Mortal Kombat, YouTube, Oracle, Lotus, Yelp, BET, LED, integrated circuit, transistor, MRI, and Plasma Thats about as prestigious a list as you'll find with probably the sole exception of Stanford.

Are you referring to University of Chicago or University of Illinois - Chicago? I believe we're referring to UIC.

... or if anyone has any thoughts regarding PhD CS at UIC those would be greatly appreciated.