Chances of PhD Funding in CS without Research Exp (Fall 2015)

Graduate School
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<p>Posted this in the ‘What are my chances’ forum. An user guided me to post it here instead…
Hoping for some insights</p>

<p>Hi all</p>

<p>I aspire to do a PhD in Computer Science in Fall 2015 and as of now I am a Software Engineer with a work experience of 3.5 years.</p>

<p>My field of interest is AI in Games I am an indie game developer where I make games at home for learning and hopefully to have a career in the gaming industry one day.Since my work and my interest do not match, I am in a fix as to whether I should even be applying to the universities in the first place.</p>

<p>I don’t have any research experience apart from the games I make for learning the techniques.</p>

<p>Also I wont be able to pursue my study in the states without funding. So my questions are:</p>

<p>1) Should I even think of applying as I dont seem to have the sought after and the typical student profile as regards to research and paper publications</p>

<p>2) As my work and area of interest are unrelated , would this further dampen my chances of even being considered for a mere glance at my application</p>

<p>3) Assuming by a nice miracle I do get selected, what are my chances of getting funded?</p>

<p>Also I plan to take the gre and toefl in the coming months and as part of the university choices to be made for sending the scores on exam day I have made the following list which is not definite at the moment.</p>

<p>These universities I have chosen since they have an AI research with specifics to Game AI and learning Agents</p>

<p>University of California-Santa Cruz
University of Texas-Austin
Wayne state university
university of southern california
University of Rochester
north carolina state university
new mexico state university</p>

<p>I have couple more Universities in mind like Drexel, I may not get into any of these universities but I would just like to know which one of them I can take aim at as I dont want to clean out my account on Universities where I don’t even stand a chance.</p>

<p>I would be happy if i could get any advice and pointers on the universities selected</p>

<p>Hoping for some anwers thank you</p>

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<p>any help would be great </p>

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<p>gentle bounce…</p>

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<p>It depends on the school. At MIT, PhD students can get funding (tuition covered + stipend) from either Research Assistant-ships, or via Teaching Assistant-ships.</p>

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<p>If you are accepted you will likely get funding, however it is possible you won’t–it’s something you have to just take a chance and wait and see. Do you have a Master’s already? Since you don’t have research, you will need to emphasize the things you are learning/developing on your own. Papers aren’t necessary. If you really want a PhD then you should apply. I don’t know that is a necessary credential for the gaming industry, but certainly the industry covers a lot of ground. If you want to pioneer some new area I can see it.</p>

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<p>First of all, I question whether you actually need a PhD. Are you interested in doing research on artificial intelligence in games, or are you interested in developing games with AI in them? If it’s the latter, then you may be better suited to an MS program. While people with PhDs can do applied work, the PhD really prepares you to do research and work either as an academic or a researcher within industry. Do you want to investigate and write papers on AI? Do you want to teach classes in computer science?</p>

<p>If you really do want a PhD in computer science, I do believe it’s one of those fields in which research experience is really necessary (CS is not my field). However, some of your work experience may include research tasks that are valued. Most incoming students haven’t published any papers, I don’t think, so I don’t think you have to worry about that too much. But some kind of work assisting a professor in a lab is desirable, if not required. That will likely be especially true at Rochester, which is a top 10 program in CS, and UT-Austin and USC, which are top 20 programs.</p>

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<p>Following up with what @juillet said, if you want to go beyond a Masters degree, but don’t want to do all the research stuff that is involved in pursuing a PhD, have you considered pursuing an Engineer’s degree?</p>

<p>Some schools, including MIT, Caltech, Columbia, and USC, offer a post-masters Engineer’s degree in computer science.</p>

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<p>@juliet</p>

<p>I want to do research on AI in Games, as I am looking more at being on the academic side of things rather than have a traditional developer career after graduating.</p>

<p>So in my University choices, USC, UTA and Univ of Rochester seem to be among the top 20 programs and I think it would be quite hard to get an admit there.</p>

<p>I have another question :
When selecting Universities how does one gauge the Univ’s standing? I chose those Universities on the basis of their overall ranks and the departments they have that matches my area of interest. I am looking at ranks 50 and above. But you have pointed that they are in the top 20 for CS. Can you suggest on how to gauge them more effectively?</p>

<p>@BrownParent</p>

<p>I don’t have a Masters and certainly cant afford one too!!!.yes what you said is true I may not get accepted at all, I just have to wait and see… Now I am really looking for any insights into my Univ List as whether its too ambitious or safe, as I have chosen them on the basis of their ranks (40 and above)</p>

<p>@nakoruru</p>

<p>I really like to do research work and so I am pursuing a PhD, and also I need the funding too!!! so I have no choice other than a PhD as funding is quite rare for Masters</p>

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<p>I can’t tell if you are just learning stuff on your own or you are actually doing research worthy work. If the latter then you are going to have to explain it and show it because you don’t have a research supervisor to attest to it. I don’t know anything about how to gauge where you will get in without formal research. At least you have the CS undergrad degree.</p>

<p>There is no way anyone could likely tell where you may have a chance. If you truly have no experience in research then you have to try lower ranked programs but no so low it isn’t worth it, and where they are doing related work. I think you need to find some way to talk to someone at a university about what you are doing now and if It has value for your application. Especially one of the uni’s you mention? Are you near any universities? Is there anyone you have identified as doing the kind of work you are interested in tat you might attempt an email with to float a trial balloon?</p>

<p>This is a guidebook that has been around a long time,that is about applying to top programs, so maybe you can glean something helpful from it, newly updated I see
<a href=“http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf”>http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>@BrownParent‌ </p>

<p>I dont live near the Universities as I am a foreign student. Is it a good idea to mail Professors and see whether they would be interested in taking students… as I have read its a common pracitce for PhD candidates to mail professors regarding their profile and interests in research.</p>

<p>Even there I am hesitant as to whether any Professor would be interested in an application without any research experience</p>

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<p>I use the National Research Council’s rankings. They are quite old (the data was collected 9 years ago at this point) but the reputations of programs doesn’t change very much from year to year. Still, I take them with a grain of salt and use them to make large group comparisons (top 10 vs. top 30) rather than absolute comparisons (e.g., #7 vs. #10). You can find them [url=<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124721/“]here[/url”&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124721/"]here[/url</a>]; they are in alphabetical order by default. Some schools are tied, so there may be more than exactly 10 programs in the top 10, so I usually round down a little (e.g. if a school is #8 I might say they’re in the top 15).</p>

<p>The great thing about the NRC is that they give you two different kinds of rankings (R-rank and S-rank; you can read about the difference on the page) and they also give you a range based on the confidence intervals of the regression analysis they use, rather than absolute numbers. So you can see, for example, that the prediction of Stanford’s S-rank is very precise with very little error, while UCR’s rank has a little bit more variability. You also get rankings of research, students, and diversity. So since you are an international student, for example, the diversity rankings may be important to you (although I think these three are also included in the S and R ranks.</p>

<p>The NRC rankings are based on surveys of faculty within the field, by the way.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>In the lab-based sciences, it is common for students to send an e-mail to professors and ask them if they are accepting/taking students for the following fall, to ensure that they will have someone as a mentor/advisor the next year.</p>

<p>But you are correct in saying that few professors would be interested in taking on a grad student without research experience. So you should focus on trying to get some research experience.</p>

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<p>@juliet</p>

<p>The NRC ranking links are very helpful, I am now getting some insight into the University rankings and whether they would seem ambitious to me… About mailing the professors you are correct, I need to get some research or any worthy experience related to my PhD subject before approaching them…</p>