Hi guys!
I received my admission in USC for the SPRING in master of computer science, congrats me!
Firstly, in order to catch up with the lectures, what is the average of hours that students should study?
Secondly, I heard about many well known school, where the efforts that professors put is 10% and the students should self-study for about 90% of the materials. What would you guys give a percentage for professors and students?
Thirdly, are most of the courses depends on practice such as coding, or researches?
Lastly, Why would you recommend me to pursue my degree in USC ?
Congrats you indeed… Since you were admitted into MS CS, you hopefully have a good idea of the work it takes to succeed in Computer Science courses. Assuming you went to a rigorous undergraduate or foreign technical school, the workload probably won’t completely take you by surprise. Just stay alert and prepare for the worst, adjust downwards when you feel comfortable. CS is one of those programs that requires various levels of inputs from different people - some have to try really hard to crack a problem, and still be unable to do so, while to others it may come naturally. Again, you should have a good idea of which category you fit in from your undergraduate experiences.
USC CS professors are a little bit better in comparison to the rest of the Viterbi dept., which isn’t to say they’re the best, but pretty decent for a grad school. There are certain names you will hear being name-dropped frequently once you start here, and you’ll know you definitely want to take classes with some of them. I don’t think many people realize that there are some real heavy-hitters in software and computer science research fields that make their home and teach at USC. It’s true that you’ll come across some professors that are focused on their research, and your grade will be guided by the textbook, but this is present at all well known schools as you’ve said.
USC MS CS is an implementation/professionally focused degree, so it will mainly be on the practice of coding and computational mathematics rather than academic research. The PHD program is much more suited to that.
USC has probably the most underrated CS program in the US because of its relatively low undergraduate enrollment and lack of focus on theory. Even its research specialties are focused in software engineering processes, encryption, AI/Machine Learning, and human-computer-interaction/VR - not so much the mathematical & computational theory focuses of other graduate programs in CS. USC matriculates the second most engineers by volume to Silicon Valley, after Berkeley, which is notable given the program isn’t actually that large. A USC BS/MS in Computer Science gets you a job, and if that’s what you’re after, then the tuition you pay is simply a transactional fee to get one. If you’re pursuing a MS as a stepping stone towards PHD, you’re better off looking at more research focused institutions.