<p>I recently came across Stanford’s icme phd program in scientific computing, and I was wondering, what exactly can you do with a phd in scientific computing? Most programs I’ve seen only offer a masters, but the phd is tempting because of funding. </p>
<p>Would a masters in scientific computing be worth it? What can you do with a masters?</p>
<p>Does anyone know of any other scientific computing programs? The few others I know about that are somewhat similar are nyu, umich, mit’s cdo and princeton’s pacm.</p>
<p>I know that sometimes a master’s isn’t worth it because thats time that could be spent working as opposed to paying $40,000 or more for tuition per year, but would a masters in scientific computing open any doors that wouldn’t already be open to me as a math and computer engineering double major?</p>
<p>I’m already signed up to take a scientific computing course next semester, and I also plan on taking a parallel programming course the next time it is offered now that i have the prereqs out of the way. I’m also considering taking fourier analysis as I enjoyed my signal processing course.</p>
<p>Sometimes, somethings, are very esoteric and just plain weird. </p>
<p>My cousin (now semiretired) who works on super computers, said long ago that he hired community college grads to phd’s . The best was a community college grad. He himself only has a BS, state university.</p>
<p>In most (if not all) fields, the PhD is primarily preparation for conducting cutting-edge <em>research</em> in the discipline. So a PhD in Scientific Computing is designed to prepare one to conduct SC research. Masters programs frequently cover as much, if not more, core subject matter than PhD programs. Consequently, MS programs may provide better preparation for most applied positions across most fields. This is why you will often hear that PhD aspirants should have academic research positions as their primary goal even though in many disciplines only a small fraction of successful candidates will ever get a chance to achieve that goal. However, there are fields in which the bulk of research is conducted outside of academics, where an industry position is not an unreasonable goal, even if one wisely chooses to keep that a secret from adcoms and advisers. SC seems as though it could fall into this category.</p>
<p>An MS is more valuable in a computing field than a PhD because the PhD takes longer time to complete, and you may not be learning useful skills or gaining experience in the right subfields for the future. If you do an MS in SC you will still come out ahead of doing the PhD, even if the PhD is fully funded because you won’t be foregoing another 3-4 years of full salary for a student stipend.</p>
<p>Lots of academic related positions in scientific computing (at government labs, etc.) only require a MS, but want experience. A PhD is ONLY necessary if you want a shot at a faculty position, but as I’ve repeatedly mentioned the odds of landing a position are so bad that it often does not make sense to make that kind of investment.</p>