What are the best colleges for computer science?

sakky
Tue, 19 Jul 2005 20:33:37 +0000

Yes, you can get into CS grad programs with a BS in math, but doing so would put you at a disadvantage. Everyone else with a CS degree will jump right into the graduate CS courses and start doing their research, while you’ll have to waste time catching up to them. They’ll only need to take a couple of refresher courses to pass their PhD Qualifying Exams, while you’ll need to quickly get up to speed.



Hey, it obviously didn’t hurt all those Turing Award winners too badly. They were able to finish their CS doctorates just fine despite only having a math background.

While I don’t know how things are run at Stanford, I can say that at MIT, to complete a PhD in EECS (emphasis on CS), you have a choice of which qualifying exams you want to attempt. Obviously a guy who comes from a math background would probably choose to do the qualifying exams that tested math concepts.

In fact, I look at the subject listings for the MIT CS TQE’s (the Technical Qualifying Exams), and I see that many of them are cross-listed with math courses. For example, one of the qualifying exams would be on the Theory of Computation, and it covers the material covered in class 6.840, where the 6 means an EECS class. Well, guess what, 6.840 is also known as 18.404, which is a math class. It’s the same class, just with two different designations. And in fact, the professor who teaches that course at MIT is not a CS prof, he’s a math prof, and the website of the class is run off a server in the MIT math department.

The same thing can be said for a number of the other qualifying subject areas. They’re basically math classes. Distributed Algorithms, Randomized Algorithms, Cryptanalysis - come on, those are math classes. In fact, I would argue that a math guy at either Harvard or MIT or anywhere else who had never done CS before in his life, but who knew these math topics, would come close to passing the MIT CS TQE. He probably wouldn’t be able to completing all of it, but I would argue that he’d come pretty close.



Sure, a Harvard BS in Math shows that you have the capability, but you still don’t have the necessary background. Why start out grad school a step behind everyone else if you don’t need to? Also, many CS graduate programs explicitly state that they will not consider applicants who have not taken X, Y, and Z CS courses. If they’re going to be funding you for several years, they want you to be able to jump right in and produce.



Well, now I think you’re just being unfair. I’m not just talking about any old Harvard math student. I’m talking about a Harvard math student who knows he has an interest in going to a graduate CS program, and would therefore be tailing his undergraduate curricula accordingly. Hence, I would surmise that he would in fact be also taking CS coursework on the side, either at Harvard, or cross-reg’ed at MIT. After all, if you know you want to get a PhD in a particular field, it behooves you to be conscientious about taking undergraduate coursework that will prepare you for it. If you’re not doing that, then you’re probably not serious about getting the PhD anyway.

After all, think of it this way. How many doctoral students, in any field, did the absolute bare minimum undergraduate coursework necessary for that field? I would argue probably pretty close to none. Most doctoral students did ** extra ** undergraduate coursework not only to boost their chances of admission, but to get the tools they needed to do their research. For example, a guy who majors in CS for undergrad and wants to go to CS graduate-school to do research in algorithms or complexity theory would be doing extra undergrad math coursework. Hence, I would argue that a Harvard math guy who was serious about CS grad-school would have gone out and corrected whatever CS deficiencies he has in order to do the kind of CS research he wants, either through coursework, or self-study, or whatever. (If he hadn’t, then he isn’t being serious anyway, so it’s a moot point). Hence the notion of being a step behind everyone seems like a red herring to me.