New answers tagged masters
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This question can probably be best answered by the MSDAI's point of contact. You can find their contact information here: https://uwaterloo.ca/graduate-studies-postdoctoral-affairs/future-students/programs/data-science-and-artificial-intelligence-mdsai-co-op
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Should I apply for it or another master in the same subject will be a drawback for admission committees
It's likely getting another (3rd?) master's degree won't help much and may signal indecisiveness in admissions committees. You've already proven you can get a master's degree in a STEM subject. It may raise concerns that you will "Master Out" ...
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There are no regulations preventing you from having as many as you like. But admissions committees will use the fact that you have a related degree and possibly downgrade the application so that the slot can be given to someone else. That isn't guaranteed, of course.
But at a certain point one wonders why you would want to do this. Lifelong perpetual ...
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If I were looking at your CV in the US I would expect a line for each project, like
supervised study of quantum electrodynamics
or
reading project on quantum electrodynamics
I would not expect a list of sources any more than I would expect a list of texts for a course you took.
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I suggest that if you want letters that won't become relevant for a few years, that you tell the writers that so that they might be able to update their recommendations at the appropriate time, without forgetting you. Keeping in touch is also useful for that.
I don't know the procedures at Waterloo, but some universities require direct transmission from the ...
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Based on the tag, I will give a US-specific answer.
Often, but not always, the difference between the masters and the first part of a PhD is that the PhD program comes with funding.
If your intent is to get the PhD eventually anyway, I would not recommend considering an unfunded masters. This is essentially the same as starting a PhD without funding. ...
answered Dec 30 '20 at 6:21
Anonymous Physicist
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No one should spend an entire career doing something they don't like. And if you decide you've made a mistake, I find it's generally best to admit it right then and there and figure out to how to fix it, even if that means starting over on a new plan.
I want you to watch a video of Steve Job's commencement address at Stanford. The part he really gets right ...
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I think you are too focused on what you want to study and not focused enough on what job or career you want to achieve. You talk quite a bit about the intellectual stimulation of various topics and feeling that nothing is “enough”. You get excited about what friends are studying and thing perhaps the grass is greener (it is probably not). In my experience, ...
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In the US, students usually apply for a doctoral program having just a bachelors degree. In Europe it is more common to require a masters, I think.
For a US student changing fields (within reason) is normally not a problem since the bachelors is a generalist degree with only a bit of specialization. So, someone in political science, for example, will also ...
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It comes down to whether you want to learn more things or to pass the course (note they are not synonymous).
If the first, then no, it's not counter-productive. You will learn more by reading the textbook, almost by definition.
If it's the second however, then yes, it's counter-productive. It's the material covered in the course that will actually end up ...
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There's no question it will hurt. You already know that. How much it hurts depends on where you're applying and whether it's to a master's or PhD program.
Top PhD programs could fill every spot with students who only have 4.0 (perfect) averages. The reason they accept students with less than perfect averages is because they also consider your LORs (...
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I agree with most of the answers that this is silly advice, and have not heard it before, but one key point not explicitly mentioned so far is:
Most textbooks are not written to covered in their entirety in one semester.
Some are meant for a 2-semester course and some intentionally have more information so instructors can pick and choose what they want for ...
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You shouldn't base your learning style on what one professor said once in a lecture.
There is a variety of reasons he could have said that:
He is not against textbook as a means of studying per se, but wants to direct his students towards the shorter and more efficient textbooks rather than the long and inefficient ones (most likely)
It's personal: The ...
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As a blanket recommendation, this is fairly obviously silly.
For one thing, "textbook" is very ambiguous. Some are full of make-work crap. Some have lots of useful information. Some are badly written (making it difficult to glean information), some are well-written, making it easy to see the point of the discussion.
There are popular slogans about &...
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I would generally agree that reading textbooks has limited uses and poor returns on investment of time. The only cases where I have found this not to be true is when a) the text book is short and focused or b) the textbook is the basis for exams. But other than that, it is very rarely the case that all the knowledge contained in a long textbook is useful and ...
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That's ridiculous advice. Believe it or not, lots of thick assigned textbooks contain useful information that's not covered in lecture.
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I haven't heard of such a thing, but can understand where it comes from. But my advice would be that doing teaches you much more than reading. In CS we often build things to reinforce learning. Textbooks can provide useful exercises. And one learns, primarily, through repetition (reinforcement) and feedback. Only a few people have a "photographic memory&...
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I myself did not go straight from my MA to my PhD (sort of). In my case, I graduated with an MA at 24 and then was admitted into my PhD program at 32. In addition to that, I had already been through another PhD program (which I had started immediately after my MA) and had dropped out because it wasn't a good fit, and in that sense I felt like I had even more ...
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Something to consider (I wanted to leave a comment but am too new to be able to), the Math GRE subject test is VERY hard. I know people who came from top undergraduate math programs and said it was very hard and did not do well. If you are able to do well on the GRE Math Subject test, I would assume you have enough of a math background to do a CS degree (...
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In my opinion, it depends. I started my PhD around your age and I found some schools/advisors appreciated more mature students b/c they are more professional and focused (b/c they know why they are there as compared to the UG who may have just rolled into grad school b/c they could). However, I know some programs had unwritten rules of if you were more ...
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At least in the United States, discriminating based off your age would be illegal, so hopefully that would not affect your chances. I started my PhD program at 25 without a masters after working for a year in an industry that was only tangentially related to my program.
I would also not expect the 4 year gap in education to make an impact. I've known ...
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The outcome of such things is unpredictable, but you might do well with this. But you can have a conversation first with this professor to see what they think of the idea.
Letters of recommendation are best when they make a positive prediction about your future success. It may be that this professor has already formed such an opinion and would be willing to ...
0
Ben's answer covers just about all the main points. Motivation and rationale are crucial considerations for undertaking a PhD. Your desire to become a teacher in your comments is an important consideration. The other concerns about your math's skills is also an important aspect that Ben raised. I worry that the level of maths skills needs to be quite ...
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This is, typically, very difficult without taking courses in real analysis, numerical analysis, differential equations, and other applied mathematics topics that you won’t get in a traditional economics program.
Your chances would be, frankly, very low without proper preparation from mathematics undergraduate courses. I did an economic major with a math ...
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