After taking quite a bit of time considering schools and departments, I’ve come up with a list of schools I’ll be applying to. I suppose they’re still subject to change, but here’s what I’ve got (in no particular order):

Georgia Tech

Degree: MS in Human-Computer Interaction

Deadline: February 1, 2007.

Notes: Georgia Tech seems to be one of the more, if not the most progressive schools in the nation when it comes to computer science. Their MS program in HCI has a bunch of interesting courses like Design of Online Communities and Collaborative Computing. In addition to the MS in HCI, the MS in CS also allows students to specialize in a field. The fields include intelligent systems, networking and communications, and HCI.

Virginia Tech

Degree: MS in Computer Science

Deadline: January 15, 2007.

Notes: Virginia Tech is one of the few schools that i found that has an HCI group. Virginia Tech is fairly well ranked in terms of Engineering schools. Another plus is that they seem to offer good funding to their MS thesis students.

UC Irvine

Degree: MS in Interactive and Collaborative Technology

Deadline: January 15, 2007.

Notes: UC Irvine is one of the schools I wrote about earlier with a specialized degree program. In this case, the field is referred to as “Informatics.” They have their own ICT group which is a huge plus in terms of research capability. “Interactive and Collaborative Technology” is exactly what I’d like to do research in, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be accepted into the program. Apparently, their MS students have a chance to get financial assistance through teaching assistantships and whatnot, so I’ll apply for the MS.

Lehigh University

Degree: MS in Computer Science

Deadline: January 15, 2007.

Notes: I had never heard of Lehigh University until I saw the name on multiple top engineering school lists. After doing some research, it seems like Lehigh is a good fit for me, since it includes a Web Understanding, Modeling, and Evaluation Lab. It appears that Lehigh is preparing to branch its Computer Engineering program into an Intelligent Information Systems Engineering and Software Systems Engineering as well, so it might be a good time for me to apply to their program.

UC Berkeley

Degree: MS in Information Sciences

Deadline: January 5, 2007.

Notes: The iSchool at Berkeley is relatively new: the school was created in 1994. The school is also very small. Only 40 of 200 master’s students are accepted each year. I have a feeling that the projects that I’ve done might make me interesting to the school, though.

I’ll try using the iSchool as my “long shot” school and just apply to see if I can make it. The courses all seem very cool, with names like “XML Foundations” and “The Quality of Information.” I would really love to get into this school, as it seems like they’re on the forefront of this field.

So getting a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science was a pretty easy decision for me to make. There’s not a “Computer Engineering” degree at my school, and “Electrical Engineering” is too circuity for my tastes.

I want to do research in stuff like social computing and computational linguistics. While looking for departments with research in these fields, it’s become evident this kind of research doesn’t typically fall in the Computer Science field.

The computational linguistics stuff falls under the linguistics departments for a lot of schools. While I like the idea of researching more linguistics, I don’t know if I want to get a graduate level degree in it. It would make more sense to me to get a MD or PhD in Computer Science.

The social computing field is actually fairly new. It seems like more and more schools are starting “Information Technology” departments that are separate from their Computer Science ones.

One such school is the Rochester Institute of Technology. RIT even has a section of its website dedicated to explaining the differences between Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering and Information Systems by likening it to the development of a video game:

The computer engineer would design the actual game platform, the hardware and low-level software. The software engineer would design the software architecture in which specific games would be developed and facilitate on-time development of reliable components. The computer scientist would develop efficient underlying algorithms for the game engines. The IT professional would focus on specific games from the player’s perspective.

In many ways, I’d see myself as either a software engineer, computer scientist, or IT person. When it’s described like this, none of the degrees seem “bad.” I think, however, that there’s a sort of stigma when talking about “IT” people. Mainly the idea that they’re the “tech support guy” who fixes dumb peoples’ computers.

I found yet another “new” degree at UC Irvine called the “Concentration in Informatics Track in Interactive and Collaborative Technology.” This one really seems to fit the bill in terms of the type of research and learning that I want to do. UC Irvine even has an ICT (Interactive and Collaborative Technologies) group with a bunch of people I’d probably like working with.

Once again, I think the only reservation I’d have is getting into a relatively “new” degree program, and the perceived “illegitimacy” when compared to a PhD in the almighty “Computer Science!” Then again, it might be time for the monolithic Computer Science degree to be broken into smaller, more specialized fields of study…

The last “alternative” graduate program that I’ll mention is at Georgia Tech. They offer an MS in “Human-Computer Interaction” and a PhD in “Human-Centered Computing.” Georgia Tech really seems to be one of the more progressive schools when it comes to computing degrees, and I’d be really happy to go there.

The more I read about these alternative graduate programs, the more I think that a standard graduate degree in Computer Science is becoming less relevant in a quickly changing world.

So what do you think? Is the traditional Computer Science track the way to go? Are these new fangled degrees nothing but semantic sugar? Please let me know in the comments, as I’m not quite decided on this myself.

I guess a good introductory post would be discussing why I’m considering grad school. I suppose that most people go to grad school because they want to make more money, or they want to be elite. Some people want to be professors, so graduate school is an obvious choice for them.

If I wanted to, I could probably just walk away from school after getting my BS in Computer Science and make a comfortable living on that. I do hear a lot of people who did just that, and the consensus is that they wish that they had gone on to grad school. They have tons of payments to make (house, car, etc.) and it’s really impossible for them to pursue further education.

At this point, I’d rather explore all of my possibilities. I’ve actually enjoyed the higher level electives in CS that I took, so more of that would be excellent. Of course, then there’s research and teaching. There are a few things I’d like to research, and teaching is pretty fun too.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to see if grad school will work out for me. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. Not that I’m going into this half-assed or anything. If I don’t end up going to grad school, I’ll most likely be able to find a well paying job. If I do make it in, it’ll be a whole new experience for me. I think it’s a win-win situation either way.