Advice for Returning to School After Long Break? 580
arohann asks: "A few months ago, I quit my secure, well-paying (but boring) job as a software engineer in India and have been applying to graduate schools in the US, Canada and the UK. My aim is to get back to computer engineering studies (my undergrad major) as a grad student. However, after a 5 year break from academics I'm not sure about my decision and could do with some advice from Slashdot users."
"Here are some of the things that I'd like to know:
1) Typically, how do graduate admissions officials view work experience? Note that I haven't been working as a Computer Engineer but as a Software Engineer.
2) What are the differences between graduate studies at the Masters level in the US, Canada and the UK? I already know a bit from what is available on the websites, so I'm looking for some deeper insights.
3) I'd like to hear from people who've done this, i.e. quit their jobs and gone back to get a higher engineering degree. What problems did you face and what advice do you have?
4) People who've studied in the UK at the MSc, MPhil, MEngg level - how did you fund your education? Were you able to get things like teaching or research assistantships and how much of your costs did these cover?"
Mature students generally do well (Score:5, Insightful)
So don't be intimidated. Sure, you'll have some catching up to do, but it won't be that onerous.
Re:Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
For the life of me (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I have to say as a piece of advice, that you are wasting your time going to grad school in CS unless your intent is to be a professor or a heavy researcher. I think the best graduate degree for a CS undergrad is probably an MBA, at least as far as earning potential. If your interests are purely theoretical and money is not something you ultimately desire out of your career, then by all means continue.
Re:Mature students generally do well (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Asking for advice on slashdot... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:5, Insightful)
step 2: get fat off the work of foreign workers paid much less that you
step 3: complain when your boss discovers that the free market apllies to your job too.....
step 4: post on slashdot about it, instead of looking at why it happened.
Re:For the life of me (Score:2, Insightful)
It still is in the west, to a point. People tend to think someone who graduated from Harvard is "better" than a guy who graduated from local community college, even though they both studied the exact same things.
It's definately a measure of social status. If your father was a PhD, for you to be anything less is an insult to the family name.
At least 3 years of my 4 year degree were useless to me in any practical sense, I didn't learn anything new. I was just there to jump through the hoops and get a piece of paper.
I got pretty fed up with the whole University scene, and didn't even consider a masters. It won't do me any good.
Any employer *worth working for* is going to care about what you can do on the job, and not much else.
At least for U.S. schools... (Score:3, Insightful)
don't go back to school simply to get another degree and cram books. enjoy the college life - go to sporting events, cultural events, join student groups... etc. if you are indian, find a way to acclimate without losing your indian roots. be part of the college community. of course, you should always work hard in classes, but don't let it become an obsession. don't become another stereotypical "foreign graduate student." that's a waste...
Re:For the life of me (Score:5, Insightful)
For almost any Indian parent, a steady professional job (medicine, business, law, engineering, etc.) is far more attractive than a riskier yet potentially more lucrative job (artist, musician, comedian, etc.)
For most Indians, we are told from a young age to study hard in order not to fail in life. Chinese parents, from my own experience, are quite similar too, in many respects.
work experience sort of matters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The answer is ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:4, Insightful)
From my own experience (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Typically, how do graduate admissions officials view work experience? Note that I haven't been working as a Computer Engineer but as a Software Engineer.
They tend to view it quite favorably. Some programs insist upon it, though I doubt that would be the case for Comp Sci. Work experience is a big plus to admission committees in my experience.
2) What are the differences between graduate studies at the Masters level in the US, Canada and the UK? I already know a bit from what is available on the websites, so I'm looking for some deeper insights.
Can't answer this one.
3) I'd like to hear from people who've done this, i.e. quit their jobs and gone back to get a higher engineering degree. What problems did you face and what advice do you have?
The biggest adjustment is getting used to not having a paycheck anymore. It's hard to adjust your standard of living. Otherwise, I found school to be much more enjoyable once I was older. I was a better student, cared more about the material, knew what questions to ask, and could more easily work with the professors.
4) People who've studied in the UK at the MSc, MPhil, MEngg level - how did you fund your education? Were you able to get things like teaching or research assistantships and how much of your costs did these cover?"
I just took out student loans to cover the whole thing. Interest rates are so low right now it's almost free money. I have some student loans as low as 1.5% interest, and in the US the interest is tax deductible up to a certain amount. My only regret is that I didn't take more money out because the cost of capital is so low. (If you don't know what cost of capital means, learn! It's one of the most valuable things to know about) If you get some sort of working stipend or grant, that is great and you should take it but I'd still recommend getting student loans. Throw the extra into an investment/savings account and whatever's left over is cheap money you can build savings upon. (Yes I realize this is borderline with regard to the terms of the loan but no one will check unless you default)
I guess I'm confused... (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you sure you are in the right field?
Re:Mature students generally do well (Score:4, Insightful)
Right on. Every graduate admissions guru I've talked to from computer science to humanities to law says they prefer somebody with field experience as opposed to (exposing my personal bias here) a snot-nosed 22 year-old who thinks they're God's gift to the university. Arrogant people are very hard to teach.
I assume you were going for funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
and not "insightful" (as it is currently modded), but I, too, left a well paying job to go back to grad school. In my case, the job wasn't even boring, and my employer was great (gave me a laptop computer as a going away present), but I wanted to expand my horizons.
There are far more important things in life then money, and the sooner one figures that out, the closer one will come to having a fulfulling life. Of course, this goes back to the maturity equation someone else has already alluded to.
As to some of the original questions - most US schools will look kindly on relevant work experience (even - or perhaps especially - if that work experience is only tangentially relevant). Diversity is still the watchword here, and that includes diversity of experience. Since most grad students (at my school - UVA) have little to no work experience and are in their early to mid 20's upon entering grad school, the older, more experienced applicant has the benefit of bringing diversity. Additionally, as others have pointed out you likely have additional maturity (e.g., well-defined work ethic) that will give you more of an advantage in the course work than the disadvantage of being away from it awhile.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
I was pointing out an obvious perspective. No mocking was done. In no part of my Guide to Success post did I say anything about the asker being a bad person, simply that there are many biased people here who would hesitate to help him out.
Obviously, due to this comment, and my other comments, due to several moderator's lack of perspective on the English language, today will not be a good day for my karma.
I did the same thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
My Grad School Resurrection (Score:3, Insightful)
I returned to grad school in music technology after 2 years off. For what it's worth, having been in a "real" work environment (at least in my line of work, at a university) really helped me understand how the whole "school beaurocracy" works.
I think going back to school after working gives you an upper hand on your classmates, especially if you're like me and have a teaching assistantship -- "real world" work gives you a lot of experience managing time and planning on how to get things done. It's very easy in grad school to wait until the last minute just like you did in undergrad, but I've found that since I worked before coming here I'm getting things done early and the quality is higher.
My only advice would be, if you go back to school, treat it like it's a job. Be serious, do your work well, and take time to relax too. If you're doing something you love, it's totally worth it.
Re:Mature students generally do well (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I kept my full time software engineering job while I went to school. It makes it so I have less time at home, but I'm still able to maintain a "full time" (12 credit hours) schedule at school and maintain a good GPA (3.75 so far).
I think you're dead on about mature students. My first time in college, I went in with a full scholarship, and lost it after the first semester because of poor grades. I ended up with a 2.1 GPA and dropped out after 3 semesters suffering from pretty severe depression. I think a lot of this is due to immaturity, and the fact that I just wasn't ready. After 13 years of school in a highly structured environment, I think the sudden shift to the freedoms and unstructured environment of college were just too much for me. I had a lot of trouble motivating myself, I partied too much, and I got poor grades as a result. The whole thing was a downward spiral.
Anyway, I took 7 years, got into the workforce, rode the dot-com bubble up and back down again, and decided to give it another go. It is MUCH easier this time around. The workload is much easier to handle now that I've been in the workforce so long, and I have experience juggling things on tight timelines. Trust me, with my work experience to this point, deadlines in college are a cakewalk in comparison. The only thing I found difficult is I would forget really basic stuff in math classes, but after taking 10 seconds to look it up, the rust was shaken from my memory, and it all came back to me.
Going back to school is a great decision, and I encourage anyone, especially those who have not yet gotten a 4-year degree, to do it. As competition in fields like programming becomes more intense, 4-year degrees are quickly becoming the baseline qualification that you must have to be considered for any job.
Re:My Advice (Score:2, Insightful)
No, no, no.
You're a *student*. You will not have a lot of money. You want to be able to get as drunk as possible for as cheap as possible, so don't destroy your intolerance for alcohol; it's your route to getting very drunk, very cheaply.
If you're skinny enough, and lightweight enough, and willing to drink in unfashionable student unions, you can get totally out of your head for under five quid (well, in the UK anyway).
NB; bear in mind that this does not look as cute on 40-something mature students as it does on 18-year old freshers. Plus, you'll probably have figured out that being really, really drunk isn't actually *that* much fun.
Re:In Engineering (Score:3, Insightful)
The companies are really to blame for this situation, not the students. If they seriously want to help BS graduates get experience to either a) go back to grad school to get a MS or PhD, or b) train up a bit and become more skilled and useful they need to have a ready set of entry positions in engineering that they are expected to fill with young graduates with little to no experience. But those positions are largely gone (from what I've seen and been told by many people). Companies don't want to pay to train people any more. They want the higher education system to do that and to hand them a worker who can contribute on their first day of work.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
No offense, but you're clearly speaking of consultants in companies I've never heard of. While it's true that what you describe is what consultants are *supposed* to be, in reality the vast majority of the consultants I know are long-term workers with no specified end date. Many of them have worked in a single consulting position (same desk, same type of work) for 3-4 years.
This is birthed from the myth held by many upper management that cutting "head count" will reduce overall costs. While this may be true in some individual departments here and there, what usually happens is that when the policy is originally initiated, some people lose their jobs, and their former coworkers start busting butt to get all the work done. This manifests itself in the form of exhausted, disgruntled workers who produce lower quality but higher quantity. Eventually, despite having no additional head count, the individual departments decide they need more bodies to get the work done, and so hire consultants to help out with some particularly large project.
Once this large project nears an end, other tasks are offloaded to the consultant, and the consultant finds themselves a standard part of the rest of the team. With only one exception: as a consultant, all the employees tend to look down on you a little bit. They don't necessarily think you're a lesser worker, they just feel you don't have the same entitlements. The consultants don't get invited to the company Christmas party even though they might have worked more hours than anyone else on the team, or having been with the company for more years. They don't get access to company discounts, they are not elligible for company training, they may not be permitted to perform certain security actions (such as VPN), and finally, their opinion really isn't given quite as much weight in the decision making processes.
Anyhow, I've digressed. I've spent time both as a consultant and as an employee, and I have a unique insight in that the company for which I'm currently consulting, I am a former laid-off employee of. Now they pay me more (compared to industry standards) than they did when I was an employee. I spent 4 years as an employee, and have now consulted with them for 4 years. It's distinctly interesting how some people who've been with the company for six months to a year look down on me some times, despite the fact that I'm clearly the veteran here. I don't think I behaved that way when I was an employee; I sure hope I didn't.
These guys have no intention of letting it end: they need someone to do the work I'm doing, and they don't have time to do it. Work only promises to get more intense, not less, and they may hire another consultant to help me with the work I have on my plate already. Of my developer buddies, from college, and from 'net acquaintences (a web of friends as it were), I know at least 14 people, myself included (having just now counted in my head, myself included) who are in long term consulting positions with no end in sight. I can think of only 2 that really are in short term consulting positions. Maybe my web of friends is nonrepresentative of current market conditions, but I find it unlikely.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:1, Insightful)
The only other thing you forgot to mention is that there is no "functioning" welfare state: every example is more or less disfunctional, and always tending over time to become more disfunctional.
Every welfare state -- the United States included -- is on its way down as it continues to squander its capital and, consequently, its productive capacity.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do the people who feel a certain wage or healthcare or education are rights but not other things? Why not a right to food and shelter? Why not a right to a $100/hr wage? Why not a right to a car and fuel to burn in it (certainly that's needed in today's civilized, progressive society). Why not a right to a cell phone, plasma tv, computer, free internet? When forcing others to sustain your "rights", where does it stop?
Re:Mature students generally do well (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
Errrrrr... wouldn't you consider the public school system to be a "socialist education?"
Both a total socialist society and a total free-market capitalist society will fail miserably. (And even if the socialist society did "succeed", it wouldn't be worth living in anyways.) For any government to be functional and competitive it needs to contain elements of both. A pure socialist government is unable to aniticpate unexpected changes and needs while a pure free-market society kills off better long-term ideas with more profitable short-term ones. (For example, the Internet might not have survived if it were not developed under the aegis of the government program known as the military). Why do so many people have to insist on either one extreme or the other?
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Generally I hear that called "contracting" rather than "consulting". Contractors do work; consultants talk about the work. E.g., management consultants mainly tell you how to manage things rather than actually coming in and managing your second-shift workers for you.
Of course, the line is blurry in tech-land, as people who can't do the work often say some pretty dumb things when they try to talk about it. And if you can find somebody who can talk about it usefully, it's natural to ask them to do it as well.
The big consulting firms (e.g. Accenture) don't help the confusion in that their big goal seems to be to use the strength of their actual consultants to breach the gate and then fill companies with just-out-of-college contractors that they pass off as consultants so that they can charge absurd rates for them.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, at one point of history, US Agriculture Departament employed more officials than there were farmer households in the country. US cotton producers are one of the most subsidized farmers in the world. So who lives in a socialist economy?
Re:Mature students generally do well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Guide to Success (Score:2, Insightful)
Without getting into the nature of the charges against Ken Lay, I will say that committing fraud is not rational and self-interested. As stated, to commit such an act is to invalidate one's own right to avoid fruadulent dealings. It is not rational to subject oneself to fraudulent dealings. Also, as with all immoral acts, the victims have a right to seek retribution and damages, so violating the rights of others (the only type of action that can be considered "immoral") has negative reprecussions, and is therefore not self-interested (unless you're a masocist).
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
The Constitution certainly doesn't support that logic.
On the other hand, Public Health is certainly a legitimate function of the government. We don't educate our citizens because they have a RIGHT to an education. We educate them because we ALL benefit from living in a society full of educated citizens. Likewise, we would ALL benefit from living in a society full of HEALTHY individuals. It benefits us, because the people that would otherwise be Unhealthy, will be a cost-burden on the health system, they are not productive, taxpaying workers, and with regard to communicable diseases, can even pose a threat to the rest of us.
To me, this is a no-brainer.
Personally, I can't wait until the neoconservatives dismantle Social Security, Public Education, and all the rest. We'll find out how brainless this line of thinking is, when we suddenly wake up one morning, and realize we're living in a third-world shithole, and Americans are illegally crossing the border to get into Mexico.
Not today, maybe not even 5 years from now. But it will happen if this agenda keeps moving forward.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:2, Insightful)
Private education works better...
Of course it does. Home-schooling works better than that, with a highly educated parent teaching several children. Both deny education to a sizeable proportion of society which cannot afford either.
Capitalism is an economic system, no government can be capitalist.
... government is the ultimate manifestation of coersion ...
Government is force, capitalism is its antithesis.
These statements are just nonsensical, and the use of "inherently" and "ultimate" don't make them meaningful. But stated with such certainty they sure sound smart! Just how is capitalism the antithesis of force? Capitalism is beanie babies and Popeil's Pocket Fisherman (?), the success of Britney Spears, reality tv, cell phones with cameras, Wallymart and all the plastic junk a good american can buy. What is it that's so special about capitalism?
I'm just taking a guess here, are you an Ayn Rand fan?
And of course you'd agree the victims of the tsunami in no way deserve charity, they've shown themselves as quite clearly not meriting survival, by their free choice of living in a tidal plain. They'd just be SOL in your perfect world, I guess.
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do you think the consumer gets the money to purchase goods? It comes from having a job. Take away that job, ship it to another country, and the consumer is no longer able to buy goods.
In fact, it INCREASES it. Cheaper labor means cheaper goods.
Cheaper goods doesn't matter when your paycheck goes to 0.
It also means MORE labor, so it means MORE goods, which also means cheaper goods.
But if you don't have a job, cheaper goods doesn't matter- and besides, worldwide and as a species, human labor has been in surplus for the last 10 years.
Unless you're sugesting that opting for cheaper labor ensures that more skilled labor will remain unemployed, which is only possible in a society already on an irreversible economic decline.
Guess what, buckoo- the United States is a society already on an irreversible economic decline- and has been on that road for 40 years, which is the last time we exported more than we imported. Any society that chooses to basically live on credit cards as a nation (by importing more than it exports) is in the exact same position as the guy who took out more in student loans than his career is worth- shit up a creek without a paddle, destined to end up homeless.
Re:For the life of me (Score:2, Insightful)
there is nothing worse than parents making their kids feel guilty for being kids and expecting their parents to look after them!
Re:Guide to Success (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure ? Would you have any savings if you had to use that $1.95/hr to pay for all the things the government provides ? Costs for private security, toll roads, taxis (if you currently use public transport), paying off your primary+high school education loans, etc would add up pretty quickly...