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Is it worth it for me to get a masters in CS?
let me explain a bit about myself before getting to the question.  I graduated recently in May with a Computer Engineering degree and a minor in CS.  Originally I wanted to go into embedded development, but after a few courses in it I decided that it wasn't for me.  At that point it was a little late for me to switch so I went with getting the CS minor instead, and took all the CS related engineering courses that I could.  Naturally there is a lot of overlap between the two disciplines, and if all of my classes mapped over I was only two classes away from double majoring, but due to departmental reasons the CS department wouldn't accept any of my courses.
I've been working for the past four months at my job and performing very well.  My work has a tuition reimbursement program that covers 8k per year of schooling/books.  I've noticed that I have some gaps in knowledge compared to new computer science graduates such as with compilers, databases, and machine learning.
So here's my question: Do you think it would be beneficial for me to enroll in a part-time masters program?  Should I just learn these things on my own?  Now that I have cash coming in I don't want to go full-time.  I'm asking this now because Georgia Tech just opened up registration for their online Masters program and it seems like I'm the perfect candidate for it.  Am I really going to earn that much extra or get a better position than I would with normal work experience that would justify the extra 20 hours of work per week this would give me (2 classes a semester for 3 years)?  With my work reimbursement this program would be free and simply a time investment.  My manager at work recommended doing it now before I have a wife and kids to deal with later.  I would love to continue learning and I guess I could stretch it out longer than 3 years if I needed to, or stop at any time and have no financial loss.

There's no clear-cut answer here. Everything really depends on the personal cost-benefit analysis: will the master's program offer you what you want to learn, or can you do it informally on your own? What will the extra credential do for your career? How much time will it really take, and will you be able to combine school and work and personal life effectively? Those are questions we can't answer.

Also depends heavily on the country. For instance, bachelor-only graduates are still sometimes frowned upon in Germany (it's a downgrade from our old Diplom). That may change, slowly, but today you probably want a masters degree. That said, CS is one of the few sectors in which getting a good job with only a bachelors is actually feasible since they need people.

If you are merely trying to fill in gaps in your education, then a Master's is probably overkill, and almost certainly not worth it for CS. You can fill in your stated gaps "compilers, databases, and machine learning" with equal effort in personal projects and reading. CS is a well documented field on the internet, especially for your three stated gaps. Compiler construction, while daunting, is an achievable task, and databases are very well represented online, being the foundation of most online software. Machine learning is also very popular lately, with lots of new and not so new resources available.
Having said that, if you are like me, and suck at the whole 'autodidact' thing, then a Masters degree might help provide the focus and structure you need to succeed at learning these fields. Your financial incentives certainly make this an appealing option.
From my perspective, completely ignorant of the standards and expectations of American CS masters, an MS.c in CS should be deeply focused on an area, taking you close to the edge of human knowledge. Who knows, you could produce something novel, but in your area, at the end of a Masters you should know where the boundaries lie. For me, this means that course based Master's programs that are broadly scoped aren't as valuable as a deeply focused Masters, be it course or thesis based.

Thanks for the reply.  You are right that there are many online resources available for me to fill my knowledge gaps.  I've looked into courses on Udacity/Coursera/edX a while back and they seemed great.  The only thing is that if I do those then I don't get any recognition that I took them as it would just be in my spare time and not through an accredited program.  In that case, I might as well have done them through a masters program to get more compensation for increased knowledge.
edit: err, this chat window is different (worse) than  stackoverflow's, I'll post another comment in a sec

The other thing I am considering is that Georgia Tech is often ranked in the top 10 for CS.  My undergrad was ranked pretty high, but I'm wondering if that will drastically change my future job prospects.  With the nature of CS I have also wondered if simply building up my Github profile would have a greater return on investment of my time.  At this point I'm leaning towards enrolling for next fall unless I see a compelling reason against investing my time into a masters.  Typing all of this out has been good therapy for me haha.

@trevor-e Glad to hear the therapy helps. It's a difficult situation, as the commenter on your original question said. A lot of it will depend on where you want to go, and what you want to do with your MS.c. IMO, if you want to study a field in depth, go for the masters. If it's really just the gaps, fill in that Github profile.

an MS.c in CS should be deeply focused on an area, taking you close to the edge of human knowledge — Nope. In American CS departments, we call that a PhD.


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Any ideas how I could get people to participate in my live Internet application experiment for my thesis?
I have developed an Internet application that I need people to run across the Internet to collect statistics to see how well the program works.  So far, I have used LinkedIn to reach out to my friends from my university and I started an open group.  I also have a Git page where the program can be downloaded.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Andrew-Stantons-WSU-Masters-Thesis-6518497?home=&gid=6518497&trk=groups_guest_most_popular-h-logo
https://github.com/acstanton515/ThesisLiveExperiment
I don't think the participation is going to be what I would like, so I need a way to find more users willing to run the program.
Any ideas on how to reach others in academia or elsewhere on a broader level?

Well played - you managed to ask a relevant question and plug some shameless self-advertising at the same time. :)

If you are ready to invest a small sum, Amazon Mechanical Turk https://www.mturk.com/mturk/ might be a good place to look.

Wow this looks cool.  I will check it out.

First: If you intend to do research, you have to pay attention to how you pick the participants. If you just take everyone willing to participate, there could be age/gender/etc bias in your results.
Answer to actual question: Standard way to do this is to pay your participants (though not necessarily in cash). Try movie tickets etc.

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is there apprentice training in master of engineering?
Do the M.Eng students in Electrical Engineering have apprenticeship? Do the students get money for their apprentice training? & how much?

There really aren't "apprenticeships" associated with most traditional college degree programs. On the other hand, many engineering programs, including electrical engineering, do have what are usually known as internship or co-op (short for "cooperative learning") programs available. These programs are inherently designed to allow students to work in engineering-related companies during their degree program. The conditions that apply to each program are school-specific and even department-specific, so be sure to check with the individual departments you're interested in.

And, typically co-ops or internships in technical fields are paid some appreciable fraction market rates.

@MatthewG.: That is true in the US; that is not the case in some foreign countries (such as Germany).

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How could publishers, in particular disreputable ones, prove that you “signed” a copyright agreement?
With almost every question from people having dealing with predatory publishers, the question comes up whether they have already signed a copyright agreement. This always makes me ask myself this question:
When it comes to that point, how could a publisher actually prove, that you “signed” a specific copyright transfer agreement? Any copyright transfer agreement I have encountered so far (only reputable publishers) I agreed to by clicking on a button in some submission system. Now there are two cases to distinguish:

The submission system is hosted by a third party. In this case, the publisher has a source other than itself that could confirm that you¹ clicked on agree and what exactly you agreed to. I do not deny that there may be some evidence here.
The system is hosted by the publisher itself. Some reputable publishers do this (at least so it seems to me) and I also would guess that this is what most disreputable publishers do. How can the publisher produce any evidence that you¹ clicked the button and what copyright agreement was shown to you? They can show that the accepted_copyright_agreement-flag in their database is set to true for your submission, but given that it’s their database, they can manipulate it at will and this does not constitute any proof.

I have not come across any other case where such kind of unilateral agreements are made online. For example, if I buy something online, the actual contract of sale is established by me transferring money (or similar) and the other party transferring a product (and I have full return rights for some weeks, at least in my country, legal disputes on whether the buy button was actually clicked are unlikely).
Note that I am not so much asking about whether some evidence would actually convince a court but rather about anything that could be even considered as evidence by any reasonable person or court.

¹ or more precisely: the person who submitted the manuscript

If your question is really "what is the legal status of ...", then it is straight off-topic. Different thing would be asking, "what are the true consequences of you claiming you didn't sign the copyright". That would be fine in my opinion.

@yo': I don’t think that the question after the legal status would be off-topic, but rather unanswerable for lack of specific laws or precedence cases. Anyway, that’s not my question. My question is rather whether there is anything which is conceivable to have some noteworthy legal status in the first place.

First, I would like to clear up a little misconception. A signature is never proof of anything. There is very little difference among a hand written signature, pressing the I agree button, and writing an 'X' on the signature line. They all carry the exact same legal weight provided they were done in a proper fashion. The only time a signature is ever really sufficient proof is when it has been notarized (which is much more than just the notary's signature). So, signing a paper and faxing it over, for instance, doesn't have much more value then pressing your "I agree" button. Without being notarized, signatures in any form are simply evidence.
Third parties, in this case, can effectively act as notaries to a certain extent. There tend to be very strict guidelines when dealing with electronic signatures. Depending on the field and the government involved, how the signatures are stored is often very important. Other than the legal requirements, the person or court would need to ask the question "Why would the third party forge the signature" and "Was the signer who they say they were". Usually these are emailed and involve a unique token, so identity is based on the security of email and the token is stored and hopefully not accessed. Periodic backups (using non-re-writable media) that are stored securely can often be used to ensure data hadn't been added or modified.
It is nearly impossible for a party of the deal to serve as the sole witness to the authenticity of any signature as they generally have reason to lie. Instead, they need to show that you agreed to transfer copyright as evidence that the signature is authentic. If they don't have you agreeing to the publication somewhere, then they are just waving around a piece of paper with an 'X' on it.

What do you mean in practice by "they need to show that you agreed to transfer copyright as evidence that the signature is authentic"?

@FedericoPoloni I apologize if that was confusing. The publisher needs to show that an agreement actually took place in some way external to that signature. For instance, they can show that you submitted a final draft to the journal for publication. They can show that as part of their process, all other articles published saw the same form to transfer copyright.  This is evidence (not necessarily substantive enough) that authenticates the signature.

@WilliamForcier: (1) For instance, they can show that you submitted a final draft to the journal for publication. – How would they do this without encountering exactly the same problem? (2) They can show that as part of their process, all other articles published saw the same form to transfer copyright. – Do you mean by producing people as witnesses who published an article at a similar time?

@Wrzlprmft (1) I was suggesting something along the lines of pulling email correspondences through things like gmail or a university email. Though, email is not necessarily 'secure'. (2) Yeah, something like that. Basically, they are trying to show that their process exists. Obviously you could be the only one they fooled, but it is probably more likely that there would be others. Was this single article really worth jail time to the journal?

The standard in US civil courts is that one side needs to show by a preponderance of the evidence that their side is true. This is actually a pretty low bar, i.e. that there's a greater than 50% chance that their version is true. It's a lot easier to come up with evidence to this level than it is to the "reasonable doubt" standard that US criminal prosecutions need in order to convict some one of a crime.
As such, a copy of the email from your email address, attested to by sworn testimony from the recipient and containing the proper text to be a copyright transfer would probably be sufficient. Similar evidence could be used if you submitted the form through a website. In order to rebut this evidence you'd need convincing evidence that you didn't do it or that it was done fraudulently.
I know that you say that you don't care about what a court would say, but the only time it would come up is in that context. Nothing else matters. If you need to try to stop someone from publishing an article or to retract an already published one, in the end, you're going to be in court. If you're going to try to convince a judge or jury that you didn't really execute the copyright transfer, you're going to have a high hurdle. If the journal presents some evidence of a transfer document, you're going to have to try to convince a judge/jury that it's somehow fraudulent.

1) I did not say that I do not care about what a court would say. I only said that I am more interested in the existence of evidence than in its potential effectiveness in court. 2) As such, a copy of the email from your email address, attested to by sworn testimony from the recipient and containing the proper text to be a copyright transfer would probably be sufficient. – While I agree that an e-mail, whose existence can be confirmed by a third party, is evidence, I fail to see what the recipient’s testimony be good for as the recipient is the publisher.

3) Similar evidence could be used if you submitted the form through a website. – But what should this evidence look like? That’s the central point of my question: How could a publisher not using an external sumbmission system produce any evidence that I clicked a button in this system? 4) If the journal presents some evidence of a transfer document, you're going to have to try to convince a judge/jury that it's somehow fraudulent. – But only if there is some evidence (that remotely deserves to be called such) in the first place. And where such evidence comes from, is exactly my question.

Testimony from a person at the publisher that they received your email of the copyright transfer agreement and a copy of that agreement is sufficient evidence. If they go to court and swear to that, unless you get on the stand and swear that you didn't, they don't have to do anything else. One of you is lying. At that point, they can try to produce further details from their email (or webserver or whatever) logs that show further evidence of receipt. They can also subpoena your computer, your ISP, etc, to produce your records. They can produce the history of your interaction.

Presumably when you fill out the web form saying you'd like to transfer the copyright, that's part of a system that you logged in to. You submitted your article through it, gave them contact information, etc. All of that info is part of a database, presumably, that keeps a coherent record. The designer of the system can testify to its design and produce records related to your interaction with it. At that point, it's up to you to rebut their evidence. Maybe you were in Bora Bora snorkeling on the day the claim you transferred the copyright, and you can prove it. That's evidence the other way.

@BillBarth still, I, as an editor of a shady journal, can sign up in your name with your email, pull the password from the DB (by default I generate four digits codes, so I can also crack it), and sign in. The IP will be off, but they are known to change, and the rest will be consistent.

@Davidmh, yeah, and? So when I call you to the stand when I'm suing you in court for fraudulently publishing my paper, I'll have subpoenaed your records for that IP info and use it to impeach your testimony. I'll also have the opportunity to testify that I was on an airplane or teaching class at the time your records indicate. That won't be good for your case. You guys seem to be beating up a strawman here. Unscrupulous publishers aren't going to sweat the lack of a proper copyright transfer, and they're going to publish your article from a jurisdiction that's hard for you to get to anyway.

@BillBarth: 1) In the usual situation where the author does not dispute having interacted with the journal’s submission system (e.g., they submitted the paper, did not transfer copyright and retracted after shady reviews came in two days later), all your proposed evidence is worthless. 2) I am not necessarily talking about the author suing the publisher but about the possibility of the publisher suing the author (that is often implicitly considered in such questions) – whether that’s a realistic thing to happen or not.

@Wrzlprmft, In your example, the onus will be on the pub to show you transferred, and if their evidence is weak, they will probably lose. Many of the things I listed would be fine evidence (on a plane, in class, wrong IP, etc). I think the most likely situation is that you would have to sue them after being turned down for publication by a second publisher who sees their fraudulent publication as having already published your article. I also think this is pretty unlikely. You didn't pay, and you demanded a retraction. The shady publishers want your money waaay more than your article.

It should be noted that although this dispute may have some civil qualities, if the author is saying that they never signed a copyright agreement and the journal is saying that the author did, then the author is accusing the journal of forgery, a rather serious crime.

@WilliamForcier, good point. That's a 3rd degree felony in my state. I doubt any publisher who would get up to this scheme would be based in a country where you could easily go after them nor would they be likely to come after you.


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Is getting a second masters in a different technical field worthwhile?
If a person has a degree in one technical field and sees and opportunity to obtain another from an even higher ranked university in a field that has great synergy with where they are now, is it worth the time and especially money spent? By worth, I mean would having a second masters be a significant benefit for someone working in industry?
That is the general question. In my case I will have an M.E. in Systems Engineering and about 4 years experience programming in an engineering field. I am looking at a Data Science program at a top university, it would be a year and a half and lead to an M.S. The cost of both is considerable, I am unsure that the benefits outweigh the costs.

So far on this site I have only seen questions about second PhDs and Masters in the same field such as Is it advisable (or even possible) to get a second masters in a similar field from a higher-ranked instution?

Worthwhile for what purpose?  What is your goal?

@JeffE If I was unconstrained by money I would go ahead with the program because I would love to learn the material. However I would be taking a financial risk and am not sure that it would pay off in increased job opportunities. So my goal is to continue adding to my toolbox as a lifelong learner, but also to make money.

Have you considered a Post-Master's Certificate? It would take less time, and require fewer courses.

@Compass I have not, I will look into it but it was more the content of the specific major and less about general furthering of my education.

A Masters degree is fundamentally different than Ph.D.  Whereas a Ph.D. teaches the general skill of scientific investigation (in some context), as Masters degree focuses on acquisition of a particular set of skills and knowledge.  If it is just the skills and knowledge that you want, it is often possible to acquire them elsewhere as well.
The value of enrolling formally for a second Masters degree thus comes from one of several corollary benefits of formal rather than informal study:

You want to make a career shift to an area where a Masters in a particular field is a pre-requisite or of high salary value.
The formal program will allow you to focus more strongly on skill acquisition, either because of the expectations set by classes or because formal enrollment will provide financial benefits (e.g., some employers have degree program benefits).
The program will give you access to resources (e.g., high-end lab equipment, mentoring by professors) that are useful for acquiring the skills and difficult to get access to otherwise.

Whether the cost/benefit tradeoff is worth it in your particular case is something that only you can judge, but these are good metrics to use for analyzing that tradeoff.


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What goes into a proper review of a paper?
I've been asked to review a paper for a publication.  I've always been teaching faculty, not a researcher and I've never done a review before, but the paper is within my area of expertise and I have some time, so I'm inclined to give it a try.  But some basic guidance on the format and content would be helpful.  What do you look for in a helpful, high quality review?

See https://cs.adelaide.edu.au/~yval/pdfs/MattRoughanWriteReview.pdf

Does the journal or conference that asked you to do the review have a set of guidelines for reviewers?

You can look at this: https://aclrollingreview.org/reviewertutorial (field specific but contains general advice)

@JoelReyesNoche  They may have some guidelines but I haven't see them yet.  So far, all I have is their email asking if I'd be willing to be a reviewer for the article. (I am such a noob at this. :)

Given what I've seen of you on this site, I'm sure you'll do a good job. There are several  answers here that will help you

Consider also asking the editor who has invited you to review the manuscript. The journal may have its specific guidelines, and the editor may have forgotten to point you to that, unlikely as that may be. After all, editors set the tones and standards of the review process in their journals. An open question would do harm, I feel.

@JoelReyesNoche  I've since found their guidelines, which are pretty minimal but track with the answers here.  I'm glad I asked here because these answers are more helpful than their guidance.

See here for mathematics: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/131532/19607

These were all really helpful answers and I wish could have returned the favor by "accepting" all of them.

In my field, all reviews that I perceive as "high-quality" follow a certain structure:

Summary of the paper (one paragraph)
High-level remarks that justify your recommendation to accept/reject/revise the paper (e.g., a list of pros and cons; or a discussion of blocking issues that have to be addressed so that the paper can be accepted after a revision)
Detailed remarks, addressing specific sections in the paper
(If any:) Grammar problems and typos spotted

Any half-decent journal will have a copy editor looking for grammar issues; you have better things to do with your (unpaid!) time

@thegreatemu A reviewer probably shouldn't be specifically looking for grammar/spelling/etc. problems, but if they find them, it makes sense to report them. I am not a reviewer, but I do quite a bit of proofreading (not academia, but proofreading is proofreading) and it is amazing how different people will notice different problems.

Also, a large category of typos will be technical/scientific (in the relevant fields), and copyeditors won't have the background necessary to spot them.

@thegreatemu In my field, I wouldn't trust on that. Some publishers have useful copy editors, others have copy editors who actually introduce new mistakes in the copyediting process, or don't have a copyediting process.

+1 Very good list. As a sub-structure to "Detailed remarks", I personally like to split them into "Major Comments", "Minor comments" and "Literature recommendations", if necessary.

@thegreatemu see this question https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/173123/should-i-let-minor-grammar-and-spelling-errors-go-during-peer-review-to-speed-up

This is exactly the structure I follow (in mathematics), imitating the reviews that I long ago found most useful as an author.

Here are some issues to address:

To what extent is the content of the paper original? What is the value added to what already exists?

Is the paper correct? If not, do errors affect the central message of the paper? Do you think these errors can easily be repaired or removed without affecting the value of the paper much? Are there issues with the arguments and reasoning?

Is the paper written well? This concerns the language but also whether everything is explained in such a way that a typical reader of the journal could understand it, and whether the arguments and reasoning are clearly and concisely presented. Is the writing too long-winded, or on the other hand is too much assumed that is not explained? If you think that anything specific requires clarification, mention this in the review.

Is existing literature taken into account properly? Give references to literature that you think is important to acknowledged but is not currently acknowledged in the paper. Is the current state of research properly represented and the content of the paper put into proper context? One thing that I see often is that existing literature is cited but not represented properly, particularly if authors make an argument that their new method is better than an existing method - the existing method is often not quite as bad as portrayed. Reviewers cannot be expected to read a lot of literature they don't already know; however I do look up cited papers that I don't know occasionally, to get a quick impression of whether they are represented appropriately.

Is everything explained in enough detail so that an independent researcher could reproduce it? Are data, software, and other important material made publicly available?

Are visualisations done properly, in a useful and not misleading manner, with clear explanation what they mean? (Same thing can be asked about formal/technical notation.)

Even if original and correct, is what is proposed of practical use, or of real theoretical interest? Is it well motivated; is the material elaborated enough that it can be used as it is, or is there still much work left to get it at this stage? Should some of this left work really have been done by the authors? You may ask for a revision in which certain remaining issues are to be addressed if you think that not enough work has been done to put this into practice (also other kinds of work such as comparisons, see 8) as far as this can be expected of a single journal paper (obviously some projects are so complex that several papers are required to treat all relevant details - in other cases I really think the authors should have done more before submitting for publication).

If the paper involves comparisons, for example between newly proposed and already existing methodology, are these comparisons done in a fair and informative way?

If the paper involves generalisation from a specific situation, do you think this generalisation is justified? Is there an appropriate acknowledgement and discussion of uncertainty and limitations? (I will criticise overblown marketing claims that can be found in many papers.)

By the way, many editors like it if you do not say directly in your comments to authors what your recommendation is (reject/revise/accept), but rather leave this to the Comments to Editor; in many systems you can just click it in somewhere. The editor then has an easier job to justify an overall decision that may deviate from your recommendation.

I like the list a lot and feel like it can nicely broken down into a couple themes: 1-2 (Novelty/accuracy), 3-6 (presentation/clarity), 7-9 (importance/impact). 1-2 are good filters  for removing cases that shouldn't be published, if you get to 3-6 it may be a publishable concept that needs cleaning up, and if you get to 7-9 you probably have a publishable paper, but these factors might decide what journal it is appropriate for.

I have had to find this kind of resource lately for colleagues and found this description Wiley's website quite useful:
https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/step-by-step-guide-to-reviewing-a-manuscript.html
In particular, the section on How to structure your report is quite good.

Some journals have specific formats or forms they want you to use. Check that before you start; otherwise, you may end up doing a lot of work for nothing.
If there's no guidance, you could put something together like this:

Short statement (1-3 sentences) that says, "I read this paper, it (is or is not) an important contribution to (the field) as it (does something/solves some problem/answers some interesting question). I recommend (your recommendation)."

Most authors (and some editors) like it if you tell them what's good about the paper. In some cases, this could be the most difficult part of your review. Write as much as you think you should; no more than ~a paragraph or so.

Assuming there are problems, make a numbered list (numbering them makes it easier for the authors/editors to refer to them later). Each point should be a clear and concise item discussing your issue with whatever they wrote. "Issues" can be technical issues, logic problems, mathematical mistakes, code failures, problems with tables/figures/equations, or with the overall flow of the paper.

Group all of the English language issues into a single point (if you can). If there are many, you can either suggest that they get help or have a general numbered point about language with bullet points below indicating specific issues. Resist the urge to rewrite their paper.

After you've finished laying everything out, write a short (1-2 sentence) recommendation. Your recommendation should follow and be supported by points (3) and (4); i.e., don't accept the paper without reservations if you end up with 20 major issues and don't reject the paper if you found one typographical error.

Finally, close your report with a note to the editor with a statement about your willingness to be a part of the rest of the review process (which will be journal-dependent).

Reviewing papers is a very important job of everyone in the scientific community. Make sure that if you recommend the paper to be part of the literature, you would be happy if your name was on it (note: it won't be - the editor should keep you completely anonymous). You are, in effect, the goalkeeper. Don't let trash get by you.

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Getting a 2nd bachelors or go for a masters?
I majored in information systems and I deeply regret it.. I had an internship where I ended up doing some programming assignments, and I really enjoyed them. But it was also my senior year so I didn't want to switch to CS and spend another 2-3 years..
So I have been trying to take the gre to get into a software engineering program (UC Irvine and San Jose State University). But it's hard studying for it now that I'm out of school. I'm constantly trying to apply for jobs and trying to study for it. I did pretty bad the first time (148 on both quant and verbal and a 4 on the writing).
I've always been bad at these standardized tests. So not sure if I can get better scores the next time (still in the same process of trying to apply for jobs and study).
I've gotten A's in the programming classes that I've taken. It's just hard to get a junior level software engineering job because companies favor CS majors. As for internships, companies only want currently enrolled students.
Any advice? Also consider financial situations etc when giving your input.
I've done a bit of googling and found that UC Irvine offers 2nd bachelors degree in CS or CSE. Anyone know of other schools?
As for masters programs that don't require the gre, I've only found National University here in San Diego. Not sure what those type of schools are like and if they're worth it..
Sorry for writing so much, just having a hard time deciding right now.

Master's for sure. I would rather be a master of something than a jack of many trades. Specialize. Comparative advantage and all that. Or perhaps you would rather be a jack? Then maybe 2 bachelor's is for you, but interdisciplinary doesn't imply jack/2 bachelor's I guess.

I'd go for the masters degree. I went from a bachelors in music, to a masters in CS. The rewards of having a masters degree I feel is greater than a bachelors. And you have the ability to do that with the bachelors completed, so take advantage of it. You may have to take a few core CS courses which will extend your schooling a semester. Check the program you are interested in for deficiencies you will need to make up.
One suggestion. If it is possible for you to get a job at a university with a program you like, they may pay for your classwork to obtain a masters degree. Then you can take your time to complete the degree while working full time.
It will take you longer to complete the degree, maybe 4 years. But you'll be working, gain experience, maybe get your tuition covered, classes could potentially be in a nearby building, and have flexibilty to take a semester off if needed as a result.

As a non-CS major (engineer, not electric or mechanical) it doesn't seem so impossible to get into the CS job market, but that is only given that you pursue your own personal/extracurricular coding projects and demonstrate your experience; after all, they carry out technical interviews anyways.
I also agree with a Masters degree (with or without work support) over spending so much time on just a bachelors. Furthermore, I don't know any details, but if you have a good GPA or have other raising factors, it could make up for a subpar GRE, but you should really have a good quant score considering its level.


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Convert UK Bachelor Degree Grades to German Grade Scale
I have a Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Systems (3rd Class Honors) form a UK University. My Transcript states as follows.
Course Name    Marks    Cats
BUS            40       12

How do I convert these to the German Grading System?
German Grading
Understanding German Grades
I have gone through the above but can't figure out how to calculate the UK (40 Marks and 12 Cats) to the German Grades (scale of 1 to 5) and also how to figure out the ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System).

@DanielE.Shub: It's not a duplicate. I have go through that answer. My Question is more specific and narrower in scope.

The answers to the duplicate question say don't do it. On the surface your question might be different, but the answer is the same.

There is no universal system available for converting grades between national systems. For instance, in Germany, each university and even each faculty within a university may have its own system for "translating" grades from one system to another, and grades obtained between courses are not necessarily directly translatable. For instance, 70% of the points on an exam in one subject might constitute a 1,3 in one subject but (for instance) a 2,3 in another subject.
The only reliable rules are:

A 4,0 (4.0) is the minimum passing grade in any subject in a German university.
In classes where written exams are administered, the scale above 4,0 should be as uniform as possible. (In other words, the difference between the minimum points for a 1,0 or a 1,3 should be the same as between a 2,0 and a 2,3.)

But, as you can see, this still allows for a lot of latitude between different subjects.

how about the "modified Bavarian formula". Best possible grade in your grading system (100) - The final grade achieved in your bachelor's programme (40) / Best possible grade in your grading system (100) - Minimum passing grade in your grading system (40) X 3 +1 -- http://www.tum.de/en/studies/before-your-studies/application-and-acceptance/grade-conversion-formula-for-grades-earned-outside-germany/

The reason I state this is because of the admission requirements. I have to provide a course description of my Bachelor which should have the German Grades Calculated.

It's OK, but it's not all that precise—and it violates the second point listed above.


text:
Can I submit application on the deadline?
If grad schools says the deadline is Jan. 15th, do I have to submit application before Jan. 15th? Or I can still submit on Jan. 15th?

Most commonly the deadline is inclusive, i.e., "January 15" means that the deadline is "at some moment during January 15". What does this mean can vary:

For online applications, it's usually 23:59:59.
For mailed applications, there are two options and exactly one of them is true:

either the poststamp has to be January 15;
or it has to arrive to the institution by January 15.

For applications you deliver in person, usually the opening hours of the office where you have to bring it apply.

In either case, it should be specified in the conditions.
And please remember that timezones can play a role here, and everything is in the timezone of the institution where you apply unless stated otherwise.

/From comments/

If you doubt the precise conditions, just call them or e-mail them and ask for clarification.

It will cost you less than solving any troubles afterwards.

I've seen universities with a 5pm online deadline for another time consideration.

@ChrisC I write "usually" and "it should be specified in the conditions" and "if you doubt ... ask for clarification". I hope this is enough to make sure that what I write is not the definite answer :)


text:
Connotations regarding F grade
How is the grade F viewed in US academic system, is it abhorred or people see that grade as any other grade. If a student gets an A retaking that particular course, the previous F grade he got would be overwritten, even though there will be a mark on the transcript.Is there any sort of negative stigma because of that?

might help to clarify what sort of stigma you mean. A stigma among your student peers? A stigma from Professors, from academic administrators? From the job market (specifically what field)?

Well I would definitely hate to get an F, in fact I loathe it - but in certain circumstances, well personally I in many circumstances did not feel belonging to certain courses due to ideals of teachers - I felt much to give a damn about my grade - I knew I had to redo the course with another teacher anyway, so when applying for graduate school, I knew it would hurt someone somewhere ~ hence I asked about the perspective of others out here.

At my university (in the United States), a failure grade (which is E here) can only be replaced if in a lower division (of undergraduate) class, and only a certain number of times. After that, or for upper division courses, the failure grade and the passing grade are recorded in the transcript.
As for the stigma associated with failure grades, I suppose that there shouldn't be any immediate negative stigma as there are many possible factors associated with the student:

The student took too many courses at once, or the particular course was very challenging.
Any social/health/familial reasons that have the student leave the university.
The student does not study well in general, or take exams well (more present if the course grade is primarily based off of exams).

Of course, there are other reasons for a failure grade, such as academic dishonesty (a grade of XE instead of E) or pure laziness in not completing most/all of the course requirements.

+1 for citing genuine reasons that aren't laziness. Taking too many courses at once happened to me once, I ended up having to drop one but I was so busy working on the other one that it took me a long time to actually find the time to formally drop the course, so my attendence record suffered.

As F stands for failing, of course there's a stigma associated with it. How much depends on the course in which it's received. For example, failing freshman biology matters much less if you're in art than if you're planning on applying for medical school.
Also note that different schools handle repeated courses differently. Some schools count only the last grade, while some count both equally in the final average (a zero plus whatever an "A" grade counts as).

And some schools offer `academic bankruptcy' which allows you to request that your performance up to some point in time be disregarded so that you get a "do over" after a bad start.

At my school, the default is to average all grades for a single course, but students can apply to have the second grade in a course replace the first, if the first is low enough (D or F), for up to four courses. [This creates a perverse incentive for C students to argue that their grades are too high.]  But all this administrative legerdemain is only for the university's official GPA calculation; all grades appear on the transcript.

A very wise supervisor of mine gave me an interesting aspect to ponder here. He also ran a a business, and when hiring, he liked to hire people with F grades on the record. He didn't like to hire people with a W (which at our school stands for "withdraw" - students who don't complete the class). The F, especially when combined with success when retaking the class, to him indicates the stick-to-it-ness that he was looking for in his employees.
So an F may not be all bad.

I love your supervisor's perspective but for the record, I know a lot of people withdraw a class simply because it brings down their overall GPA. I know a lot of recruiters will not even look at a resume unless they meet a certain GPA requirement.


text:
Citing into the future on ArXiv – good or bad idea?
I have coauthored two papers, which are strongly related. The younger paper is thus citing the first and the older paper is annoucing the second along the lines of “a study of aspect X will be published elsewhere“. As ArXiv enables you to update your papers, it would be possible to include a citation to the new paper in the old paper after the aforementioned sentence. This might save a reader of the old paper some time with finding the new paper.
However, this breaks some paradigms that were inherently fulfilled by any pre-internet citation, i.e., that you could not cite future work¹ and that there are no loops in citation graphs (i.e., there can be no papers A₁, …, such that A₁ cites A₂, which cites A₃, which cites …, which cites A₁). Thus I find it conceivable that such a citation into the future may cause some problems, for example some weird software behavior (ignoring for the example’s sake that this would arguably be the software’s fault).
Is there any such issue, which would make the aforementioned citation into the future a problem?

¹ Of course, will be published elswhere existed before, but it could not be accompanied by a regular citation.

related (or maybe duplicate): http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14495/should-my-citation-graph-be-acyclic

The problem arises if the two papers rely on each other for correctness.

Occasionally two related articles are published simultaneously and cite each other, so loops in the citation graph are OK. See for example this article in The Scientist which describes two papers which do so. I was able to verify that they both cite each other through my university's library.

Well, arXiv paper is on the same level as any other preprint. When a paper is on arXiv, it's somehow not quite different from you putting it on your personal website. Whence I don't see any problem here.

The update process is different, though. ArXiv papers have time-stamps...

@paulgarrett IMHO timestamps don't change the fact that you loop-cite your preprints. Do they?

What I meant was that, on a home-page, revisions can add to the loop-cite "confusion". I am entirely in favor of revisions to correct needless typos or other errors, so I am likewise in favor of citations keeping track of versions or upload-dates...

I understand that when you are "updating" your paper, you are creating a new version in the same way a new edition to a book or a republication of the article in another journal or event. If memory serves arxiv takes track of the version numbers. Does it not?
The problem is: a 2nd edition should be cited by its new publication date and location. The same way we do with books. When a republication happens on journals there is usually a note in the header informing the original publication date and location of the article. I do not think this is an internet related phenomena. Version tracking is common in books. Republications are not common in printed journals, but they do happen.
In short: I do not see any problem. You are actually citing the past on a new edition. I think a note in the header in the document explaining that this is always an good idea.

Just to cite an example: http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-0%20and%202-1.Programming_a_computer_for_playing_chess.shannon/2-0%20and%202-1.Programming_a_computer_for_playing_chess.shannon.062303002.pdf


text:
Why require permanent pens and disallow correction tools in exams?
A common rule in exams is to require them being written with permanent (non-erasable) pens, which includes usually ballpoint pens and fountain pens filled with special ink. The rule forbids using fountain pens with erasable ink, ink erasers, pencils, correction tape, or fluid.
What is the point of such a rule?
I’ll give my answer according to my own research and understanding below, but I am interested in anything that adds to it or refutes it.

I don't believe I have actually seen this restriction, at all levels ...

Kind of bizarre to see this question. Is this a question anyone ever asked? Is it not obvious it's to prevent altering the marks after the fact?

@user541686: It is not obvious to some of my students for sure. Since I could not really find a comprehensive resource on this, I thought I might as well create one.

@Allure Anecdotally, this restriction was in place for every single (non-digital) written exam I’ve ever taken in my life, from elementary school all the way up through university.

@JanusBahsJacquet Really? I don't think I ever took an exam where I was required to write with pen. Indeed, for many exams I was required to use a pencil to accommodate ancient automatic scanners that relied on the reflectivity of pencil marks and would report an exam with answers written in pen as blank.

@A.R. Interesting. I’ve never even heard of exam papers being processed by automatic scanners. Ours would just be copied on regular photocopiers and kept in school archives (nowadays they are presumably scanned and stored on servers). I don’t immediately see the benefit, either – how much can you automate about a five-page handwritten essay? The only situation where I can really see it being useful would be for multiple-choice, and those don’t exist on exams here. There is of course a trope that US exams are all multiple-choice … might that reflect your experience?

"A common rule in exams is to require them being written with permanent (non-erasable) pens" - Is it? I'm currently attending classes at a university in the US and all of my professors require my tests be taken with erasable pencils. Is this more common in other countries, perhaps?

@JanusBahsJacquet I'm not sure how seriously the trope you mentioned is considered, but in my last four semesters as a full time student in a US university, I've had zero multiple choice tests.

@Todd For college-level education, I’ve always assumed it’s just a meme. I get the impression that there may be more truth to it in regards to elementary and high school, but I’ve never studied in the US, so I have zero first-hand knowledge.

@JanusBahsJacquet it's been a long time, but in my memory I used pencil in elementary school. Come high school, pens became expected but correction fluid was not banned. I understood it as pencil fades much easier than pens, which makes pencil exams harder to grade. I also remember MCQs where you shade the answer for grading (not necessarily with machines, teachers used paper cutouts to grade this too). The instructions would specifically say to use a 2B or HB pencil.

I see three reasons for this (roughly sorted by relevance):

The forbidden tools increase the opportunities for the student to tamper with the exam when they get to review it and remark marking mistakes.¹
While examiners can make a point by completely ignoring anything using forbidden tools, this would be disproportionately strict and also just creates extra work for the examiners.
However, examiners have good reason to refuse to correct their markings on an exam or part thereof where forbidden tools were used.

Most, if not all of the forbidden tools are more susceptible to accidental damage:
Non-permanent ink dissolves better, correction tape can be rubbed off, some correctable ink is susceptible to light and temperature, etc.
Should any of these things happen and not using forbidden tool could have avoided the loss or distortion of answers, the examiner can more easily (and often justifiably) refuse any claims based on this.
For example, anybody can claim that correction tape with relevant content written on top somehow rubbed off during the correction of the exam.

It is more difficult for the correctors to tamper with the exam and thus it is more difficult for the student to demonstrate that this happened.
(Thanks to Federico Poloni for adding this point.)

So, from the examiner’s point of view, students use the the forbidden tools at their own risk.

¹ Of course, it is never possible to fully exclude that somebody improves their solution by simply adding something, but such things can only be done with suitable mistakes and corrections. For example, a student may fix a mistake by changing “x” to “x²”, but only if the latter happens to be correct and the correction wasn’t adding a “²” in red (or whatever colour is used for correction). On top, the exam review should be surveilled to spot if anybody is writing in their exams.

I agree with your reasons. People put another reason in -- I'm not in favour of it though: You see the student's thought process if you force them to cross rather than correct. For me, the first is #1 reason and when I got a pencil-written exam in, I made a copy and stapled it to the original.

@yo': when I got a pencil-written exam in, I made a copy and stapled it to the original. – If some rule required me to copy every exam using pencil or similar, I would instantiate a rule that I do not even look at any such exam, just to avoid that work.

You are missing a third reason: it makes it harder for the teacher to tamper with the exam.

@FedericoPoloni: Indeed, although hopefully much less relevant than the other two reasons. I added this.

As @yo' said, you see the student's thought process. This can be useful if there is a suspicion of cheating

@toby544: While this may provide some counter-evidence against cheating, I would not rely to much on it. Some students prefer to perform the thought process mostly in their heads and they should certainly not be punished for that.

@FedericoPoloni Why would a teacher tamper an exam? Why would anyone want to study in such a place where this happens? Yes, I know exams might be bought, but seriously, there are ways to do this that are far easier to hide. If you don't trust the teachers in absence of strong evidence to the contrary, you can as well do away with the process of assessments.

"exclude that somebody improves their solution by simply adding something" - we had exams where TAs were encouraged to cross out any space left free during correction (just a swipe across the page), to make it easier to detect such tampering. It was a large class and students were allowed to write during review, on separate sheets for their remarks or personal note-taking.

@CaptainEmacs In normal conditions teachers don't tamper with exams, I agree. Still, it makes sense that a university has rules in place to ensure everyone plays fair.

@CaptainEmacs In my youth admission to the elite secondary school was by examination ("the qualifying exam"). Teachers at some schools were said to improve the papers of their own pupils so as to enhance their own reputations.

@erstwhileeditor Ok, that's a good example. It is a tricky one to prevent. One reason "grading on the curve" is tolerated is because it acts as countermeasure to this. However, it comes with its own set of unfairness.

@CaptainEmacs It's one of the case studies from Freakonomics. Regardless of how often it actually happens, pop science has made people believe it's a real phenomenon.

@fectin Which one is the real phenomenon, improving one's students' results or grading to the curve? Or both?

@CaptainEmacs improving student's results.

I’m not sure I follow your first point. When exactly would the student sitting the exam have the opportunity to tamper with anything? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how the exam you’re describing works, but in all written exams I’ve sat where restrictions like these were in place, the student hands in the paper when the time (usually four or five hours) is up, and then never sees it again until after it has been graded, at which point the school has archived a copy. Tampering with it at this point would be pointless. Your second point was the only reason ever given to us.

@JanusBahsJacquet: never sees it again until after it has been graded, at which point the school has archived a copy – Here, we have a designated event where students get to see their exam again (under surveillance, without pens and similar). Then the original exams get archived. We do not make copies of the exam, because it would not be worth the major effort.

We usually got to take our graded exams home and keep them (the copies were then stored in the school archives – I imagine they’re probably scanned and stored on a server nowadays), but that’s a minor difference that doesn’t really affect the overall process much. I just don’t see, even in your system, when and why the student would/could ever tamper with the paper. At the event you describe, they’d be hard pressed to because of the surveillance – and besides, it’s already been graded at that point, right? So what would be the purpose of tampering with it?

@JanusBahsJacquet: One purpose of the event is that the students get to remonstrate grading mistakes, so there is some incentive to tamper with the exam. While surveillance and the prohibition of pens also serve to prevent tampering, forbidding correction tools in the exam adds another layer of security here. None of these measures is very good on its own, but taken together they are.

The answer by Wrzlprmft focuses on exam integrity reasons for this instruction. I'm more familiar with an academic system in the US that does not treat most exams quite as seriously as is common in Europe, so while I think everything in this answer is accurate I've also heard reasons related to the type of work expected and practical issues with erasing.
If the instructor is expecting a stream-of-consciousness sort of answer and not an edited manuscript, they do not want students to go back over and erase and edit their work because this will cost them time "improving" things that don't matter for the grade at the cost of time not spent on those that do.
Practically, erasers (particularly for pencil) often do not work well and it can take substantial effort to erase and the results may not be legible. A simple strike through and re-write in ink, if necessary, takes less time and is more legible anyways.

I don't find this argument very convincing. Surely, part of education is also that the student learns in which situations to be cautious about cosmetic details of the written text, and in which to avoid wasting time on this! Regarding erasers specifically, they can send vibrations through a whole row of tables, distracting other examinees, so there's that at least...

@leftaroundabout There are a range of views on those sorts of "meta instruction" goals; many educators would say "my job is to teach Physics, therefore my assessments should be strictly on students' knowledge of Physics" and anything else is noise. In that context, the instructor wants students to focus on specifically what they are being assessed on rather than testing whether they know to avoid cosmetic details when not necessary. It can be painful to see a student who knows the material perform poorly on a test for reasons not relevant to the course content.

"does not treat most exams quite as seriously as is common in Europe" [citation needed]

@CaptainEmacs Maybe "formally" would have been a better choice of word. And, yes, it's probably a mistake to ever say "Europe" as if it refers to one place.

@BryanKrause Actually, I thought exams are treated much more formal in the Anglo-Saxon realm, than, say, Germany. Sure, there is invigilation etc. but I found it far less impositional in terms of hard external parameters.

@CaptainEmacs The US does not do anything like the UK with exams; not sure who all you're counting as Anglo-Saxons which I believe best describes a cultural group who haven't existed (that is, are better described culturally using other terms) for 1000 years. In the US in most cases there is no exam board, no protocol, no one responsible except the instructor for the course. Some bureaucracy may be invented to try to make things equal among different course sections when they exist, but that's about it. Grades may or may not even depend heavily on exams, and the final may not be important.

@BryanKrause Ok, I take it back. Then the US is like Germany (at least as it was 20 or so years ago).

@CaptainEmacs: Germany twenty years ago is a muddy reference point. It was in the middle of implementing the Bologna reforms, which in particular affected exams quite a lot.

@Wrzlprmft Fair enough. Just before Bologna. I do not know details about how it looked afterwards, as I had left by then.

In addition to concerns about cheating, I think there are more mundane practical concerns:

Correction fluid can create a mess, including melting/sticking pages together/getting ripped off.

(I think correction tape may suffer from similar problems but to a lesser extent.)
On Cambridge International exams (example), the instructions contain this line: Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid.
Putting correction fluid together with staples, paper clips, and glue strongly suggests the concern is less about cheating and more about the above practical concern.

Pens are often clearer than pencils

Also from the Cambridge International exam instructions: Write in dark blue or black pen.
We know markers use red pens. But the above also specifically prohibits pens of any other colors (e.g. light blue/pink/purple/green), suggesting there is a desire for exam-takers' writing to be clearly legible.
Also, nowadays, exam scripts are sometimes scanned (where again any writing in pencil might be less clear than writing in dark blue/black pens).

Some teachers/schools/academic systems treat any writing in pencil as the student's own rough work for herself that will be ignored and won't be marked

Green pen is sometimes used if there's a 2nd marker - and that accounts for all the common colours when the rules originated.  Now you can get any colour you like, it's still clearer to stick with blues and blacks for work to be marked.  I have seen professional exams being marked on photocopies - blue and black copy well unlike some colours (at least in the past)

I occasionally had to use a different colour than red to mark an exam, because the student wrote their exam in multiple colours of pen, including red. When this happened I would make a note on the front of the script explaining what colour I had marked in and why. So the requirement that students write in blue or black is not just for legibility, it also allows markings made by different authors to be differentiated.

All our exams (a Norwegian university) that's still conducted on paper are done on triplicate carbon copy paper.
This means that erasing isn't possible, so using erasable tools are just asking for trouble if the student try to erase anything (or use correction tools like tape or fluid).
And ballpoint pens work better for getting a proper copy on all three layers than pencils do.

That's an interesting fact - do the students get to take a copy? Or does everything get processed with in the system?

@Joe: 1 copy for the student which they get immediately, 2 copies for the institution, usually intended so both the internal and external examiner can get a copy each. Then, after correcting, 1 copy is stored in the archives (the top form in the triplicate, the one the student actually wrote on)

that's super interesting, I'll be telling my students that immediately.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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How should I announce that I'm leaving?
I've been offered a 3-year Lecturer III appointment at a top 10 university in my field.  It's an opportunity that fell in my lap, not something I sought, but it's obviously not something I can just pluck from a tree anytime I like.  So of course I'm going to take it.  I'm trying to decide how to announce that I'm leaving and what to say about it.
I've been a lecturer at a state university for four years, PT since my FT contract ran out last year and not currently scheduled for any new assignments.  My colleagues like me and I'm leaving on very good terms.  Both my current chairman and my previous chair (who recruited me) insist I should take this.
How would you announce your departure? Or would you leave that up to your chairman?  What do you say to students?

Given that you're writing under your real name, I think you just announced your departure to everyone.

True, but anyone who should find out personally already knows.

@NicoleHamilton Well, in that case - what's the worry? Congratulations, by the way!

Related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38179/how-to-keep-plans-for-a-job-change-quiet

Since your departure is known to and supported by the head of the department, there is no real issue here: you can talk about your departure in any way that seems most reasonable to you.  I don't think there is any canonically best way to do it.
In my (limited) direct experience, faculty who leave but do not retire often do so without an "official" announcement.  The exceptions have occurred when we want to rehire into the position before the new academic year.  Maybe it would be better in some ways if there were an official announcement.  If you feel that way, I would talk to your chair about it and ask if they would like to make an announcement on your behalf.

What do you say to students?

That surely depends entirely on what kind of students you have and the nature of your relationship with them, about which I know nothing and you know everything.  I presume that as a PT lecturer you have not been advising graduate students in any kind of official capacity.  But if you know of specific students for which your departure would cause a definite and substantial disruption -- well, sure, I think you should tell them as soon as you know you're leaving.  That seems to be essentially common sense.
Good luck in your new job.

Correct, I've been working with undergrads only.  But I am teaching two lecture courses this quarter and I wonder what to say to them.  Maybe just the obvious?  So long and thanks for all the fish?

@Nicole: It's really up to you, although I fear you would have to follow up "So long and thanks for all the fish" with some remedial culture lessons.  (Hope I'm wrong.)

My chair says he'll announce it to the faculty and encouraged me to announce it myself to my students.

@Nicole: Okay, sounds good.


text:
Does experience at a startup for a couple of years increase the chances of getting into a good Ph.D programme in a US university?
Background:
I'm a non-US undergrad majoring in Computer Science. I will have published a couple of research papers in a few months before I graduate, have worked on a couple of research-based academic projects, made some significant contributions to a big FOSS project, have done an internship from a small US startup, and a project in a big company (the size of Microsoft, Yahoo) - kind of a university-company mentorship. I intend to pursue my Ph.D from a US university.
3 questions:

If I join a US startup after relocating to US, work there (coding work - PHP, Python, iOS development) for a year or two before taking the GRE test and applying to MS/Ph.D programmes, will it increase my chances? I really want to work at a startup and want to found my own.
What if the work at the startup is based on data analysis and machine learning (along the lines of which I intend to pursue my Ph.D)?
Also, does having already founded a small startup (supposing I've got an investor or two too) help my chances in gaining admission? Considering I will co-found my own startup anyway someday, for sure.

You intend to pursue your PhD in what?

@EpiGrad I'm still figuring that out; but most probably it'll be roughly on the lines of large-scale text classification or large-scale graph analysis (eigenvectors, centrality measures).

The answer to all of these questions and more is going to be: Maybe.
Experience will help, but testimonial in the form of reference letters will be better. If you work at this company and it gets you a dynamite reference letter, testifying to your skill, it may help you. On the flip side, for a PhD, skill may not be sufficient--- for a PhD your research background (what you already have) may be much more important than the work experience.

I would like to add that startup coding experience is unlikely to help unless it is research related.

a dynamite reference letter, testifying to your skill — Specifically, testifying to your skill as a researcher.  Letters testifying to your skill as a programmer are unlikely to be very helpful.

@JeffE - I see. Unfortunately, in my institute (like many middle tier universities in my state), undergraduate research work (good publishable research) is rare - few students do it and the general atmosphere is not really conducive to it. A handful of students like me do independent projects with a little help from faculty mentors.

If I get access to the proper infrastructure (eg. a cluster for running my hadoop jobs, or the funding to use commercial solutions like AWS) while working at a startup, I can probably do some independent research and be able to publish papers. Would that help? Or is it essential to be affiliated with some research lab or academic institute, since everyone is stressing on reference letters?

It's far more important that you show potential as a researcher than have actual formal research experience.  Intellectual maturity, curiosity, creativity, attention to detail, persistence/stubbornness, confidence, clarity, independence, and a history of finishing your projects are all important indicators that your letter-writers can write about.

Echoing what @JeffE said - it's not necessary to have done your own research, though it never hurts, but your letters and the like should emphasize things like problem solving ability, independence, extending things beyond where they were before, etc. and less "@Nilesh sure does write some good Python code."

In answer to your three questions:
1) Working at a startup shouldn't hurt, and may help your application if it supports the part about "wanting to found my own."
2) Sure, the more relevant your work is to your proposed course of study, the better (all other things equal). Just don't get trapped in a lot of "mickey mouse" work in data processing.
3) Most universities pride themselves on training "leaders" in the field, and "tech founder" (to some fundraisers) sounds like "future large alumni donor."


text:
What should be done about conflicting invitations for graduate school interviews?
I have received offers from a few graduate schools to interview in the coming months, but there are only so many February weekends available and two schools already have the same interview weekend. I accepted the first one when the invitation arrived, and now the second has arrived. Both are top choices in my book, so it's hard to drop one.
What can be done about conflicting interview dates for science grad school?

This happened to me when I was interviewing for graduate schools—two different schools offered only one weekend per year, and picked the same weekend. However, a number of students had the same problem, and contacted them. As a result, the departments in question agreed to "share" the weekend, with part of the time spent at one school, and then part at the other.
If the schools are not geographically close, and you have no way to split the weekend in such a manner, then you should contact the schools in question, to let them know that you have a scheduling conflict. In some cases—particularly if the department is large—they may be able to schedule you to visit on another date. To some extent, such a visit might be even more useful than the scheduled group visit, because you get to see what the department is actually like when they're not trying to impress everyone!

I absolutely agree with Aeismail.
Contact one or both of the schools, TELL THEM you have a conflict for the proposed date, and ask if you can reschedule.
They know you're talking to other schools. They know you have a life and/or a job. You aren't the only one who is going to have to make this request. This isn't the only day when they're going to be scheduling interviews.
Note that the same answer will apply when interviewing for Real World jobs. Or indeed for most things. Simply being honest with people and asking if they can work with you to solve a problem is almost always the best approach.


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PhD in Germany after Bachelors
Recently I have received an offer for PhD studentship in Biology from a lab in Germany. I have completed my Bachelors degree and I have solid 2 years of research experience with 3 peer reviewed publications. Now to formally enroll as a PhD student they are asking me for Masters degree which I don't have.
My question is, is it possible to enroll without masters degree into PhD in Germany? I know that in US, UK Masters degree is not a pre-requisite for PhD. How about in Germany? Can't my research experience be accounted as qualification ?

Where did you get your bachelors? How many years was it? Did it include an honours year? In what circumstances did you conduct your research?

@DaveClarke In those german universities that I know, all these things are irrelevant. No masters -> cannot enroll into PhD programme.

@xLeitix: In (non-German) universities I've worked at, we consider whether one degree is equivalent to another. For instance, a British Honours degree can be considered equivalent to a masters.

@DaveClarke That's interesting! I have never heard about an honours degree being considered equivalent to a masters.

I have no masters degree, though I do have a PhD.

Most PhD's I know of ask for a Master's degree or equivalent research experience (What you hope for). There are also some PhD's that include an MPhil within their 'program'. That would require you to take some taught courses within this first year though. You should enquire at the specific University in Germany.

It's up to the faculty to waive its rules for admission. There is no "law" or anything on it in Germany. The prof wanting you has to convince his colleagues. Who might ask you to prove yourself in some exam, do this or that masters lab course, etc.

Germany doesn't have a federal law on universities. This is Ländersache. Which state (Bundesland) is the lab in?

Essentially, you cannot start a PhD program without a master's degree in Germany. Some programs feature a dual-degree option, whereby you're admitted to a master's program as well as a PhD program. US and UK programs do basically the same thing, which is why the master's degree is not a prerequisite—you earn it, or the equivalent, along the way to the PhD after the bachelor's.
However, in German universities, most PhD positions are actually government jobs in what is known as the TV-L system. More precisely, it's what's called a "TV-L E13." Now, one of the requirements of the TV-L E13 is a master's degree in the appropriate subject. There really isn't a way to waive this requirement.
What perhaps can be done is to ask if the group is willing to sponsor you as a "Wissentschaftliche Hilfskraft"—essentially, a part-time worker in the group—while you complete the master's program. (If they're eager enough to hire you with a bachelor's, then they should be willing to support you while you get the necessary training.)

Actually I don't think it's very common for UK PhD programs to include the master's degree in the same way that US PhDs do.

The UK system is midway between the US and German systems. It's definitely easier to do an admission to a combined master's and PhD program in the UK than it is in Germany.

This answer is wrong. It really depends on the University, the doctoral degree regulations of the faculty, etc. For example my faculty (Maths and Computer Science, FU Berlin) offers Bachelors to enter. They have to attend the first year Master lectures and pass an exam, however, they don't have to complete the Master and they also don't receive the degree. In turn they save 1 year.

Actually, you're still supporting my argument. You are not allowed to start the PhD until you've completed the equivalent of the master's phase. Your program lets them skip the thesis phase. This is very much an exception, not the rule. (Hence the "essentially" at the beginning of the answer.)

The master thesis phase is only 1 semester, i.e. you save another semester and most importantly you do not receive a degree as suggested by your post. The fast-track programs really don't make any sense if there isn't any difference compared to finishing a full Master, and thats exactly what the question was about.

Master's programs are not always two years. Some are three semesters, so you don't have extra savings. But even then, the university has to certify to itself that you have the equivalent of the master's degree. That certification won't work anywhere else.

My question is, is it possible to enroll without masters degree into PhD in Germany? I know that in US, UK Masters degree is not a pre-requisite for PhD. How about in Germany?

In Germany, as well as many (most?) other places in central Europe, a Master's degree is a formal requirement for starting a PhD.
The reason for this is mostly historical: in Europe, we did not really have Bachelor's and Master's degrees until 2000 or shortly thereafter. Until then, a "Diploma" (sort of equivalent to master's degree, a bit of a mixture of MSc and MBA) was the first degree you could get from an university. Around 2000, the so-called Bologna process went into action, with the goal of homogenizing the way how higher eduction works across Europe, and the chosen target model was the traditional Bachelor / Master / PhD model of US universities. Of course, adopting this model in the somewhat different realities of european universities meant that what was really implemented in many places was sort of a half-hearted mixture of old and new system. For instance, in my country of origin (Austria), almost every study basically just took the their old "Diplomstudium" (old curriculum, where the equivalent of MSc was the first degree) and more or less randomly awarded a BSc after 3 years. Of course, at this point, the student did not have a completed education in any way - the curriculum was fully designed that students do another 2 years after master studies afterwards (and the majority of students does so). As a result, public opinion, for instance in industry, of people with "only" a bachelor are not very good -- in many ways, those are considered people who stopped their studies prematurely. In a similar vain, universities also require a "completed" undergrad study (which, in Austria, means doing the entire 5-year original master studies) before being allowed to enroll into a PhD programme.
Now, that being said, I find it more than just a bit awkward that your department in Germany did not clarify this in advance. This issue is not an unknown quantity in Germany -- everybody who hires even occasionally from outside of Europe should know about this and handle this issue in advance. I am afraid it will be a difficult problem to solve.

Can't my research experience be accounted as qualification ?

I highly doubt it. This is not just a small administrative hurdle -- in many places (I do not know about Germany, though), the requirement of a Master to get enrolled to a PhD programme is defined by national university law, so it is not a requirement that a university or professor can just waive for you.

Which other countries apart from Germany require a Master for a Ph.D.? My impression is that there are not so many, but I don't know.

Certainly Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. I think France, Spain and Italy as well. For other european countries, ymmw. However, it is certainly not uncommon in Europe.

Hmm after having though about this, I remember at least one person that got a German Ph.D. without a Diploma (no master at that time). I think it's really a faculty decision, and any exemption is possible. And I think this holds for every University. National University Law - do you have links? My professors would not care about such a thing.

I thought a Diploma in Austria used to take 4 years (8 semesters), so it was exactly halfway between what's now a Bachelor and what's now a Master. (Also, my impression is that in many programmes, they just pushed the old Diploma requirements into the Bachelor and added stuff for the Master.)

@sgf Programmes completing with a Magister typically were 4-year programmes, programmes completing with a Diplomingenieur typically were 5-year programmes. Some weird mixtures existed - like my program, which somehow was 4.5 years. At least for my program they definitely did not cram the entire 4.5 years into the bachelor (this would realistically not be feasible).

I know of some cases when it is possible: e.g. when the university offers a so called
fast-track PhD program. In this case you are required to have at least a B.Sc. in a related field. Then within the first year of this fast-track program you basically start working on your M.Sc., but you don't write M.Sc thesis. Instead of that when the first year is over, you keep working on your topic for the next couple of years and make a dissertation out of it.
Check out e.g. this page: http://www.gsn.uni-muenchen.de/studies/ft_program/index.html

There's also http://www.ma.tum.de/TopMath/WebHomeEn

I see people claiming that Masters is an absolute requirement to start PhD in Germany. I am not an expert in the field but my supervisor in my university does not have a Masters, he has registered PhD studies immediately after the Bachelors. He is a German and was a student at the same uni. How he did it I don't know. What I know for sure is that such a case exists.

Are you sure he did his PhD (and not just his Bachelors) at a German university? Or maybe he doesn't have a Masters but an old-fashioned diploma? (Not doubting you, just checking.)

100%, he was student in the group seated opposite to ours so I would check their poster from time to time, and he did not have a Diplom Ing but a BSc, and graduated recently. Just to confirm I checked his online account now. It has 3 years of Bachelors, 1 year of undefined and then 3 years of PhD in Theoretical Computer Science

I believe it is possible. I have no masters but I have Honours (not really known or recognised outside the Commonwealth) and 3 years work experience as a research assistant. I had no trouble enrolling in my PhD in the Netherlands. The actual university guidelines say that candidates must have a Masters unless they have been given a special exemption by the director of the institute. If you've been given an offer then it's likely an exemption will be made, unless the rules are more strict in Germany than in NL.

Yes, the master's is typically a formal requirement for starting a PhD in Germany.
However, many universities reserve the right to deviate from the usual pathway in exceptional circumstances. There are students who have started a bachelor's without earning their Abitur first and students without a bachelor's who were admitted to master's programs because of their industry experience.
Since they have offered you admission in the program, they may consider you an exception. You shouldn't assume that they simply overlooked that you don't have a master's.
The exact rules differ by federal state (Bundesland) and university. So to answer your question, you have to read the university's policies closely and then contact their admission's office as well as your prospective supervisor.
EDIT:
Universities' published policies can be out of date. What really matters is what the people say and write. When I applied for my master's the written policy also said that the bachelor's had to be a four-year program but everyone at the admission office was very clear that they had no such rule, at least not for European bachelors. And indeed, there was no extra paperwork at all.


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How prestigious is a Fulbright scholarship
I am an international Fulbright scholar, the scholarship covers my university tuition expenses to complete my Masters degree in the US.
I heard a lot about how the Fulbright scholarship is one of the most prestigious scholarships there are and I was wondering if the prestige is due to only the financial reasons or are there any other benefits?
Also is the scholarship only prestigious in the US or is it famous on a world wide scale or only in academic realms?

Fishing for compliments, user10071? ;-)  Congrats on the award.

@grauwulf Thank you. But no I am not fishing for any compliments, I just wanted to know the real magnitude of the scholarship.

FWIW, I'm from Europe, an academic, and I found out about Fulbright scholarships only by meeting holders of this scholarship. This doesn't make it less prestigious, but to answer your last question, it isn't particularly famous outside the US, afaik. This is probably also because in much of Europe, the concept of a scholarship to do a PhD isn't very well known (PhDs are usually considered employees and given a contract and salary).

Yes, it is very prestigious, yet in many countries most non-academics will not have heard of it.
Regarding the benefits, I assume you did your research before applying so I don't know what we can tell you that you don't already know.
However, since this could help other people thinking of applying to one of the Fulbright programs, I am providing an (unofficial and incomplete) list of good things about this program. Please contact your local Fulbright office for more detailed and updated information.

Once awarded, you'll attend a workshop/training in your home country, that will help prepare you for applying to US institutions and for studying and living in the US. This can be very important for people traveling to the US for the first time.
If you need help improving your English, they'll likely send you 1 to 6 months ahead of your MS studies, to attend an English program in a US University (not the same university in which you'll get your MS).
They have academic advisers that will help you apply to Universities, will check your recommendation letters and statement of purpose, so that you can maximize your chances of getting into a top program.
You'll forever be part of the "State Alumni" network and will be invited to attend networking opportunities with other State Alumni members in your home country (and I guess other countries if you relocate).
During your first year of studies, you'll be invited to a 3-4 day Fulbright Enrichment Seminar on "topics of global importance" (topic changes yearly). Personal note: for me, this was an amazing experience and probably the best part of the whole program. This video shows what the grantees do on these seminars.
You may get some additional financial help (in addition to tuition), like a stipend for books and/or to buy a computer.

EDIT (Added the following):
On the intangible benefits of the Fulbright Scholarship
Ultimately, the Fulbright program is an International Exchange Program. It is hard to try to explain the intangible benefits you get from participating in such a program, but these quotes from Senator Fulbright can help:

"International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace--eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education."
"The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy--the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. The simple purpose of the exchange program...is to erode the culturally rooted mistrust that sets nations against one another. The exchange program is not a panacea but an avenue of hope...."

Very often, international Master's students in the US end up interacting primarily with other international students in their own program, and sometimes even with mostly other students from the same home country. A student participating in the Fulbright program has numerous opportunities to interact with US citizens and other international students from different programs and from different universities. It is an enriching experience that most likely will contribute to give you a more broad view of the world. This will likely have a positive impact in your career, either directly (for people in law, international relations, government, etc.) or indirectly (like helping you become a better teammate, a better project leader or manager).
If you want some examples on how the grantees experience their time in the US, this book has good reviews (I cannot comment myself, since I have not read it).

Thank you for your answer. Yes I did my research and most of the information I found was through my local Fulbright office, thus I am looking for the unofficial aspects of the scholarship, things that my local Fulbright office would not tell me about, if there is any such aspects.

@user10071 I added more on the intangible benefits of the Fulbright programs.


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Determining the scope of a Master's Thesis
I am a student of comparative politics currently considering what specific topic I want for my Master's Thesis. On the basis of the choice, the university will allocate an appropriate professor - given that they understand the choice of course. However, the boundaries for topics are mainly limited by the field and the length; 80-100 pages. As such, I am unsure how wide or narrow I should aim to be with the thesis.
I have a general idea for the topic, and a fairly good understanding of the field, but the length is an abstract I find hard to deal with. Basically, how much should I limit myself in the scope and use of selected theory and empirical content?
Of course, this varies between universities and fields, but some general guidelines on determining how to go about determining what can reasonably be achieved with a year of writing for a Master's Thesis would be appreciated.

I'm not sure if this applies to all subject domains, but in computer science, most of the Master's Theses that I have seen were quite broad.  They gave an overview of the subject and a more detailed analysis of whatever subtopic the author chose to cover.
Most of them had little empirical content.  From what I can tell, the goal is to analyze a few works related to one's topic and formulate several salient questions that could be addressed in the future.
To reiterate, a master's thesis differs from a PhD dissertation in that the goal is not to provide novel content, but to show that one has a good understanding of the material, is comfortable with analyzing current or previous research, and that one has the ability to come up with new, exciting ideas to build upon said research.
To determine what is reasonable, you should consult with an advisor, I do not think that you can answer this question without already having some sort of topic in mind.  On that note, if possible, I think that providing insights is far more important than reviewing topics that most people in the field are already familiar with.  So, if you have enough content, you could easily cut some of the overview and concentrate more on your ideas, which if good, would look more impressive.
With respect to "selected theory" vs "empirical content," I think that's entirely up to you.  Whatever serves your thesis better is what I would incorporate into it.  This probably seems like a very hand-wavy answer, but it really does depend on exactly what questions/issues that you're attempting to address.  I may be wrong, but I doubt that there's any sort of formula that dictates how much of either you should use.

I think this depends entirely on the course - for my masters dissertation (a 3-month project on a 1-year course, in a science area in the UK) I was expected to have "original content".

For comparative politics, the thesis' content should have a healthy empirical content. (As opposed to, say, political theory.) The thesis is basically the answer to a question. At your level (master's), it helps if it addresses a pointed research question in the field.
If you feel this is strainedly narrowing your general knowledge, then congratulations: that's the goal in my book.


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Should I declare a minor if it is not required?
With my current major (Medical Lab Science) I am not required to declare a minor at my university. However, the program's supervisor informed me that through taking all of the required courses to complete the program, I will only be one credit in chemistry away from being able to declare a chemistry minor.
Is it worth it? Is there any real positive prospect in declaring a minor if it's not necessary, given my major?

Why not? What's the disadvantage? An afternoon of paperwork? One extra class you have to take?
Compare that to the advantages: Let's say you are looking for work, can't find any in your chosen field (medicine), and so begin looking to work in a chem lab. Being a "medical lab science" major doesn't necessarily mean you know how to do a lot of chemistry, it may just mean you know things about handling biohazards like blood carefully. A hiring manager who doesn't know your school or that program doesn't know how much or little chem is required for such a major. You can't prove you know any chem unless they ask for a transcript or you have relevant work experience. But having "Minor in Chemistry" on your résumé would show that. So you could potentially land a low-level chem lab job easier that way.

Very true. I suppose the only disadvantage would be the cost and time/effort. But as you said having the chem minor would be more beneficial despite the disadvantges.

I highly disagree with wugology's sentiment. Have you hired people at low level chem labs or are just assuming this is how having vs. not having the minor would be interpreted. If you are qualified for a chem position it will be easy to make your resume show this regardless of the minor. The fact that it will force you to highlight specific skills, projects and classes will make your resume look even stronger than someone who just put chem minor down without doing a good job describing the skills they attained from said minor. I have hired people before and I ignore minors.

Go for the minor if that one extra class is a class you think you will enjoy taking or are interested in. If there is a different class or academic extra curricular activity (research,  internship, etc.) that you'd rather do, you should do that instead.
Double majors and minors are usually not that meaningful to employers and graduate schools as most people think, unless they are in a very unrelated field. You can always make your resume highlight the classes you took in the field most applicable for their job. Very few companies or graduate schools will care that you have a minor, especially in a field as related to medical science as chemistry. Even if taking this chemistry class prevents you from taking a different chemistry class you'd prefer to take, take the more interesting one, and then highlight the things you learned on resumes and interviews. If you'd take the class required for you minor (after reading the course description) even if this minor wasn't offered, definitely do it. However, I suppose you wouldn't have asked the question if this is true.
Personally, I really regret taking the one extra class I did to complete my minor. It blocked me from taking a really interesting project based class in the same field. People came out of that project class with great experiences an exciting line on their resume like "built ...." or "Developed a new theory of ..."
As for when to declare the minor, I really see no advantage or disadvantage for doing it later vs. now. You might as well declare it now, so you don't forget, I guess. Usually no university privileges (like priority registration) are associated with having a declared minor.


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IEEE TVCG length of review process
We recently submitted an article to IEEE's Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics journal. It is the first time I submit to a journal so I am a bit unfamiliar with the process, being used to conferences.
In their website they mention that the review process usually takes between 6 and 12 months. I am wondering, does this refer to the time taken by all reviewers to take a single iteration on the manuscript or, does this include more review iterations? I.e. does this time take into account also the time needed by the authors to revise their manuscript according to their comments and resubmit it? How much time does one have to do these revisions? Provided that it is not rejected...

Review time is usually time from submission to final acceptance (ready to print).  After you submit most journals will assign your submission to a group of reviewers based on their specialties.  Those reviewers will read your paper and write up any comments, questions, or concerns.  They also typically issue a recommendation as to whether the paper should be 'accepted', 'provisionally accepted', 'changes requested', or 'rejected' (my terms).  All of that is uploaded to a central website, and when everyone has responded those comments are sent back to the authors.  If it wasn't accepted outright, you'll usually have a chance to address comments or concerns by making modifications (clarifying graphs, numbers, etc.) and resubmitting for reevaluation.  This can go on for a number of rounds of back and forth.  If your paper is eventually accepted, you are notified and sent a proof of what it will look like printed.
Now sit back and watch the citations roll in.
IEEE's TVCG process may differ a bit.  I'm familiar with publishing CS papers, but most of my publications are in Bio.