Should I Apply to CS Graduate School?
In our opinion, the primary reason to go to graduate school is because you want one of the career paths that graduate school opens up. If you think ahead to the future and see yourself as a professor, a PhD is a necessary step along the way. If you see yourself in a position of additional responsibility at a company—a senior developer or manager, with more duties and a higher salary—a master’s degree is a great way to get there in the short term.
Post-Graduate Careers
A master’s degree typically allows you to start further along the management track or senior developer track at a company, in a position of more responsibility. The conventional wisdom is that it is faster to move along that track via the master’s degree (i.e., you advance faster by spending two years getting a master’s degree than you would by spending two years at the company). In addition, a master’s degree qualifies you to work for many research and development organizations (including FFRDC in the US), to be the tech lead at a startup, etc. A research career with a master’s degree typically doesn’t involve writing many research papers, but often involves reading papers, collaborating with academia, writing patent and grant applications, and otherwise using and evaluating cutting-edge technology.
A PhD is typically required to be a professor, to work at a top-tier industrial research lab, or lead a group at a research and development organization. The conventional wisdom is that a key reason to pursue a PhD is to end up in one of the jobs that requires a PhD. For example, almost all tenured faculty positions require a PhD. A tenured faculty member cannot be fired except in very rare circumstances, and that level of stability is attractive to many people. Some common reasons include being able to settle down in a town and build a life there and being able to pursue work topics that you care about (rather than those that support a company’s bottom line). The mixed focus on mentorship, teaching and research is also appealing to many.
A graduate degree is required for, or significantly helps with, many career options:
- Tenure-track faculty member at a research university (called “R1” schools in academia). These jobs feature the job security of tenure (informally, after a certain point you cannot be fired for poor job performance or unpopular opinions), a significant focus on pushing forth the boundaries of human knowledge by leading cutting-edge research, flexible hours, the opportunity to teach and advise students, the opportunity to work with creative colleagues (students and collaborators), independence (no real boss telling you what to do), longer time horizons for projects (often up to five years), and the opportunity for international travel, among other benefits.
- Tenure-track faculty member at a liberal arts college. These jobs broadly feature the same aspects as R1 schools above (e.g., tenure, independence, collaboration, etc.), but the teaching and scholarship obligations are rebalanced: liberal arts college professors spend a bit more time and effort on teaching and mentoring undergraduate students and bit less time on research and scholarship. While faculty at liberal arts colleges often teach more classes, those classes are typically much smaller in size and there are often more opportunities for interdisciplinary projects.
- Teaching-track faculty member at a university (variously called teaching-focused faculty, lecturers, professors of practice, general faculty, lecturers, etc.). These jobs feature a significant opportunity to teach and advise students, often focusing on cutting-edge pedagogy research and its application to larger classrooms. Writing research papers is typically not required, with a focus on applying scholarship to the classroom instead. Many teaching-track positions either offer tenure directly or offer an equivalent of tenure with a different name for historical reasons (e.g., the University of Virginia offers “expectation of continued employment” to their teaching-track faculty).
- Industrial researcher at a large computing company (such as Microsoft Research, Intel Labs, etc.). These jobs feature a significant opportunity to engage in cutting-edge research and push forth the boundaries of human knowledge. Compared to faculty positions, industrial research labs tend to feature more moderate time horizons for projects (often up to three years), and the opportunity to transition your research results to the software products, software tools, and developers associated with your company. This is called technology transfer. Some industrial researchers teach a class at a nearby university every few years, but most interact with students by mentoring summer interns. These jobs can feature opportunities for travel (e.g., Facebook/Meta is normally associated with California, but has a London office and team).
- Industrial researcher at an academic or federal lab. These include government labs (e.g., NASA), Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs, such as Raytheon BBN or MITRE), and labs associated with universities (such as MIT Lincoln Labs, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labs, and the Kestrel Institute near Stanford). These are similar to industrial research positions at a large company lab, but with research results supporting broader governmental or national goals, rather than a specific company product.
- Industrial researcher at a specialized lab. While larger companies and labs are more frequently discussed, many (most?) students completing graduate programs work at smaller, specialized companies that focus on a particular sub-area (usually the area the student also focused on during graduate school). These jobs typically involve research and development or contracts with a shorter time horizon.
While this guide defaults to a US perspective, these positions have international analogs. A tenure-track faculty position at McGill University in Canada or the National University of Singapore or University College London is very similar to one in the US. An institution like the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (in Germany), Max Planck Institutes (in Germany), or the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria in France) is very similar to a federal lab in the US.
Our associated graduate job guide details which jobs are available to students completing a graduate degree and offers advice on how to get them.
Other Common Decision Factors
The decision to pursue a graduate degree involves a number of costs and benefits. We describe many of the common ones here. Some of these may be familiar to some readers, but people come to this decision from different backgrounds.
Time Required. All graduate programs take time. The length of PhD programs can vary, but the average is 5-7 years. This typically involves 2 years at the beginning where you take classes while conducting research to get a master’s degree “along the way”, followed by 3-4 years focused primarily on research. A stand-alone master’s degree takes much less time than the PhD. This is especially true if your school offers a “five year bachelor’s + master’s” program. In such a program, you typically take a graduate course or two at the end of your undergraduate degree, which allows you to complete the master’s degree coursework in 2-3 semesters rather than 3-4. Many students are tired of school and want to get out in the “real world” and make a difference.
Long-Term Money. From a purely monetary perspective, the master’s degree is typically the best return on investment: it doesn’t take as long as the PhD but, compared to an undergraduate degree alone, it increases your starting salary considerably and increases the range of jobs you are qualified for. Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that you actually end up with more money if you pursue the master’s degree vs. the PhD: while the PhD starting salary is higher, the opportunity cost of the additional four years of lower pay means that the “area under the curve” for lifetime earnings for the master’s degree is higher. This is one of the reasons that PhDs are typically pursued for career, rather than purely financial, reasons. Many schools offer statistics about the salary increase associated with a graduate degree.
For example, UMass Amherst students with master’s degrees earn over $12,000 more than those with bachelor’s degrees in computer science. The University of Michigan tabulates salary information and supports queries by major and degree level.
Short-Term Money. In computer science, PhD students are almost always fully funded. The program pays your tuition, health insurance, and stipend. By contrast, if you are in a master’s degree program, you are continuing to pay tuition (and you do not receive a stipend, etc.). This is worth reiterating because it varies from field to field. Some readers of this guide may have friends or colleagues who pursued PhD programs in the liberal arts and had to pay their own way. In computer science, fully-funded PhD programs are the norm and you should expect the program to pay your tuition, health insurance, and stipend if you are accepted. Stipends vary depending on the school’s type (public vs. private), ranking, and location (high-cost of living vs, low cost of living), but are often between $20,000-$40,000 a year (as of 2023, see the CRA Taulbee survey, page 46).
While PhD compensation is not high compared to industrial positions, it is seen by many as much better than continuing to pay tuition (and potentially deal with student loans, etc.). If you are not certain about whether you want a master’s degree or a master’s degree and a PhD, there is some consideration to applying to PhD programs, having them pay you, getting the master’s degree along the way, and then leaving if you don’t like it. This is “free” compared to paying your own way through a master’s degree program. However, this is harder to do than it might seem because PhD and master’s degree programs are looking for very different things when making admissions decisions. This ends up being fairly rare in practice.
Time Gaps Between Schooling. It is very common to complete an undergraduate degree, work in industry for a bit, and then apply to graduate school. Being such a “returning adult student” does not make you a worse applicant or put you at a disadvantage. For example, about half of Wes Weimer’s PhD advisees worked outside of school (in industry, in government, etc.) for at least a year before starting a graduate program. In his personal experience, the median time in the “real world” is 2 years, with a common range of 0 to 6. After six years people often self-select out of applying (e.g., because they are used to “real-world” salaries and/or are focusing on building a life or family relationships) but are still qualified. If you are thinking about graduate school but have been “out” for a while, do not worry.
Company, Government or Military Support. In some cases, an organization may offer to pay for you to pursue a graduate degree. For example, some companies offer a “graduate school assistance program” or “tuition reimbursement” program for eligible employees. This is a standard benefit that you can ask a company HR representative about. Many governments and militaries offer something similar. Informally, the rationale is that it is a net positive for the organization to pay for your training to become an effective leader (rather than having you leave or having to hire someone new at that level).
In practice, these often have less-obvious constraints. For example, they may restrict which universities you can apply to (e.g., a Silicon Valley company may only pay for tuition at Bay Area schools, etc.). In Wes Weimer’s personal experience, the options associated with the US military almost always feature very optimistic time budgets (e.g., requiring that you complete the degree 1-2 years faster than the average student). Despite that, they are definitely worth considering if one of them is applicable to you.
International Considerations. Attending a graduate school in another country offers both challenges and opportunities. If you are considering applying internationally, we recommend augmenting this guide with specific advice for that aspect.