What Might We Look For in a MS Program?

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These are notes on some of the things one might look for in a less-than-PhD graduate program.  Whether or not a PhD will ever be practical for me is still to-be-determined, but in the short run it doesnt feel as though it is with one or two exceptions still being evaluated.  Ask for details.

 

But there are other paths through the jungle and they can achieve some of the goals that we are trying to achieve, including but not limited to: upgrading my technical skills which are wildly out of date in some areas, too many areas, getting a so-called terminal degree which might be an MFA or an MS or an MPhil depending on the subject,work with interesting professors and other students, possibly get some cachet depending on the reputation of the institution and finally, with luck, the MS is structured to prepare people to do research which is value added.

I am awful at evaluating such things over the internet in spite of it being a bold new paradigm.  Economics tells us that information is expensive so I am interested in what my friends who may know more than I in these areas have to suggest.

 

Obviously, in the old days, I would have gone to the MIT Media Lab (aka Archmac) or MIT, Stanford, CMU.  I am not sure I could get into any of these today, things being how they are.  

The following have been mentioned by friends.  Bob Coyne and Larry Stead have pointed out that Columbia has an excellent Masters of some sort in Computational Biology.  Noah Wardrip-Fruin has pointed me to several Masters programs at UCSC.  He he also pointed out that UCSB has a Media Arts & Technology program I knew nothing about.  Magy is starting something up at UCSC and thinks I should be able to easily get into a Masters program.  Jacki Morie has recommended a very interesting PhD program done mostly remotely that is based in Ireland.  Cambridge University has a wonderful sounding MPhil in computer science (dream on, wahrman) and of course, CalArts has a famous animation program which results in a terminal degree.  Michael Kass has pointed out that Cornell has some sort of joing program going with Technion in Israel.

I see value in the program being in a different country.  An educational visa is one way to get around visa restrictions.  The United Kingdom, Montreal in Canada, Italy and Israel are all value added for a variety of reasons.  I have always wanted to attend the London School of Economics, I have no idea why.  The RAND Corp has a PhD program but I have no idea if I am qualified.

The default here is to do none of this but to (a) take some courses online and (b) work on my previously specified projects (and some that are not specified and some that I dont even know about yet) and then fall over dead like everybody else.

All of this of course is for a year from now, for the most part, because of the pandemic.

Thank you.

Graduate School Application Craziness

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UCLA has one set of rules.  Stanford another.  And Cal Arts still another.  I love these people.  No!  Wait!  I dont.  I am one person, will you please get your shit together.  Thank you.

Notes to Reviewers I (Schools)

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These are the schools I plan to apply to so far.

I recognize that there is work associated with each additional school (even if you are just cutting and pasting which is what I would do).  So I have tried to minimize the list and I am also completely cool with the idea that if you consent to do any of these, that you may prefer to do one or two rather than the whole list.  You will let me know, etc. 

Additional notes:  1. The goal is to get a PhD but it really doesnt bother me to get a masters first because I have a lot to catch up on and because I think it lets people get a look at me first (which may help and it may hurt).  2. There is at least one foreign school on the list, I would like others, too.  Maybe Canada?  Maybe Europe?

Computer science: Stanford (because of Pat Hanrahan), Columbia (excellent computational biology), something in Israel (TBD).

CMU?  MIT?  Illinois?  Berkeley? You tell me.  NYU is too close to home.  It would be fine otherwise.

Public Policy: Rand Graduate Institute, something at Georgetown.

The Travel Plans for the Next Year

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I am leaving where I am living and presumably leaving S. California on or about the first of the year. Its a little complicated to explain what is going on, where I am going, why this is all so vague, etc. But none of it is secret, and it isnt really that complicated.

I really do not like ambiguity about where I live. If it were up to me, I would own a modest 2 story, 12 room house in Providence, RI or a classic 6 overlooking the river in Manhattan, put my library and computers there, and then travel the world. The point is, I really like to know where I am living and know that there is a place to go to where I can rest my head. When I dont know that, I am at sea.

For a variety of reasons, I have come into a very modest amount of money and for the first time since I went into computer animation, which obviously was a mistake on my part, have a small but steady income. This is not enough to buy a house and pay a mortgage, but it is enough to pay rent outside of a major metropolitan area, or travel if I do not pay rent.

In an effort to get up to date on technology, and maybe do new work, and maybe get some respect, I am trying to go back to graduate school. If nothing else, it is always fun to be around a university and learn new things, so why not. The applications go in now for a possible start next fall. I do not expect to get into a PhD program so I am also applying to masters programs as a fallback.

This means that between now and next September, I can do whatever I want as long as I am very frugal and modest. If I had a driver's license, another long story which I am trying to fix now that I have modest funds, I would spend more time at the national parks. Since I dont, or probably won't in this time frame, I will probably, if I can figure it out, spend 6 or months in Europe on various tourist visas.

For example, in one scenario I would spend 3 months in Italy, an hour or two outside Rome where I could possibly afford a room, and then 3 months in the United Kingdom an hour or two outside London. But the way short term rentals work, you can not rent them until you are ready to move in (or a week or two in advance). And I am not ready to do that yet.

Some time in this 9 month period, I will know which school or program I got into, if any, and will know which city I am living in for a while.

So it is all up in the air. If you have a cabin in the woods, or a room in the city, or wherever, that you want to rent out, let me know.

I will probably stay in touch via my blog and Facebook in this period.

What Field and Where?

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Since my participation in the field of computer graphics and animation is not up to my requirements, although I suppose that could change at any time, the best plan I can come up with is to go to graduate school and try to learn another trade. Many people assume that when I return to school (if I return to school) I will study computer graphics / animation. But why would I do that if the field is not being minimally economically viable? Yes VR/AR is spending a lot of money.  But how that will work out remains to be seen.

No doubt, visualization will be part of what I do in the future, no matter what direction I take. I seem to have dedicated a big part of my life to it, so why not continue?

So what field and where?

1. Field

If it involves computer science, then it might involve computer security, computational biology, machine learning, autonomy, or image understanding. All these fields are very important and interesting. If it involves being able to teach, then a terminal degree in art, the MFA, is useful. It would also be entertaining to get. In a previous life I studied economics and it is clear to me that the world economists are morons and a half, it might be fun to get an advanced degree in it. All my life I have studied history. Why not a PhD in that? Finally, RAND has a graduate institute.  I could probably get in, and try to work on a variety of RAND projects.  I see this as form of regression to a happier time.  The plan is to apply to as many of these as I can afford and have time for. Since I have no money, the final list will no doubt be shorter than the list here.

2. Work

Well one reason one might not want one of these degrees is the fact that I will not get employment after graduation.  But then I probably will not get employment whatever I study. 

3. Where?

All graduate schools are ageist and deliberately so. The ability to get accepted to an elite school such as MIT, Stanford and so forth is zero. I still may apply because I am stubborn and I hate their behavior and I want them to reject me to my face. The good news is that there are many schools where I can get a good education. Any major research university will do. How about UCSC, or NYU, or Columbia, or UNC? Where else do you suggest?

4. How?

To get into a top school, I need the best recommendations. My grades got me into Harvard the last time I tried, and god only knows how my GREs will go, but the last time I took them I did well. So it comes down to my essay and the recommendations.

As usual, my essay will be brilliant for those who have a brain and hopeless for those who are conventional and are terrified of someone who thinks differently.  But I have no plan to sanitize it for the small brained as it would do no one any good.

I am told that the only recommendations that are considered by admissions committees are recommendations by colleagues and peers: in other words, if you are applying for a CS school, you need recommendations by a tenured professor in CS. Anything else will be ignored. Unfortunately, while I know quite a few professors of CS, only one has agreed to write a letter of recommendation.

5. Other strategies

The MS programs are easier to get into, I might volunteer to go do a MS before the PhD to reduce risk. The average PhD candidate will be offered a fellowship. I will offer to do all this on government loans, that may make it easier to admit me. By admitting me they immediately get a graduate who has won an academy award. I am probably responsible for 1/2 billion in revenue based on my work. I will emphasize that I probably would have had at least 5 patents if I had had the money to file.

6. What happens after?

By the time I graduate, I hope to have at least one if not two books published (The details of that for another time.  The first book is well underway).  I will have social security, maybe a tiny income if I keep writing books.  If I get a job, I can repay my govt loans.  If I do not work, then they can come take it out of me.

Is Applying to Graduate School Self-Destructive?

At this point I am well into the process of applying for graduate school, although I am also in the awkward, anxiety driven stage where literally none of the important milestones have been achieved.

And so the the topic “applying to graduate school when outside the normal demographic” or some other title to-be-determined will become a formal topic of this blog.

As is often the case in this blog, the reasons for having such a topic, which could potential expose me to public derision or embarrassing failure, include the usual ones of (a) working through my own issues during this process and (b) as a lesson to the others who might have similar aspirations.

It is probable that the topics of this blog will change as this and other activities become more active.

It is probable that I will become unavailable to write for the blog as I slam into deadlines, although sometimes the reverse is true in that the blog becomes a meritorious way of procrastinating.

It is probable that I will create posts that accurately explain what I have learned and what I feel about them in the context of expectations about life and society, and that these posts will then mysteriously disappear as I reconsider whether they can be part of a public image.

This latter is pretty sad because these posts are usually among the most interesting, and I already have pretty high standards of self-deprecation, so these extreme posts can be entertaining. But thats too bad, as it is this blog could use more editorial to keep it on track and avoid random diversions and self indulgence.

The first topic, probably, coming soon is why in the world I would do something as silly as applying to graduate school.

More later.

Relationship Between Grad School Acceptance and 6th Grade Clique Selection

[2.12.2013 complete rewrite]

As many of you know, I am applying to Graduate School in a futile effort to be accepted as an adult by society and in order to set the stage for a second act to my so-called career.   I have found the process to be very confusing, arbitrary and limiting thus far.

The impression I get is one of rigid rules and preconditions designed to winnow the applicants down to a small set of people who will act and obey as a ruling elite demand. And who have done nothing whatsoever but exactly those things they are looking for in the most conventional and unimaginative way.  "Those who are like us may apply but those who are not like us should not even attempt it.", they seem to be saying. (1)

It is not a new insight that situations in elementary and jr. high school prepare us for life as an adult by putting us through apparently incomprehensible and damaging social circumstances.   "Life is high school with money" goes the joke.  One example of such a situation is the "prom" nightmare many of us have had to go through.   Another is the weirdness of those who are accepted by a clique and those who are not.

Its been a long time since High School, however, and I was never very good at being accepted by cliques.    But I have come across a 6th grader on the Internet, by name of Hayley, who has two very interesting blogs that may enlighten me on this topic.  Her first blog is called "The Thoughts of an Almost Teenage Girl" and the second, "The Popularity Papers of 6th Grade", about her efforts to be accepted by an elite clique in her Elementary School in Minnesota.  (The URLs for both blogs are below).

So the plan is to monitor Hayley's blog and then report back how the process of getting accepted to graduate school is like or unlike the process of being accepted by a clique in 6th Grade.

Think of it as a research paper in Cultural Anthropology.

A spy vs spy comic I got from Hayley's general blog, demonstrating great taste in one so young.

The Thoughts of An Almost Teenage Girl

http://theteenagegirlthoughts.blogspot.com/

The Popularity Papers of 6th Grade

http://sixthgradepopularitypaper.blogspot.com/

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1. In particular, I have been advised not to apply to any top school because there is virtually no chance in hell that I will be accepted.  Thanks a lot, people, I appreciate your words of support!  But seriously, these people who give such advice are trying to help: by being realistic about the odds, one is more likely to be accepted to a school with good people that does not get the same deluge of applications that the so-called top schools get.

Which school is a top school is different in each field, but it should not surprise you to hear that, depending on the field, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Oxbridge are on the list.  The point of the advice is that there are many other excellent schools in any field you care to name that are not one of the short list mentioned above.  And that is true.  The counterargument, however, is that America has always been elitist and it may only be those who attended the elite schools who will be offered a chance to participate later.