Interesting Master's degree programs?

Question

I'm applying for a masters in fall of next year and was wondering if anyone had suggestions for interesting/challenging master's degrees in CS. I think that even though picking the right university is important, it is even more important to pick a master's degree where you'll find talented/creative people to interact and learn from.

background: never taken AI, discrete math, compilers, operating systems, data structures, cryptography or anything involving c/c++ courses

looking for: hci research & applications, the future of mobile tech & social interaction, something tangible and not abstract, somewhere where I can take a minor in music/art/design

inspiration: randy pausch, johnny lee, blaise aguera, jeff han, 42entertainment, and jonathan harris (ted.com)

Answer 1

Go for a software engineering course, you can always learn the speficic details while you are working,but the understanding of what is the overall architecture and what goes where and what are the general practises will give you a very good idea of where to go.

Answer 2

background: never taken AI, discrete math, compilers, operating systems, data structures, cryptography or anything involving c/c++ courses

Hmmm ... It would have been OK had you not taken cryptogrophy or AI, but if you dont have an idea of Data Structures, Operating Systems, Compilers etc., I am not sure you have lot of options for good shot at 'hardcore' CS stuff at Master's level.

Answer 3

I would suggest taking a linear algebra course at a community college or at least self-teaching yourself, as regardless of what you go into, you will need this material. This is a generalization, but it seems to be true!

That being said, here are my thoughts:

1. Social interaction - The data mining field is heavily into social interaction at the moment, at least at my school. A common thing is to look at datasets from Twitter or Facebook and see what you can do with this. This field relies heavily on linear algebra and graph theory, but the results are a nice mix between theoretical and practical. Forming communities and synergies between people, as well as discovering interesting information from or about specific people is very doable and seems like it would interest you.

2. HCI - This is a huge field. What kind of HCI are you looking for? New input methods, like multitouch? Computer vision, where you can use a camera to interact with the computer? Speech recognition and synthesis so you can hold a conversation with your computer? Many of the HCI subfields rely on AI. The most widely used AI book on the market is Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. It is extremely readable and I can recommend it as a beginning text.

I would suggest looking at a university that is close to where you are now to see what kind of material they are teaching in their graduate courses. Often you can find seminars for research groups that have a paper list of literature that the research group covers in their group meetings. Reading some of the papers will give you a better idea of what to expect and what the current trends are in fields.

Good luck!