Entertainment Business Degree?
Q: Is it worthwhile to pursue a software engineering master's degree? And what
schools should I be looking at? I think it is what I want to do, but I'm not
entirely certain at this stage, I'm still an undergraduate at the junior
level. I know programs such as CMU's require professional experience before
applying, which seems somewhat counterintuitive, but I can see why they
would want it. What are you thoughts on the subject?
A:I'll answer the easy one first. Assuming you decide to do an advanced
degree, the best school will be the one that focuses on the sort of
computing you want to do. To find that out, spend some time in the
library looking a the professional journals for that specialty. Count
the number of authors from the schools. Those schools with the most
authors will usually be focused on that specialty.
Once you have narrowed it down that way, go on the web and seek rankings
of the schools in general, for CS, and for your specialty. Usually
these will be for CS in general rather than a specialty, but some
professional organizations for specialties may have rankings.
Now you should be down to two or three so send away for their catalogues
and look at the course descriptions. The obvious thing to look for is
good coverage of the things you want to do. You also want wide coverage
of things that interest you because you won't specialize *that* much. A
more subtle thing to check for is coverage of software development
process. Beware of a school that has lots of courses on data
structures, operating systems, compilers, networking, etc. but none on
software engineering itself.
This is, to some extent, true of any engineering degree. In fact, it might
be true of any degree targeted to a specific subject. A degree