Information for New Graduate Students

Welcome to the CS Department at UT! We are honored to have such distinguished colleagues as yourself joining our department.

• Get your photo taken! This will help the faculty to remember you. Photos are taken by Carol Grosvenor, carolg@cs.utexas.edu, TAY 2.116C, 471-9753.
• Get a computer account (graduate office on the ground floor, TAY 2.114).
• See Graduate School orientation web page http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/orientation/
• Ms. Gloria Ramirez (gloria) deals with graduate students who are enrolled. She also makes appointments to see the Graduate Adviser, Lorenzo Alvisi (lorenzo)
• TAY 3.128: Faculty Lounge. Students are allowed to use this room and to get coffee. This is a "studious" room for reading etc., also often used for talks.
• GRACS Lounge: southwest corner of ground floor of Taylor Hall. This is the grad students' room, with mailboxes, copier, microwave, etc. GRACS (Graduate Representative Association of CS, also a pun on grackle, the large black birds seen on campus) is the grad student organization. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~gracs/
• There are many research lectures during the year; go to them! The best researchers in the world give lectures at UT. Attending will teach you about current research and about how to give an academic lecture.
• Video seminars for graduate students   http://www.uga.edu/gradschool/student/videos.html from Univ. of Georgia (you may have to change the web addresses of the videos to http://).
• The official rules of the graduate programs are on the CS web pages under Graduate Students, Degree Programs.
• Foreign students often do summer internships; this requires a form and requires taking CS 195T the following semester.

CS Courses:

• Course number syntax: The first digit (usually 3) is the number of hours per week the course meets. The second digit denotes the level of the course; 8 and 9 denote graduate courses. The final digit, and perhaps a letter suffix, are arbitrary, used to distinguish courses.
• CS 395 is a conference course. Ph.D. students are required to take a CS 395 each semester until they reach candidacy. (The first semester, Ph.D. students take CS 398T instead.) One CS 395 may be counted toward the MSCS.
• CS 395T is a "topics" course number. You can take CS 395T multiple times as long as the topics vary. There may be ten CS 395T courses each semester.
• Usually no graduate courses, other than CS 395, thesis, and dissertation, are offered in summer.
• See Course-Instructor Surveys http://www.utexas.edu/academic/mec/cis/cisonline.html to see how previous students evaluated courses and professors.
• Background: Architecture (CS 352), Operating Systems (CS 372), Programming Languages (CS 345) or Compilers (CS 375), Theory of Computation (CS 353) or Algorithms (CS 357). Satisfied by CS Subject GRE &ge 90%, courses taken previously, courses taken at UT with GPA &ge 3.5, final exam taken with at least B. Taking a graduate course in these areas does not satisfy the background requirement.

The Ph.D. Program:

• Research Immersion: Each student must take CS 398T the first semester, then a CS 395 research course each semester until Ph.D. candidacy. CS 398T has lectures on teaching, and talks by most CS faculty on their research; then students select a professor to do a conference course with. The CS 395 requirement is intended to get students started on research as soon as possible. A CS 395 course is a "date", not a "marriage"; you can change supervisors for CS 395 the next semester.
• Course load: A full-time load is 9 hours (3 courses) per semester. Ph.D. students must receive (rare) permission from the Graduate Advisor to take more. Additional courses such as P.E. are okay.
• Diversity Program: 5 Diversity courses, from 5 different threads, with no more than two courses from each area (Theory, Systems, Applications), each with &ge B and Diversity GPA &ge 3.5 .
• Depth requirement: 3 courses related to research area, not CS 395 or CS 398T, GPA &ge 3.6. These provide specialization in the research area.
• Most Ph.D. students get a Masters degree (MSCS) along the way; this typically requires only two more Minor courses.
• Before the end of the 3rd year, each student must pass a Research Preparation Exam, for which the student conducts research on a topic, prepares a document, and presents a talk.
• When you have taken enough courses and passed the RP Exam, submit a Research Qualification (RQ) Document. This lists your Diversity and Depth courses. The faculty member who signs your RQ is agreeing to supervise you in a dissertation proposal.
• At an appropriate point, do a dissertation proposal and Application for Candidacy. The proposal may vary from being an idea for research up to being a half-finished dissertation. The dissertation proposal is presented to the proposed dissertation committee, which must answer two questions:
  • If substantially completed, would the proposed work constitute a dissertation (an original contribution to knowledge)?
  • Does the committee believe that the student can substantially complete the work in a reasonable amount of time?
  Passing the proposal gives the student a contract that the committee will accept the work if substantially completed.
• After the dissertation is finished, the student defends it in a public presentation.

The Masters Program:

• There are two degrees: the M.A. (30 hours, including 6 hours of Thesis) and the M.S. (36 hours, all coursework). At most 9 hours of undergraduate work may be included, one CS 395 (M.S. only). Most students get the M.S. You don't have to choose which degree until you fill out the form to graduate.
• Two Minor courses are required. Minor courses must be approved by the Graduate Adviser; send an email to the Graduate Adviser and get approval in advance.
  • Things that usually are approved: upper-division or graduate courses in ECE, Math, sciences, sometimes Business or Law; GRS 390W, GRS 392W are useful for academic writing skills. CS courses that are cross-listed with other departments can count as minor courses, even if taken under the CS course number.
  • Things that usually are not approved: lower-division courses (those with numbers below 320); M 325; courses you have already taken somewhere else; trivial courses ("how to make a web page"); French, Theater and Dance, Literary Criticism, etc.
• Diversity requirement: at least one course from each Diversity area (Systems, Theory, Applications).
• Transfer courses: maximum of 6 hours of graduate work from another institution; no transferred course may have been counted toward another degree.
• If your ultimate goal is to get a Ph.D. from UT, act like a Ph.D. student from the beginning. You can take courses that satisfy both the Ph.D. requirements and the Masters requirements. Make good grades on Diversity courses. Try to get involved in research.