Graduate Programs

The Department offers both a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. program in Computer Science.

For fully qualified students, the M.Sc. program provides three routes for completing the degree requirements: thesis, project or course. Students must choose one of these routes when they apply for admission to the program.

For the M.Sc. program, at most one course at the 400-level is allowed. No more than 2 directed reading or special topics classes may be used in a program. The courses taken may include at most 2 courses outside of Computer Science. Program requirements are slightly different depending on which route is chosen.

A directed readings course (CS89x) is an alternative to a lecture-based graduate course. You may ask a faculty member to supervise a Directed Reading course for you on a particular topic. Please keep in mind that such courses are extra work for faculty members. As mentioned above, at most 2 such courses are permitted in an M.Sc. program. For every such course, a course description form must be submitted prior to registration that explains the topics to be covered and the grading scheme to be used.

All M.Sc. and Ph.D. students are required to participate in two seminar series, including giving a presentation themselves in each series. The seminar series are associated with CS 900 course, which is credit-only (i.e., it has zero credit hours associated with it). The seminar courses are both numbered CS900. The first one you take should be labelled as section 001 and the other one as section 002. The two seminar classes cannot be taken during the same semester.