Today we're going to talk about grad school.

Is graduate school worth it?

Now, this is a question that a lot of people have come here to ask me about, and I have gone through computer science grad school myself.

I actually went over to UC San Diego.

I went to UC Berkeley for my undergrad.

So I'm going to walk through the entire graphical program for you, such that you have a clear understanding of what sort of benefits or this advantages you may be getting when you go into grad school.

And we'll also talk about the decision about why I decided to go through this school versus other schools.

Now, one thing I want to know for you here is that most of the time is going to depend on your specific scenario and what alternatives you have, right.

If you can get into some amazing grad school program like, say, Stanford or Harvard computer science, then yeah, by all means.

You should probably do that.

If you can't get very good job, offer in comparison or if you can get into a very good company like, say, Google or something.

But you can't get into a very good the grad program school.

Then you should pick up that job offer.

And so what I'm telling you is that most of the time it seems that people are trying to avoid having to put in the work and research to figure out whether they should even be trying to apply it to some of these programs.

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Their 1st 500 subscribers will get a free two month trial check amount link In the description below you may be someone just doesn't want to bother applying to grad school.

They're too lazy to do that.

They want to save themselves the time of having to apply to take the G R E passed those tests put in an admissions as a People just want to feel good about the choices that they currently have made in life.

So the fact is that nobody is really going to be able to tell you whether it's worth it to go to grad school versus whether it's worth it to take a job.

If they don't really know which grad school you can even get in right.

You won't know that unless you try to apply.

And it seems to me that the sort of dilemma happens all the time.

I get so many questions like this where somebody may say they're currently on a certain career track, right?

Maybe they're a tester.

Maybe they're a data scientist or something, and then they want the surgeon to suffer engineering or they want to switch into project management or some other thing.

And then people get all upset about the contract that they're on.

And yet they don't really quite wanna put in the effort to switch tracked and try to even explore that they rather have somebody like me.

Just tell them No, you're good, right?

Your current track is fun, whereas in reality every track is really fine, right?

Anything is good, but it depends on how far you're willing to push yourself any career path.

You can make it work, and you can become very highly successful in anything.

But you have to have the passion to do it, and it's also going to depend on what other alternatives you left on the table.

So let's talk specifically about grad school in computer science, not for me straight out of college.

I think if I had an offer to get into something like Google, Microsoft, Amazon Apple, something like that, I probably would have just picked up that offer.

And I probably still recommend that path for you.

If you can get one of these offers working for a year in the top tech company, you're going to learn a lot.

But of course, this is going to very depending on what your personal goals are, right?

Like if you really want to get into some events area of computer science, like, say, Aye aye machine learning, computer vision, robotics or bio engineering.

Some of this stuff is going to require in advanced degree for you to really dive deeper into some of these fields for myself.

I also wanted to get deeper into computer graphics.

I really felt that I didn't know enough about how to create, like a graphics engine game engine.

So I like the idea of going to grad school so I could focus more on these topics.

So if you don't really know where you're going to do, and you don't really want to pick up any old random startup job or something like that where you feel that it's not going to push you very far, then picking Big Rascal program is a good way to just stop for some additional time, which was essentially what I was doing.

The fact is that after say, three or four years in industry, your very first job straight out of college.

Nobody really cares about right.

It's just something in your resume.

What you may even remove, but a graduate program degree.

That's probably something that is valuable enough that you're going to leave on your resume forever, and it's going to have good value all the way throughout your whole career.

People will always take a look at you and say, Oh, yeah, this guy at least seems to have a master's program And I felt this when I was working at Google as well.

I felt like there were more senior opportunities available to me because managers recognize that I was the person on the team who at least had a graduate degree, whereas the other people on my team didn't necessarily have that.

Now, when the time tend to apply to grad school right out of UC Berkeley, I have had enough of that school really for myself.

You know, Berkeley is in a fairly code foggy city with a lot of homeless people who will actually go and live and sleep inside the libraries, and that just wasn't my cup of coffee.

So for me, I wanted to apply to some different college and experience in other areas.

My siblings were in UC San Diego and San Diego is right by the beach.

And they had the amazing computer science program, one of the best computer graphics programs, actually, and I had also applied to U.

C.

L.

A.

As well, just because they're pretty well known school.

And these were kind of my top choices, and I got into both and for me.

I ended up choosing UC San Diego because a lot of my family was there and the beach just sounded really appealing to me.

You, after having spent my undergrad in coach Fargate Berkeley, I just wanted a complete change of environment, and I wasn't really looking forward to going to a place like U C L.

A.

Over in Los Angeles.

It's just more city space there.

So for May, I was actually really looking forward to going to grad school.

I knew it was going to be a fun time is going to be in the Great City.

I was going to be able to spend time with my brother and sister over there.

They're computer science program was top notch.

I was going to be able to get more into computer graphics, which I really wanted to, and that department have been renovated.

All the buildings were brand new, and I also saw it as a second chance at college because the first time around in my undergrad, I only focused on studying and I didn't have any fun.

I didn't join any clubs.

It was just books all the time.

And so for me, in the second chance that college I took on some more fun classes.

I joined some clubs and organizations that was more interested in joining.

You're not just under society's, but, yeah, I might take a class in dance, hip hop, right, venture business mechanics or something like that just because it sounded interesting.

And so that's one thing I was actually looking for two a lot that this stuff.

Often I get questions from people who seem like they're not really interested in attending grass school.

They view it more as a waste of time, something that has to be done.

And if you're just going to struggle through this and you're not going to enjoy it, I would encourage you to think about perhaps finding a school a city, some environment that actually gets you more excited because this is still going to take about one year of your life if you do the master's programs right now, the PhD program is considerably longer, and it requires some real research.

And generally I don't recommend PhD programs for normal people unless you really know where you're doing right, unless you're sure that you really want to get into this whole academic side.

Because when you get out of the PhD program, your career options are also going to be fairly different, right?

Generally, you would be a plane from Maura research oriented positions, and the interview process is actually a little bit different for PhD students as well.

So let's take a look at this graduate program that I specifically did.

And I'll tell you one other reason it chose UC San Diego was because they don't require you doing actual research to complete your degree.

You can really just do a test and 1/4 of research, and that was sufficient for myself.

I've never been all that interested in doing brand new research, spending a lot of time trying to figure out something new in the field because my interest has always been more in the practical application of things.

But we can take a look at what we have here, and the first thing you'll know this right off the bat is that a lot of these grades I got was just past no past, and that's a great thing here.

I was able to just focus less on grades, but I do have to say that I felt like I struggled through every single graduate course.

You know, the graduate courses are pretty serious work like you really have to put in some study, and they're like, probably twice as difficult as a standard undergrad course, because there's just less handholding from the professor and expectations were higher.

I also was able to take some undergrad courses, and at this point they just became very easy for me because I had a lot of background, that understanding this stuff, you could see that in my first quarter I took computer graphics, Operating assistance faculty research, was a teaching assistant and took venture mechanics.

After that took computer animation principles of computer architecture, computer vision and the seminar in computer science.

In my third quarter, I took cell for systems designed computer graphics to rendering advanced algorithms designed and analysis.

And then my last quarter, I took compute ability and complexity, computer graphics with measure, animation Ah, computer science and engineering program and then another ta course.

And so here I was with the Graduate in one year, and really, what this graduate program was focusing on was, it just develops further into the undergraduate courses, right?

Like there was a graduate version course of operating systems, fans, algorithms, computer architecture in more detail.

Most of these were taken past no past and the first half of my year.

I really enjoyed it.

And then probably towards the end of the year, I was about ready to get out.

I was about done, and I wanted to get into industry and start working.

Now.

One of the things I actually enjoyed about being the graduate student was that I was treated more closer to like faculty like there would be a graduate student lounge with drinks and snacks that would be available on Lee photographs, evidence the professors with actually take more time to get to know the graduate students better.

I was even actually hired by one of the professors.

I feel that the professor's just put more time into getting to know their graduate students.

I remember when that was there As a master student, I almost wanted to be like a PhD student.

It looked so cool and they got so much respect.

But as soon as I graduated and finished the master's program, I was pretty glad to actually be out and be done with all of that.

One fun way to think about this is it's almost like a study abroad program where you choose another city where you would like to live and experience life in and continue your studies there and you get all the credit for that, too.

And it's not like you're really burning your time.

It's just building up additional experience that is quite valuable.

Could be quite good to have on your resume, right?

Employers are still going to like that stuff, and you know there's no strong guarantee that it's going to really pay off and get you a better job.

But at the same time, it's not going to look weird on your resume, and it's not like you just picked up some low entry level job.

That was not very good, right?

He basically just allowed you to buy some additional time.

And during that time, you know, you can continue to pick up internships you like.

When I was in grad school, I picked up additional internships like that Microsoft that helped me prepare better for when I actually finished the program and got out.

I do have to mention, though, that I did spend 1/4 living in the grad school dormitory housing and my roommates were some of the most miserable people I've ever met.

You know a lot of these rascals students.

I think that they become bitter towards some point, right, the PhD students, especially because they just get stuck in that program for years.

And you hear stories were professors will actually keep the PhD students stuck in that program so they can get some free labour.

So when I look back on my grass school experience, I don't regret it at all.

Actually, I thought it was great.

That was fun.

And it was another stage in my career development right?

I easily could have swapped out that grass school program and replace it with some entry level job as some start up somewhere.

But I'm not sure if that would have actually been very memorable for me or very useful at all, right?

I probably would have removed that job from my resume as I started building more experience.

But this grass ical program is something that I'm just leaving on my resume.

So there you go.

That's my perspective on graduate programs.

Let me know what you guys think in the comments below would love to hear if you like the video, give a like and subscribe and see next time.

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