Switching from ECE to CS with a Second US Master's: My Admission Story — Georgia Tech

Original post: https://corgitechus.com/study-abroad/ece-cs-second-ms-georgia-tech-admission/

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Introduction

This year, with the pandemic raging, I nervously waited several weeks after accepting my offer before the school's final official offer finally arrived, officially wrapping up my applications. When I was choosing schools, I got a lot out of the PTT study-abroad board, and in the end my school selection strategy worked. Thanks to mmonkeyboyy on PTT for helping me pick schools. Posts about switching from ECE to CS with a second master's are relatively rare, so I'm sharing what I did to prepare for each part, for younger students in a similar situation who want to take the leap and study abroad. The post includes a brief timeline for anyone currently in a master's program who wants to prepare.

Decision

Georgia Tech (GT) — CSMS

Admission

2/10 Rice University — CSMS

3/19 Purdue University — CSMS

3/20 University of California, Irvine (UCI)— CSMS

4/7 University of South California (USC)— CS37 MS

4/7 Georgia Tech (GT) — CSMS

Rejection

3/16 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) — INI MSIN

4/7 University of Michigan — CSE MS

4/8 University of South California (USC) — CS Networking MS

4/9 University of Wisconsin, Madison — CS PMP

4/16 Carnegie Mellon University — ECE (Switch to Spring semester)

Pending

6/8 University of Texas at Austin — ECE SES

Background

BS in NCTU ECE:
Overall GPA: 3.79/4.3 (3.72/4.0)
Last 60 GPA: 3.97/4.3 (3.83/4.0)

UIUC exchange:
GPA:3.61/4.0 (3 CS courses)

MS in NCTU Communication Engineering:
GPA: 4.29/4.3 (15 credits CS related)

[Test Score] GRE: 321, TOEFL: 101

[Publication] VTC conference + Oral presentation *1 (1st author)

[Experience] SWE summer internship at a US company, summer internship at an IC design house

[Recommendation] My master's advisor, a professor from a CS course I took, my internship manager at a Taiwanese company

School selection strategy

Because I was determined to switch fields, and studying in the US isn't cheap, I only targeted proper CS programs or top-10 ECE programs, mostly concentrating on schools ranked in the top 20 for CS. When weighing schools, I mainly considered these factors

1. Would I definitely go if I got in?

2. How easy it is to find a job (location matters less in the pandemic era)

3. How rigorous the coursework is (CMU, GT, Purdue and USC are all relatively rigorous)

4. School reputation

5. CS Title

Whatever you do, put a few lottery schools on your list. Maybe you'll be the lucky one

Application timeline

I think staying on top of the whole timeline is really important. I only decided to go abroad in March of the year I applied, and the whole thing felt very, very, very tight, so if you can start preparing early, get going! After talking with people who'd been through it, I learned how much experience at a foreign company and grinding coding problems matter for the job search, so I worked especially hard on problems and landed an internship at a foreign company to build up my experience.

Before February: my thesis was only missing some data; most of it was there

March: decided to apply, signed up for Mason GRE, researched and planned the preliminary steps

April: memorized 2000 words before class started, studied for the TOEFL, ground problems, wrote my thesis

May: first TOEFL attempt 94, interviewed for a foreign company internship, started GRE classes

June: went all out finishing the first draft of my thesis, studied for the GRE

July: went all out on the GRE, internship

August: first GRE attempt 321, a huge weight off my shoulders; internship; went all out reviewing my thesis

September: thesis defense, went all out preparing for the TOEFL

October: second TOEFL attempt 94, signed up for SK2's writing-only course, prepared application materials

10/27: started emailing to ask for ROLs

November: writing score went up, third TOEFL attempt 101, went all out on application materials

December: submitted everything, ending nearly 7 months with zero entertainment. The first thing I did was buy a Switch to play

Those six months were really painful for me. Every step was stressful because the timeline was so tight there was almost no room for mistakes. Looking back now, though, it was a rare stretch of my life that felt truly full. People are especially efficient when they focus on one thing, and that's what I kept telling myself to keep going.

Application documents

Before writing my application documents, I spent quite a while working out how to make my SOP, CV and ROLs tie into each other, so each would be convincing on its own and even more convincing together.

SOP

As a student switching fields, the core of my SOP was how, step by step, I came to feel I was a good fit for CS, and how I'd apply my existing ECE networking know-how to CS.

Since I'm not a traditional CS student, I had to find an area where I could hold my own against students with pure CS backgrounds. As a student in a communications engineering institute, I'd done some work on networking programming, and my thesis was closely tied to it, so I decided to build my SOP around Computer Networks

Here are the book and website I used (your school library should have these, so you can borrow them~)

How to Write a Study Plan for Studying Abroad: Write Your SOP and CV This Way to Get Into Top Universities Worldwide

Author: Dr Fiona Hu

Website: https://blog.essaycrafter.org/2018/10/01/sopwritingtips/

I highly recommend this book. It showed me that the logic of writing an SOP is completely different from writing an argumentative essay in Chinese: Chinese likes to build up gradually, while English has to get straight to the point and then back it up strongly with examples (much like the essay structure on the GRE and TOEFL). We have to start getting used to the fact that a strong way of saying something in English is completely different from how you'd say it in Chinese. Down the road you'll exchange countless negotiation emails with Americans, so understanding how they communicate is extremely important.

Here's an overview of each paragraph:

Paragraph 1: the opening. How taking System Programming at UIUC sparked my interest in CS and built my fundamentals.

Paragraph 2: the CS courses I took during my master's and my GPA, plus a summary of the key points in the following paragraphs: research, projects and internships, all related to Computer Networks.

Paragraph 3: my master's thesis. A detailed description of how I single-handedly built a complete networking-related system, plus achievements like an oral presentation at a conference, a competition award and showing it at a startup expo

Paragraph 4: projects. A detailed description of my networking-related projects, and why I think they still need to scale up and improve security (linking to the courses I'd take after being admitted, later on)

Paragraph 5: internships. A detailed description of how, in my SWE internships at a Taiwanese company and a US company, I helped the team improve code efficiency and memory usage

Paragraph 6: Through the networking experience above, I came to understand my interests and the many remaining challenges in architecting a complete networking system. So if admitted to XX, I'd take security, software engineering and large-scale networking courses (adjust per school: some care about labs, so name the professors you're interested in, while still focusing on networking)

Paragraph 7: my dream and goals

CV

Basically, list your highlights in order of importance. Mine came to 2 pages; much of it overlaps with the SOP, but it's shorter here. Since I was switching fields, I listed all my CS-related courses under my education. I think the most important thing is that, for projects and internships, you use one quantified sentence to sum up what you helped improve and by how much

For CV details, I used this article:

https://www.cantabenglish.com/blog/howtowriteenglishcv

ROL

I discussed with each of my recommenders what I hoped their letter would focus on, and I'm grateful they were all willing to tailor it for me. That split the letters into three angles, each backing up abilities mentioned in my SOP and CV, to make all my documents more convincing

Master's advisor — research ability, presentation experience, innovation, hands-on implementation skills, personal qualities

CS course professor — fundamentals, hands-on implementation skills

Internship manager at a Taiwanese company — practical implementation skills

GRE/TOEFL

Mason and SK2 have experience posts on these. I have to say prep schools are still pretty effective for a short-term push

Reflections

Applying with a second master's

Overall, I think the second master's helped me: good grades made up for my so-so undergrad GPA, and in those two years I built up a lot of software and internship experience and figured out what I really wanted. The main pain point for me was changing my mindset about still studying for a second master's while my classmates were starting their careers; finding comrades to push through with is one way to handle it. Another downside is that many schools don't accept applicants who already have a master's, which ruled out a lot of schools I wanted (UIUC, UCSD and so on). Someone on the board has compiled a list of schools that won't take second-master's applicants, so check that out.

Preparing materials

I'd say my application materials were solid but unremarkable, with no obvious weaknesses and no obvious strengths. But I tried as hard as I could within what I could still influence, and kept every piece of my application centered on the themes I wanted to emphasize so they backed each other up, hoping to show the reviewers that I'm someone with a clear goal and direction.

Results

I was pretty surprised to get into half of the CS programs in the end, because my undergrad GPA really isn't outstanding and my GRE/TOEFL scores only just met the cutoffs. I think my other experience helped me quite a bit overall. If you're reading this with plenty of time left, really, really start preparing early. A lot of materials and experience (internships, coursework foundations, conferences) can't be rushed.

I applied to GT because I saw on the board that some people with mid-range GPAs and unusual experience got in, so I threw it in as a lottery pick. I didn't expect to get in, so I was pretty happy!

Mindset

I didn't switch fields with a second master's simply because CS has a high expected pay. I think the most important belief that kept me going was interest. During my master's I kept wondering whether I was suited to the telecom or IC industry. After a lot of exploring, taking some CS courses, trying a few Leetcode problems and finding contests thrilling, I slowly realized that maybe deep down I'd rather do pure software. I still feel a little panicky about all the unknowns of moving to the US and leaving my family, but maybe that's what makes life full of surprises… who knows

A funny story

On 4/5, two days before GT admitted me, they'd sent me a rejection letter. At the time I just shrugged and closed it, but a day later I got this email.

Honestly, I really didn't get my hopes up that day @@

Then the very next day I got the AD. Truly amazing.

Thanks

Finally, I want to give special thanks to my family and friends who helped me all along the way; my master's advisor; the PhD students and lab mates who took care of all the graduation details big and small when I was falling apart; the teachers and managers who wrote my recommendation letters; and the classmates and teachers who patiently read 7 versions of my SOP and CV.

Closing

Finishing your applications is just the beginning, and bigger challenges lie ahead. I hope everyone applying in the future has a smooth journey.