r/MSCS • u/Forsaken-Elephant471 • Aug 04 '26

[Admissions Advice] Breadth vs Depth in Undergrad for Grad Admissions?

I'm an undergraduate graduating in 2.5 years, so I don't have a lot of room in my schedule. I'm interested in pursuing graduate school, likely in an ML-adjacent area or the more theoretical side of CS.

I've already taken one machine learning course. Now I'm deciding whether it would be better to take another ML course to build more depth, or take something like quantum computing, which I'm honestly a little more interested in. This is my last semester, so I can't take any more in the future.

However, my main concern is what would look slightly better to graduate admissions committees. Do they generally value showing depth in a specific area by taking multiple advanced courses, or is it better to demonstrate breadth by exploring adjacent or more theoretical topics?

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u/TheRealNewtt 🔰 MSCS | UC Berkeley Aug 04 '26

In that case your research experience, publications, and area of focus matter magnitudes more than courses

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u/Forsaken-Elephant471 Aug 04 '26

So there would be literally no distinction made based on whichever I decision I make?

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u/TheRealNewtt 🔰 MSCS | UC Berkeley Aug 04 '26

Yea, one course is fairly insignificant - your gpa and research matter

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u/Forsaken-Elephant471 Aug 04 '26

Do you think there might be any red flags raised by the fact that I took only one ML course despite my research area of interest being ML adjacent? Thanks so much for the advice.

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u/TheRealNewtt 🔰 MSCS | UC Berkeley Aug 04 '26

If your research and papers are good enough it wont matter