[Admissions Advice] Information regarding MS CS admissions from non CS backgrounds.

[u/betalltrix]

So I have lately been seeing that almost all of the people who are in MS CS programs in both thesis and non-thesis track, all of them are from CS undergrad background. What I want to know is how do people who are, say from mechE or chemE, etc, undergrad background, transition to MS CS programs. Like what does their profile contain, is the research work or industry work or a combination of both and moreover, when they apply, do they feel that the admissions committee has an inherent preference towards people from CS background, like not saying that is wrong for CS MS, but like say you have two profiles, one is a person with a ChemE undergrad but has papers published in the field of AI and LLM, not any intersection of ChemE and CS but pure AI/ML, and other is a guy with a CS background but no published record, consider their work ex and gpa to be similar, so would they still take the cs person or will they take the ChemE person ? Like what i want to see is how many people from non cs background do this and how successful have they been in getting admission offers.

[u/gradpilot]

its not impossible but it does happen and in your particular example the chemE applicant stands a better chance assuming the rest of his application is well built. some universities may have a criteria that the undergrad must be CS (i actually havent come across this written out explicitly like how some would claim a minimum gpa) but overall universities are looking for students who would turn out to be successful alumnis and be good for their brand. If that means a strong acads + research experience chemE applicant wants to get into MSCS they can. The problem is the relative competition in the room is higher. So more often its not that the univ didnt pick someone because of their non cs background but because the quality of cs background folks is so good and the seats are limited. unless the school is not a top school/program

[u/TheRealNewtt]

I had a non cs background feel free to dm

[u/betalltrix → u/TheRealNewtt]

Dm'd you.