Computer Science

For those students contemplating advanced studies in computer science at UBC, completing a master's degree before continuing to the PhD program confers several advantages. The two-year period of the master's first helps students decide whether a research career is the right career choice for them. If it is, taking this time helps give them the skills needed to pursue independent research. Second, the research experience gained can be very valuable as student work toward picking a PhD topic, as most professors in the department prefer that students shoulder this choice on their own.
Third, a student who completes a master's degree and decides to work in industry prior to embarking on the full PhD has the opportunity to apply his or her skills and master's level education in the field and to take advantage of jobs that have attractive starting salaries.

Thesis Master's

12 credit MSc thesis and 18 credits of course work.

The focus of this master's program is on the student's research, which will be equivalent (in effort) to four graduate courses.

The student will be required to present his or her thesis results at a departmental seminar. For this purpose, the thesis need not be in its final written form (although the basic results should be in hand).

The 12 credit MSc thesis must satisfy one or more of the following criteria:

• It involves some original research results;
• It deals with a novel exploratory implementation, the results of which will be of some interest to a portion of the computer science community;
• It involves novel implementation techniques;
• It involves the implementation of a practical piece of nontrivial software whose availability could have some impact on the computer science user community.

The fundamental requirement is that you must have sufficient background for graduate studies in computer science. Most applicants demonstrate that they meet this requirement by holding a degree academically equivalent to a UBC four-year Bachelor's degree (or more advanced degrees) in Computer Science. If you do not have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. English Language Requirements IELTS band: 7 TOEFL paper-based test score : 600 TOEFL iBT® test: 100