Program in Computer Science School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Programs of Study

The Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute offers Master of Science and PhD degrees. Both are research-oriented programs which require completion of a thesis by each student. Major research areas include bioinformatics, computational science and engineering, computer graphics, computer vision, data cyberinfrastructure, data mining, database systems, machine and computational learning, networking, parallel and distributed computing, pervasive computing, robotics, security, semantic web, social networks, software design and programming languages, and theoretical computer science.

The Department

The Rensselaer Computer Science Department includes 20 tenure/tenure track faculty members based in the department, as well as 17 joint and affiliated faculty members. There are about 100 graduate students, and about 535 undergraduate majors. Among the faculty members are fellows of AAAS, ACM, and IEEE; officers of ACM, IEEE, SIAM and SPIE special interest groups; authors of numerous books; editors of leading journals; and 4 winners of the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Rensselaer encourages inter-disciplinary research, and computer science faculty members lead 3 research centers and conduct research in collaboration with faculty members from other departments, including mathematical sciences, electrical computer and systems engineering, industrial engineering management, cognitive science, biology, physics, and science and technology studies.

Admission

Applicants are chosen for admission by the faculty members who will become their research supervisors. Admitted students generally have strong academic backgrounds in computer science and demonstrated research potential. Admission to the graduate program is highly competitive. Fewer than 20% of applicants are accepted.

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Financial Aid

Most computer science department graduate students receive financial support. About 75 of the department's graduate students are supported by research and teaching assistantships. These provide both tuition and stipends. In 2012-2013, the stipend is $18,000 for the academic year. The remaining students are supported by sources including fellowships, their employers, or, in the case of students earning joint BS-MS degrees, undergraduate financial aid.

Typically, students will start as teaching assistants, and then will transition to research assistant positions after they have become more familiar with the work of their research groups, but occasionally a first semester student is awarded a research assistantship. A few truly outstanding first-year students are awarded fellowships.

When applicants are admitted without aid, it is usually because they already have funding from other sources. However, if applicants who need aid are admitted without aid, they will have opportunities to apply for assistantships after enrolling.

Financial awards are made on the basis of ability rather than need. To receive full consideration for aid, students should submit all required materials by December 15 for the fall semester or August 15 for the spring semester.

Research Centers

Among the many research centers on campus, 3 are led by CS faculty members: the Institute's Network Science and Technology Center (NEST), which studies fundamental properties of networks, including social, cognitive, technological, and communication networks; the Data Science Research Center which focuses on the development of data-to-knowledge integration technologies that facilitate acquiring, processing, analyzing, visualizing, disseminating, and archiving complex data to support multiscale modeling and simulation across all disciplines; and Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software that engages RPI students in open source projects. Other centers in which CS faculty members are involved include: the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), a supercomputing center designed in collaboration with IBM and New York State; the Scientific Computation Research Center (SCOREC), an interdisciplinary center conducting research on advanced computational techniques using adaptive methods and parallel solution strategies; and the Center for Subsurface Sensing and Image Systems (CenSSIS), a National Science Foundation for Engineering Research Center (NSF-ERC) that conducts multidisciplinary research on common solutions to diverse problems for sensing and imaging objects that are hidden under a surface.

Graduate Student Life

Although the graduate curriculum is challenging, students still have time for other activities. Hobbies enjoyed by students in the department include computer games, bicycling, soccer, tennis, skiing, hiking, reading, writing, listening to music, playing musical instruments, and cooking. Students often get together to go out to eat, play board games, go bowling, or go to movies, concerts, or hockey games.

On the Rensselaer campus, there are many opportunities for recreation and entertainment, including movies, plays, concerts, sports events, athletic facilities, and more than 175 student organizations. Rensselaer's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) presents concerts, installations, exhibitions, and other artistic offerings. The Houston Field House is used for ice hockey games, rock concerts and other major entertainment programs.

Troy, Albany, and Schenectady offer numerous concerts, plays, museums, sports events, nightclubs, and restaurants serving food from many different cultures and countries. The near perfect acoustics of the Troy Music Hall attract some of the world's outstanding musicians. The Saratoga Performing Arts Center, summer residence of the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra, is only a half-hour away. An hour away in the Berkshires is Tanglewood (the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and the Williamstown Theater Festival. Three major metropolitan areas, New York City, Montreal, and Boston, are within a 3 hour drive.

• Degrees Offered
• Major Degree Levels Offered
• Master of Science (MS)
  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

• Degrees Awarded
• Master's Degrees 15
• Doctoral Degrees 4
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported
• * Shows the number of degrees awarded for the last academic year that data was reported.

• Earning Your Degree
• Part-time study available? Yes
• Evening/weekend programs available? No
• Distance learning programs available? No
• Terminal master's degree available? Yes

• Degree Requirements
• Master's Degrees Required
• Doctoral Degrees Required and Required
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported

• Acceptance Rate
• Applied432
• Accepted54
• Acceptance Rate12%
• Enrolled25
• Applying
• Application Fee - Domestic $75
• Application Fee - International $75
• Electronic applications accepted? Yes
• Applications processed on a rolling basis? Yes
• Application Deadlines
• Type Domestic International Priority Date
• Fall deadline January 1st January 1st Yes
• Winter deadline Not Reported Not Reported Not Reported
• Spring deadline August 15th August 15th Yes
• Entrance Requirements
• Master's DegreesGRE General Test
• Doctoral's DegreesGRE General Test
• First-Professional's DegreesNot Reported
• Other Advanced DegreesNot Reported
• International DegreesTOEFL required, 570 paper based, TOEFL iBT

• Tuition & Fees
• In-state tuition *$39,600
• Out-of-state tuition *$39,600
• International student tuitionNot Reported
• * Tuition for full-time graduate student per academic year
• Fees
• Per-academic year fees$1,896.00
• Per-term feesNot Reported
• One-time feeNot Reported
• * Fees for full-time graduate students
• Financial Support
• Financial award applicants must submitNot Reported
• Application deadlines for financial awardsJanuary 1
• Types of financial support availableFellowships, Research Assitantships, Teaching Assistantships

• Gender
• Total Graduate Students82
• Female Percentage12%
• Male Percentage88%
• Participation
• Total Graduate Students82
• Part-time Percentage4%
• Full-time Percentage96%
• Ethnicity
• Hispanic / Latino0%
• Black / African American0%
• White / Caucasian87%
• American Indian / Alaskan Native0%
• Asian3%
• Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander0%
• Two or more races0%
• Unknown10%

• Faculty Breakout
• Total Faculty22
• Full-time Percentage100%
• Part-time Percentage0%
• Female Percentage27%
• Male Percentage73%

• Existing Research
• Focus of faculty researchComputer vision and graphics, algorithms and theory, pervasive computing and networking, data mining and machine learning, semantic web
• Externally sponsored research expenditures last year$1,800,000