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Graphics Software Education

Post Undergrad Comp. Graphics Studies in the U.S.? 55

Posted by Cliff from the where-to-go-after-that-first-degree dept.
AliParr asks: "Having just completed my first degree, BSc Hons Visualization at Teesside University in England, I am considering continuing on to Post-Graduate study. While courses in the United Kingdom are fine, I have always fancied studying abroad, or more specifically, in the states. Finding a course/university seems an overwhelming process however and I'm struggling to know where to start. My interests are Computer Science and Graphics based, with my first degree centering on C++/OpenGL/DirectX and general graphics algorithms. I was wondering if fellow Slashdot readers could give guide me as to the best places to look, and maybe shed some light on their experiences."
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Post Undergrad Comp. Graphics Studies in the U.S.? More

Post Undergrad Comp. Graphics Studies in the U.S.?

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  • Mississippi State University (Score:3, Informative)

    by Yerase ( 636636 ) <randall DOT hand AT gmail DOT com> on Monday July 11, 2005 @01:44PM (#13034579) Homepage
    Mississippi State University has a good program, both in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, that focuses on Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization. They also have a close working relationship with the DoD's 4 supercomputing centers (MSRC's) via the PET program. You can find info on the DOD, MSRC's, & PET on http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/pet/ [indiana.edu]

  • TestMagic: advice on getting into grad school (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can get advice on programs and admissions from your peers here: (international students trying to get into U.S./Canadian programs)

    TestMagic [testmagic.com]

    Look under the graduate forums. Hordes of people discussing how to get through GREs, get Financial aid from various schools etc. Most people on the board are Indians, but you have your odd Australian, Briton, American etc.

    Some of these people really know how to work the system...

  • Narrow down your choices first maybe? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ankh ( 19084 ) * on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:00PM (#13034761) Homepage

    Start by asking yourself what you expect to get out of studying in another country, and why that country in particular.

    There are some Canadian universities that at least at one time were very good for post-graduate graphics work, for example, and I think one in Singapore.

    Note also that a Masters in North America is treated like a BSc in the UK, so you'll probably have to do a Master's before you can do further studies, but the master's degree in the US might only be one year. So there are some differences in terminology.

    One approach to help you decide might be to investigate authors of up-to-date graduate level text books, and people who are publishing interesting papers (e.g. ACM SIGGRAPH), see where they are teaching, and see what some of their past students have done.

    Another obvious approach is to compare the Web sites of some of the schools (as they call them) that interest you, and see what the course looks like. If the Masters in Graphics requires a course in Adobe PhotoShop and another in Adobe Illustrator, it's probably not what you want! (and yes, there are courses with such requirements).

    The level of teaching varies wildly, much more than you might expect, as does the cost. Canada tends to be cheapr than the US if that helps any.

    If you are going abroad to get a different experience, you'll find Kentucky State University very different from the University of California, and that in turn is different from MIT (in Cambridge, MA, a conurbation with Boston). My husband did a degree in Fine Art in upstate New York (maybe 8 hours' drive from New York city) and the people in the town there are very conservative and "redneck", openly racist and homophobic (e.g. a pizza store that didn't serve blacks), but on the other hand a wonderful faculty and campus. Horrible weather though, with nine feet of snow in one or two weeks in the winter, and over 100F with high humidity in the summer.

    In general the two coasts of the US tend to be more tolerant than the middle of the country. If you are not white, the North is a better bet than the South.

    So, narrow down your choices by listing your priorities, and maybe post them here. Then go and do some research. You can also email people teaching computer graphics, or working in industry, and ask their opinion, but make sure you do some research first, so you don't just waste their time.


    Liam

  • Check GPGPU.org forums (Score:3, Informative)

    by ccweigle ( 25237 ) on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:07PM (#13034838)
    There was a recent thread on the GPGPU forums about picking a grad program for studying graphics. Since pretty much everyone there is either studying graphics or practicing them, you may get better responses than from here.

  • Georgia Tech (Score:3, Interesting)

    by secondsun ( 195377 ) <secondsun@gmail.com> on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:25PM (#13035038) Journal
    Try the Georgia Institue of Technology [gatech.edu]. The College of Computing has an awesome graphics graduate program. People you should contact are Jarek Rossignac [gatech.edu] and Greg Turk [gatech.edu]. Those are the two professors who I am most familar with, but there are more.

    Those are the links to each's homepages. From there you can browse out to their works, papers, projects, etc. Feel free to drop them a line.

    Hope the best

  • Here is some (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fr05t ( 69968 ) on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:25PM (#13035040)
    http://www.unb.ca/ [www.unb.ca]
    http://www.utoronto.ca/ [utoronto.ca]

    Because Canada is more fun.

  • Vizlab (Score:3, Informative)

    by jonabbey ( 2498 ) * <jonabbey@ganymeta.org> on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:25PM (#13035042) Homepage

    Take a look at Texas A&M's VizLab [tamu.edu]. They're a part of the school of architecture there, but they do graduate training in computer graphics, generally. A lot of their grads go on to work in the movie business.. Pixar, PDI, Sony, etc.

  • it IS an overwhelming process. (Score:4, Informative)

    by lliiffee ( 413498 ) on Monday July 11, 2005 @02:49PM (#13035285) Homepage
    Applying and getting accepted to CS grad school in the US is an extremely drawn out and painful process, even for US citizens. The method I advise for you is this:

    1) Find the US News and World Report rankings of the top 50 programs. (You can ignore the exact rankings, but this is a good list of 50 schools to look at.)

    2) For each (yes!) school, go the the faculty, and find those (if any) who have interests in graphics. Read their web pages and papers. Make a list of all faculty that would be interesting to work with. (To a first approximation the shool you go to does not matter. What matters, TREMENDOUSLY, is who your advisor is.)

    3) If possible, correspond with the above faculty.

    4) Apply to each school (shoot for 10 or more- competition is extremely high these days) who has at least one faculty whose research is interesting. This will cost you, with application fees running around 50-100USD each. (But you are in England- treasure those exchange rates!)

    5) (If you get in) Profit!

    Also note that to get in, you principally need LETTERS OF RECOMENDATION FROM PROFESSORS WHO CAN VOUCH FOR YOUR ABILITY TO DO RESEARCH. Grades, test scores, etc are somewhat important, but the above trumps all.
  • If you're planning on becoming a researcher/academic, your plans make some sense.

    But if you're planning on becoming a practitioner, think again. There is clearly an increasing world glut of software developers. To make decent money you'll need to start your own business. To do that you'll want some business education.

    A business education without a technical background isn't good enough to go into business in computers (although Steve Ballmer did okay). But a purely technical background will likely

  • am I the only one that read, "BSc" as "Bronze Swimming Certificate'?
  • Leapfrog the US. Go to India, China or one of the developing nations.
    • Uh, ya. Now explain to me why thousands of students from those countries (usually the best ones at that) continue to pursue graduate course work in North America and Europe.
  • Firstly, let me say Thank You all for the interesting and informative comments. You've certainly given me a starting idea and foothold. Let me give a few more details, to help refine your suggestions :) "The submitter is looking for grad schools, not another 4 year degree (BA/BS, etc). The submitter named C++ as a current skill, not an end goal. And finally, at no point did the submitter suggest interest in the "computer graphics" industry, for which you list a few members of the entertainment side. Given
    • While the university was originally a Poly, some 20 years back

      It was origianlly a college (open in 1930) and change to being a poly in 1969. It changed to a university in '92 along with all the other polys, so some 13 years back.

      graduate IT industry in the UK is ridiculously competitive

      It shouldn't be if you have a 1st.

      Good luck in the applications.

    • I just finished my B.S. in the States, and I just finished getting accepted to grad school. I was interested in graphics more than visualization, but at the time I was researching, I didn't know the difference. (I know I prefer graphics now.)

      I'm a native of California, so I'm a bit biased, but when I went looking for schools, I concentrated on schools on the West Coast. Of the schools I found, UC Davis seemed to have a very strong visualization program. They have an "institute" which means that sub-div

  • USC has a pretty decent graphics program for their masters degree. The also have distance education so you could essentially stay where you are and get the degree.
  • The University of Iowa [uiowa.edu] has a fairly good computer graphics crowd--Jim Cremer [uiowa.edu], Chris Wyman [uiowa.edu] and others are actively engaged in this field. It's worth taking a look at.

    ObDisclosure: I'm a grad student there, although not in computer graphics.
  • Anyone have experience with Florida State University? I am moving to Tallahassee next month and also considering starting work on my master's in computer science and just curious if any of you could tell me a little about FSU.
    • I personally think Tallahassee is a great place to live, so enjoy. FSU has a decent Computer Science program. They have been experiencing a lot of growth recently, and it remains to be seen what they do with it. They have a security program that's hooked up with the NSF and DoD scholarship for service program. They're better in some areas than others, and your experience would probably be most affected by who you work with and your area, as with most graduate programs.
    • I went to grad school with a FSU CS prof, Dave Banks [fsu.edu]. Really smart guy. He does research in computer graphics and scientific visualization. His dissertation was on visualizing 4-d surfaces, IIRC. Also funny in a strange way. He tends to look at the world from a slightly askew viewpoint.
  • if you're gonna be a programmer, don't go to school. The only way to be a programmer is to write programs. I don't think they do too much of that in school anymore. :-)

  • You might want to check out UNC - Chapel Hill [unc.edu]. Their CS department has a strong bias towards graphics, visualization, virtual reality, etc.

    Check the Department News Headlines [unc.edu] and you'll see how a lot of the interesting stuff that comes out of UNC is graphics related. Likewise, look into their Major Research Areas [unc.edu] page and you'll see Graphics and Image Analysis [unc.edu] as one. Look at some of the stuff they're doing.

    I'm not a big graphics guy myself (I'm more interested in AI, Distributed Computing and Softwar
  • At the end of the day, studying in the US is only worth it if you can get into the top universities. USNews.com and Vault.com both has great guides to help you pick the right place to study. If you end up going to a below "tier 1" school, you'd be better off studying in the UK or Canada (as examples). The American job market is extremely competetive, and comming from the right school is the 'alpha & omega' when it comes to landing the good jobs.

  • Graphics Programs (Score:3, Informative)

    by doktor-hladnjak ( 650513 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2005 @01:59PM (#13044614)
    A good starting place for information is this little document by Mike Gleicher [wisc.edu] who is a graphics prof at the University of Wisconsin. He gives a lot of general advice, but also some specific stuff for graphics which is helpful and otherwise hard to find.

    Here's his list of places where major graphics research is going on in North America:

    The "Big" Places for Graphics: (all of these places have LOTS of graphics students)
    • Washington
    • Stanford
    • Georgia Tech
    • UNC
    • Utah
    • MIT
    • Brown
    • British Columbia

    Other Really good groups (smaller, more personable):

    • Princeton
    • Caltech
    • NYU
    • CMU (was big, but lots of people left)
    • Toronto

    Up and Coming Groups (newer groups with a small number of newer faculty in graphics)

    • Berkeley
    • Virginia
    • Illinois
    • USC
    He also of course adds Wisconsin to the list too. I'd personally place it in the last category, since they have a small, young but respectable program. Generally, I agree with this list although there are probably a whole bunch of other places with just one faculty member doing good work.

    Having spent time studying and researching in Europe, there are some good graphics groups there too. In the UK, I know of two places off hand: Cambridge (Malcolm Sabin doing stuff with surfaces and geometric modeling) and Bath [bath.ac.uk] (Phil Willis and some others). In Germany, there is the Max Planck Institute [mpi-inf.mpg.de] (which does everything in English and is a very strong group although I admit I used to work there, so I'm probably biased), TU Darmstadt (Alexa), RWTH Aachen (Kobelt) and Tuebingen (Strasser). In Switzerland, there is the ETH in Zuerich (Markus Gross), the EPFL in (I think) Lausanne (Nadia and Daniel Thalmann) and Basel (Thomas Vetter who not so long ago left Freiburg to start a new graphics group there). In France, there is a group at the INRIA in Grenoble (Marie-Paul Cani). The above is certainly not an exhaustive list, just names that come to mind off the top of my head.

    Most of these programs in continental Europe probably require you to already have your MSc before beginning PhD studies, but some have MSc programs as well. I know the MPI has one and awards scholarships even to foreign students. Generally, it's easier to get funding with only a Bachelor's degree in the US than in most of Europe. I've also heard the funding situation in the UK is not really very good, which is probably another reason to consider places like the US, Canada, Germany or Switzerland.

    Competition for admission to US schools is fairly intense and is a time consuming and expensive process, but there are some really amazing opportunities here. I'm currently a grad student (graphics, visualization and scientific computing) at UNC [unc.edu] and we probably have the largest number of graphics and imaging faculty and grad students under one (academic) roof in the world. We're not as hard to get into as a lot of the top schools like Berkeley, MIT, Stanford or CMU, but we still only take about 1 in 7 applicants or something. The key is to apply to as many places as you can afford, but only apply to places you'd actually attend.

    Happy searching!

  • Cornell University [cornell.edu] has a highly respected computer graphics program. I am not too familiar with it, other than the fact that I share a building with them...

    I can tell you Ithaca NY, where Cornell is located, is wonderfull, unless you hate gloomy weather and long winters.
  • If you decide you want to focus on graphics, I know a few people who attended Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, CA and have heard nothing but rave reviews. They all have great jobs now as well. You can see their site at: http://www.gnomon3d.com/ [gnomon3d.com]

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