Continuing: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1338032

Beth,

I’m a full Professor of Computer Science, and former department chair, in a PhD granting Computer Science department. I work directly with many students, personally advise a half dozen PhD candidates, review grad school applications, and keep in touch with former students. I’m posting this anonymously because I really have nothing but bad news to convey, and I’m also gonna be a little bit harsh with you.

First of all: CUT THE APRON STRINGS! Do it. Do it now. Why? As a couple other folks posted, your son is an adult. If he wants to get into and succeed in grad school he’s going to have to be self-starting, self-sufficient, self-everything. That’s a given. But let me give you a peek behind the curtain. We actually want to know when a student shows up with their mommy or daddy, because we do NOT want those students in a PhD program. Staff and faculty will be polite, smile, even ask them to pose for pictures, because we want to know who they are and do not want to let them through. I need to know that I can count on Johnny to get things done, assigned tasks, research, papers, etc, without needing parental supervision or help. No one except perhaps a teenaged prodigy ought to show up in a graduate school office with their parents. NO ONE. EVER. If you don’t want to brand your son a mama’s boy, and effectively blackball him from grad school, let him do it himself.

Next, more bad news: the academic job market for CS PhDs right now is abysmal. Sad, but true. In the past couple years we’ve had post-docs working in our department who already have PhDs from “better” schools than both where I teach and where I earned my PhD. A post-doc, in case you don’t know, is essentially someone who’s already earned their doctorate, but for all intents and purposes cannot find a suitable position, so they continue to study and write papers in the hopes of making themselves a better candidate for a future position. Effectively a graduate assistant with a terminal degree. In the old days, “terminal” meant you were done. Now it means that you’re one of the too many candidates for every opening.

As others have posted, a PhD outside of academia simply means that you’re over educated. Frankly, aside from a few choice companies (named by some of the other posters), IT departments in industry do not value advanced degrees, and applicants frequently now “dumb down” their resumes lest they be considered overqualified for mundane meat-and-potato jobs.

Lastly, I want to disabuse you of the notion that you can “get him in” if he just gives you the green light to do so. Honestly, no one in the CS department is going to care that you went to Law School, at that or any other institution. And they shouldn’t, and neither should the reverse, for example, if you had a graduate degree in CS, and he was applying to Law School. “Legacy” means nothing in a legitimate graduate school. There are no networks of folks large and influential enough to “get him in” to a program based on favors and fond reminiscence, spanning schools and departments. Professors have to worry about their reputations, even amongst their colleagues. I like to think I have some influence within my department, but when it comes to admissions I’m just one rater on a committee. I’m not going to campaign for the kid of some lady who went to “our” Law School two decades ago just because someone on campus whom I don’t even know remembers her fondly. And that person’s not even going to try to communicate with me or anyone else in the department that they might know. Does that even make sense? You might be thinking “I saw doctor so-and-so and told him to put in a good word and he said ok…” But that’s standard operating procedure. Why would doctor so-and-so want to spoil a relationship or someone’s memories? It’s easier to just be polite than explaining all of the above and risking hurting feelings or, worse, starting an argument. Besides, there’s a chance that the student might measure up and be admitted anyway, so no need to discourage it. At the same time, if they aren’t admitted you can say, “Sorry, I tried, but…” It’s just easier to be polite than explaining reality. Graduate schools at research institutions are incredibly mercenary.

I guess what I’m saying is that you can’t “work it” to give him a “leg up” or “skew his odds.” You mention that he might not need it but that it can’t hurt. I’d suggest the opposite: you can’t bend the system to his advantage, but you could actually diminish his chances. The harder you push, and the more “influence” you try to exert, the more likely you’ll actually effect his chances detrimentally. Don't believe me? Then take him in and introduce him around the CS department.

When I read your post, it nearly made my teeth curl. Hence my reply. The presumption interspersed with ack ack ack, crap crap crap. Honestly, I hope that you’re just over-brimming with excitement and enthusiasm for your son, and that you don’t really believe all that crap you wrote. Love him. Uplift him. Undergird him with morale support. But, please, if you want him to succeed, don’t think you can go down to the university and kick down doors and knock obstacles out of his way. He’s got to do it himself—all you can do on campus is make him look foolish and undesirable.

Absolutely true! I was a faculty member at a smaller university, and I agree 100% with this note. A helicopter parent does more damage than you can possibly understand. Let you child be an adult.

1. I'm not going with him anywhere (I wasn't planning to, anyway)

2. I agree with a lot that you wrote

3. I'm going to share what you wrote with him

4. My alma is big on legacy students. That's kind of how it is. I had no idea such a thing existed until I was there.

5. I can't game the system in the sense that I can get him in anywhere, just like I can't get someone a job. But I can recommend a classmate for a position. The rest is on them. ETA: IOW, I know people who went to certain schools who can give him the rundown on faculty. I had no idea, but when I applied to grad school, some of my classmates found out who was sitting on the committee for our class and tailored their personal statements to what they thought the faculty members would like to hear.

6. My first post was a freak out. I was vacillating. I'm done. It's all on him now.

ETA: Yes, I know what a postdoc is. I also know what fellows and visiting fellows are. I also know that in certain areas of academia, you better hope someone quits or dies if you'd like a tenure-track position. *If* he does this, it will be under his own steam. I won't interfere. Do I want to interfere? Yes, but I know I shouldn't.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2014 11:38PM by Beth.

Beth - First, congratulations to your son, he sounds like an amazing young man! I hope everything works out for him.

As a mother myself, I understand your desire to help your son realize his full potential. However, I fully agree with what Anon for this one wrote above. My son was only 20 years old when he was accepted with a full scholarship to a prestigious law school. The thing is... I didn't do one thing to help him. When he was a teenager I helped him navigate the initial college admissions process but by the time he graduated I expected that he was intelligent enough, and ambitious enough to figure things out for himself... and he did!

Let your son be his own man.... you will be glad you did.

A classmate reached out and said, "You know I was in xxxxx with like half of the xxxxxx CS Department, right? Have him put together some questions and I can introduce him to some profs there who were former singing buddies of mine."

And with all respect to the OP, because educators in academia don't get enough respect, CS programs don't actually teach you how to code. You will learn a great deal about what is or is not Turing computable and about certain theorems, and you'll write code for your projects, but until you have a couple of years experience actually coding for the real world, you'll be a hazard to your clients. If your son really wants to learn everything, he should go get a job under the supervision of a senior developer who reviews his code and holds him accountable for producing quality work. At some point experience becomes more valuable than theory. I've interviewed a number of recent MS CS grads with no work experience who could not answer basic questions about the platform they would be required to work on, but got all the object oriented theory questions correct.

FWIW, I'd estimate that 50% of working programmers have no CS degree. Those who do have an edge up in their early career, but many of us are self taught. I have a philosophy degree and have worked with people who majored in Medieval Studies, English, History, and all manner of unrelated subject. I even worked with a programmer who had attended Yale Law, practiced for a couple of years, and decided he'd be happier writting code. So really, unless you're going to be a professor, work or NASA, the NSA, or research new types of arcane algorithms, I strongly have to advise against grad school for CS.

If your son really feels compelled to get a graduate degree in CS, recognize that such a degree is learning for the sake of learning. I would advise him to find the least expensive program that has a reasonably good reputation. Georgia Tech offers an online MS program that only costs $7,000 in tuition in total, which doesn't preclude entering the work force at the same time. http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

A better use of time and money would be to earn an MBA or a degree focused on managing technical enterprises.

Right now it is learning for learning's sake. He loves what he's learning and doesn't want to stop. I was surprised when he mentioned looking at PhD programs. The only computer scientists he knows are the few professors that teach at his small school. After reading and thinking about the information you've (the collective you) been sharing, he might decide to go another way.

My first post in the original thread was about me being too involved in the sense that I'd take over, and I needed to be reigned in. You all helped me with that. I asked for parenting advice because I don't want to be *that mom*. I wrote the first few posts before I spoke to him.

After I spoke to him, he said it would be nice to have information from more sources than the ones he has access to.

I appreciate everything that people have shared.

I was a sophomore when a professor came up to me and asked me if I'd considered law school. He put me in touch with another professor I hadn't taken, and I took some courses with him. He also put me in touch with another professor I hadn't taken who graduated from the school I attended. I took classes with him. He wrote one of my letters of recommendation. I couldn't have figured all of this out by myself. I learned that I could take a prep class for free by working for Kaplan. I learned about fee waivers for the LSAT and applications. I didn't not know that I could do these things, but people who knew more than I did shared knowledge, and that's really what this is about. How do I find people that aren't in his circle that he can't find to help him figure this mess out?

Once he decides that he has enough information, he can go from there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 12:09AM by Beth.

I have a BS in CS, and nearly 20 years of working experience in the software industry. Along the way, I picked up an MBA part time to "help my career," and it did. A few years ago I wanted to update my skills so I went back to night school to get an MS in Software Engineering. I liked it so much that I quit my full time job and now teach half time and am pursuing a PhD half time and do a little consulting. So, I definitely have a foot planted firmly in both camps: academia and industry. I'd agree with most of what the OP says, and some of the other posters too. Unless your son is determined to have a PhD in CS, I'd suggest working for a year or two. I've heard a lot of cool stuff about that MS at GA Tech, but I'd suggest a masters degree in something else, like an MBA, to round out his skills, or if he wants something in technology try a masters degree in something more applied, like Software Engineering, or Information Systems. It will help him more in the work force than a CS degree which is all theoretical stuff. In fact, security is where all the money is right now, on and off campus. Research money and jobs are all "security" focused lately.

It's good for him to have different perspectives.

Oh, and I'd emphasize what the OP said about the academic job market right now for CS jobs. It sucks. Fortunately for me, Software Engineering is somewhat interdisciplinary. I'm teaching in the IT department, but I'm teaching programming classes. At the same time, I have an offer to teach full-time in the Business school (MIS). I'm sure my MBA helps in this regard. Most graduates don't have this breadth of study or the lengthy work history, so it gives me a leg up too. That said, I don't want to teach "CS," and I'm leaning towards the MIS job because schools of business tend to pay much better than engineering schools (by almost 50%).

I hadn't honestly considered studying anything outside of computer science and math. Can you elaborate on how the MBA helps you? I mean, I got that your job options are less limited, considering that you've got a wider berth of knowledge and experience, but what does the actual knowledge that you've gained from the MBA do for you?

I've got to be honest, though: I'm sure the degree is helpful for what you're doing, but I'm not sure business is for me. I don't know how it is at other schools, but at my college, there's an undergraduate computer science program and an undergraduate information systems program. The main difference between the two here is that the CS program is much more about the technical stuff, while the IS program is centered more around the business and administrative side of things. I don't know if coding is what I want to spend my life on, but the more functional "how stuff works" side of things is what really piques my interest.

Thoughts after a very brief skimming of the subject:

1. Help as much as you can but no more than he wishes.

2. Forget all the calls for "cutting the apron strings etc.". That's silly. There's a life time for him "to be a man", and there's nothing "unmanly" about getting help from family and community. That's what rich people do, that's what ethnic communities do, and it's good. If you can do it, do it.

3. Good on you raising a child to a place of such a wide variety of life choices. Enjoy it and teach him to enjoy it. Man is that he might have joy;^)

I feel like I have to keep defending our relationship.

He works three jobs and still has a high GPA. He helps incoming freshman who are at risk of dropping out because many are the first people in their family to attend college. I text once a month, "This is your monthly text from your mother. Please confirm that you are alive." We live on different sides of the country, and I see him twice a year. It's not like I micromanage his life. I don't even ask him about his grades or if he is dating or drinking or whatever. It's not my business. All that he has taken on is his to manage, and he's doing a great job - it's just that he has hit a wall right now, and he needs some help. We talk about classes that he's taken, and it's like he's speaking in a different language. I didn't say, "Hey, while you're at it, pick up a couple of minors along the way." This is all *him*, and I have no idea how he does it.

Thank you for responding to my mother's inquiries using your capacity for human kindness. It didn't occur to me until I read your post, but it's entirely possible that the reason some of the other posters in this thread are so entrenched in computer science is that they're secretly robots. That might also be the reason that some of them haven't seemed to grasp the concept of treating others with respect. Keep on doing what you do, friend :)

A few thoughts:

Any chance you'll sleep on this and feel different in the a.m.?

Have you considered writing an advice column?

Can I call you for unfiltered advice regarding major life decisions?

I can't stop thinking of you sitting at your computer as your teeth curled. I don't know why I see Jim Carey.

I think it was cathartic for you to make that post (?)

It was informative and funny as all hell.

:)

that person assumed I wouldn't like what s/he wrote or like her/him if I knew who they are.

Annnd, a friend from grad school just told me that her husband would love to talk to my son. He designs (I think that's the right word) iPhone operating systems. Or is it platforms? I imagine he and anyone else my son speaks with will echo many of the things that have been written here about the state of the industry, coding vs. theory - help him take such a large area of science and help point him in a direction that might be a good fit for him.

I don't understand what I did that was so wrong.

I have only one piece of advice for doctoral candidates in this day and age.

FIRST GO TO A TRADE SCHOOL AND LEARN A TRADE!

Maybe then you will be able to put beans on the table.

Neither one of us wants that.

Seriously, though, uh. I'm not looking to get rich quick here or anything, you know? I've seen all of the other CS kiddies at my school and it seems like they all think they're going to start up the next Zynga or Mojang. They don't come to class, they don't pay attention when they do, and they don't care. They don't care about the field that they're studying. They just want the professor to dismiss us so they can go play Hearthstone. Then they turn around and look at me like I'm some god for knowing what a binary search tree is.

I'm not one of those kids. I actually enjoy the process, and I'm not just looking for quick results. I know I'm going to have to start paying back loans before I know it, but part of me is kinda like "What's the point if they're gonna be with me until I die, anyway?" I think a lot of folks my age feel this way, too. Or else, they haven't really reached the point in their lives where they start thinking about consequences yet.

I guess my point is that I know I'll need the beans, but I never really liked them that much anyway.

My recommendation, if he is doing a grad degree in CS, go for machine learning/artificial intelligence. It is a hot area right now, but beyond that it is a skill set that (at least right now) will immediately place you in senior positions, potentially consulting directly with upper management directly, straight out of school. It also isn't necessarily as much of a programming discipline as other CS studies might be, which might be a positive or a negative, it is however math and statistics heavy. Granted, after a 3-7 year grad study program the field will have totally changed, but I see things only getting better (the corporate realm is quite immature right now for ML/AI developers, but it is getting better all the time as more tools and products hit the market and the technology is proven useful. The immaturity of the field in industry leads to mostly great opportunities, but that can be somewhat difficult to find).

Edit: this is one of the areas of the CS industry where it seems that a grad degree helps (otherwise it just seems to be less useful than the experience you would have had), you really need at least an MS to be taken seriously, at least from what seemed to be the case when I was looking for jobs.
And for someone with a wide variety of interests it is easy to get into discussions surround psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy in that kind of study. I feel like that is more the case than for other CS fields.

Then again, this is all my personal bias, so take it with a grain of salt :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 02:03AM by notnewatthisanymore.

He asked me to print the threads so he can read them tomorrow.

The thing I'm loving about this is the varied responses from people who are passionate about CS and are willing to share the things that jazz them.

I agree with you about machine learning. You are better off getting into that field with an advanced degree, largely because the need for deeper theory and advanced math skills. Ironically, the one person I know who is in that field has a GED, but he is a pretty exceptional person. I know I couldn't teach myself machine learning.

It is an extreamly promising field.

Machine learning and AI, huh? It certainly sounds like something I'd be interested in, but the problem is that everything else does, too!

Like my mom said, I'm mostly interested in learning for the sake of learning right now. I know the job market is crap and my generation's prospects are crap because everything is crap, but that doesn't really worry me. I'll find a career or I won't. At this point, it's not really my main concern because I'd rather study something that I'm interested in and then maybe have to get a job doing something unrelated than study something I don't care about, then get a job doing things that I don't care about just because the prospects seem to be better.

In any case, thanks for the words of wisdom! :D

Hey, guys. So, uh. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone--and I do mean everyone--for all of the advice. There's certainly still a lot for me to learn before I go off begging schools to tell me I was really one of the cool kids all along, but, at the very least, I don't feel quite as ignorant now as I did thirty minutes ago. Sincerely, I thank you.

Second of all, I have to be honest about my intentions here: While, as I've said, I'm certainly appreciative of the help, I'm writing all of this less to address the legitimate words of advice and more to address the assumptions made by OP and a few others about my mother and our relationship.

You have to understand: I'm not an angry person. It really takes a lot to properly upset me, but if I were to name one thing that tickles my frothing rage gland, it would have to be "people who condescend others based on assumptions and projections."

You don't know me, OP. You don't. That's all there is to it. And for all that I'm sure my mother may be a vocal (and if I know her at all, possibly too vocal, at times) member of this community, you don't know her, either.

Shame on you for presuming that you do. Shame on you for presuming that you understand the nature of our relationship based on a few paragraphs she wrote on the internet. Shame on you for the way that you and your colleagues treat those grad school hopefuls. Shame on you for thinking that you have the right to judge the worth of other people based on your own preconceived notions and limited life experience.

Don't get me wrong, though; I get it. You've been alive for a few decades. I'm sure you've been around the block once or twice. You've, at the very least, put in the time and effort to get yourself a position as a department chair in a PhD granting department somewhere. You've probably met a lot of people in your life, so it's natural for you to to label and catalog them. Categorization is the default method for understanding the world around you, after all; we deal with new stimuli by likening them to things we've already experienced so that we have some frame of reference by which we can grasp the new things.

People are complex, though. People have decades of continuous existence under their belts. People differ from one another in necessarily infinite ways. You can no more comprehend the entire being of a person than you can count all of the numbers between zero and one. Likewise, you can no more judge the academic worth of a student based on your limited understanding of her relationship with her parents than you can use that same relationship to judge whether or not she's a domestic abuse victim.

It's astounding to me that so few people seem to get that. The world is complex. Life is complex. Certainly, you can divide a subject into simpler and simpler specimens, but the grand fallacy is that there is always a finite point that you cannot surpass. In reality, there is only a finite point at which our vocabularies become insufficient to describe what we're observing.

It's abhorrent to me that there are people out there who hold the futures of others in their hands and deem those people unworthy--even unfit--to write a couple papers just because they brought their parents along that one time. There's any number of reasons a person might take their parents to see a school.

Lord knows I try to keep my life compartmentalized, lest my mother snoop around and have a panic attack the next time one of my idiot friends nearly burns his apartment down trying to light farts on fire, but even I could think of reasons that I might want my mother to come with me to see a prospective grad school. Maybe she's been there before. Maybe she knows someone on campus and wanted to visit just as much as I did. Maybe she just wanted to see what it looked like.

In any case, I do my work. I get stuff done. I sacrifice sleep and relationships with my friends and loved ones so that I can do work--UNDERGRADUATE WORK--that I can be proud of. I spend hours every day trying to teach bored college students middle-school-level math and English so that they can squeak by in their classes and get that shiny piece of paper their parents told them was so, so important. I spend my life--my limited time on this planet--trying to impart knowledge about things that I love onto people who do not care. I don't get A's to impress you. I don't spell check my work so that you'll think I'm smart. I don't need your respect, and I don't need your school's clown-shoes approach to determining someone's academic worth.

The thing that really bothers me about this condemnation of my mother as some helicopter parent, though, is that I sent SAMs after that craft years ago. That Black Hawk is down. Call me "Solid Snake" because I fear no Hinds. She does not manage my life, nor do I need her to. The only reason that this series of threads even came to be is that she came to me, told me she might know some people who know some people with CS degrees, and asked if she wanted me to see if they had any pearls of wisdom. This thread does not exist because I am incapable. This thread does not exist because I am incompetent. This thread does not exist because I lack the confidence to stop suckling. This thread exists because my mother made the mistake of thinking she could ask for genuine advice from strangers on the internet without them insulting her intelligence or integrity.

Again, though, I'm thankful--to everyone--for the career advice. I'll certainly take it to heart, but OP, I find your lack of faith disturbing.

May I point out one aspect of this thread that I readily observed? You are a fantastic writer. My goodness. I am serious. I have a feeling you will be successful wherever you end up. Loved this line especially, "but if I were to name one thing that tickles my frothing rage gland, it would have to be "people who condescend others based on assumptions and projections."

Try not to be so quick to find offense. I'm sure none was intended. Advice was asked for, including re how much a parent should be involved, and posters responded accordingly.

Good luck in your endeavors. Hope you enjoy the board.

You really missed the exchange. Reboot and read it again.

People love to talk. How about listening?

or my son? I think he's done, so he might not respond.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 11:45AM by Beth.

Did you read your mom's original post? That one was pretty panicky and screamed helicopter mom. That's why she's getting the blowback she is.

Now that she's calmed down and not so much in Grizzly Mama mode, I have a little note for Beth:

Breathe. He is a grown-ass man. I know you know this. Just say it to yourself out loud, a few thousand times. He can handle himself. (That's clear from his posts above.)

I understand that he will always be YOUR baby, but you have to understand that he is not a baby. You get to keep your son, but you have to figure out how to relate to him as two adults instead of mommy and baby. You can still have a terrific relationship with your son -- he will always be your son and you will probably always love each other. Subverting that instinct to protect, well, I don't have kids, so I can't even imagine how difficult that is. I see an awful lot of intelligent, capable, reasonable people have trouble with that very thing. Love is a powerful drug, ya know?

The only advice I have for you is: CTFD. Just. Calm. Down. There really aren't any down sides to grad school. At worst, he'll be over qualified and under employed. And clever enough to make his own way somehow. He will be just fine and so will you.

He did read the original post, and he said something to the effect that he's not surprised that I had that flip out. It's weird having us both on this thread. Anyway, he said that he understands how people who don't know me could see it as they have. I'm not saying that my behavior is okay or healthy, and I told him before he read the thread that I'd gone a bit wacko.

CTFD - he laughed. Yep. I've heard that before from someone close to me. That you for reminding me.

I finally found my mantra.

One additional thought, Beth's Son -- I understand the falling in love with academia bit, I really do. There was a time when I was in my M.A. program when I was considering going for my PhD, because living the life of the mind is so alluring. It can be very pleasant to spend your time reading, writing, thinking, and discussing serious topics with like-minded people.

Before you consider grad school, however, I would get out into the working world for a few years. Put that CS degree to work. It will give you some needed perspective. I know when my friends were applying for MBA programs the schools required them to have some real-world business experience first. There is a reason for that. Theory will only take you so far.

Grad school will still be waiting for you should you decide to go. But my advice to you is to take that "shakedown cruise" before you set sail for a distant land.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 09:23AM by summer.

He might come lurk later. I think the Darth Vader quote was his sign off, but I don't know.

<3



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 11:56AM by Beth.