Graduate Student Association's Orientation, Advancement to Candidacy and Transferring Credit

I attended the Graduate Student Association's (GSA) Orientation today. A nice thing I learnt was that there's full remission of in-state education of registration fees and health care premiums if a student works at least 10 hours a week as a GSI/TA, Reader or Tutor (a 25% appointment or higher).

Tax filing is important too. GSA will hire a tax consultant for a workshop here later.

Setting Up Payment Account

There are two places you need to set up for receiving all your payments:

• Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) in MyUCSC for getting financial aid from Student Business Service, if you don't set this you will get your financial aid through checks.
• Payroll setup at your department for getting your payment from work as TA/GSR (I don't know how to do this yet).

Advance to Candidacy within Two Years?

At the BBQ I met a nice second year PhD student working on software engineering (Mr. Z). He planned to advance to candidacy at the end of this year (so two years in total).

According to Graduate Requirements, in order to advance to candidacy you must "have completed the course requirements, passed both the preliminary and qualifying examinations (or just the qualifying examination if passed prior to the end of the student's third year in the program), cleared all Incompletes from their records, have an appointed Dissertation Reading Committee and have paid the filing fee. "
Mr. Z said it's normally OK if you take two 5-credit courses each quarter so that you can finish all course requirements and advance to candidacy within two years. But you do have to work hard to make sure you find the topic for your dissertation (needed for qualifying examinations). Publishing papers is not a hard requirement. He said some other guys he talked two only advanced to candidacy at their fourth year!

Transferring Credits

We also talked about transferring credits from other Master programs. According to Graduate Requirements, you can transfer up to three courses from other institutions. But Mr. Z said normally it's hard because you have to submit your previous exam papers, term assignments as part of the partition. And you can only do that after the first quarter (so if you want to transfer CMPS 201 don't take it in the first year's first semester, you can take it at the second year's first semester).

I'm thinking of transferring some of my old courses, but it seems I can't find my old assignment works. :(

Choosing courses

Today I had the first on-campus face-to-face  meeting with my supervisor Professor Darrell Long. In his nice office he invited me for a cup of espresso, and even though I picked the mild flavor, it was still too strong for me (I'm a frequent coffee drinker back in my country but I rarely drink espresso). The caffeine has a strange effect on my heart, muscle and brain.

Then we talked about my courses for the first quarter. He gave me a very useful estimation and I documented here:

• Each 5 credit course = about 15 hours study a week (include pre-reading, class and after class assignment works)
• Each 2 or 3 credit course = about 8 hours study a week (ditto)

Therefore if you want to maintain around 40 hours study time a week you should know how much courses you should pick for a term.

Here's my initial plan for my first term (with credits):

• (3) CMPS 200: Research and Teaching in Computer Science and Engineering (09/22/11 - 12/02/11, Tu 04:00PM-05:45PM, Kresge Clrm 327, same as CMPE 200, thanks Yali!)
• (5) CMPS 201: Analysis of Algorithms
• (2) CMPS 280S: Seminar on Computer Systems
• (5) CMPS 221: Advanced Operating Systems
• (5) CMPS 290S: Advanced Topics in Computer Systems (Ethan Miller, 09/20/2011 - 12/02/2011, TuTh 12:00PM - 1:45PM, J Baskin Engr 169. NOTE: Begins at 9/20, not 9/22!)

CMPS 200 is a must do for all new graduate students in the first year. However when I tried to add this course into my curriculum at Sep. 3rd I found that all its 30 seats have been taken, although there are still nearly three weeks before the first lecture. I consulted my advisor about this and he told me I can walk in at the first lecture and register with the lecturer and it will be just fine.

CMPS 201 is also an essential course that a new graduate student should take.

CMPS 280S is the group seminar for our storage system research group so that's a must have.

Now for the three courses above I roughly need to work 8 + 15 + 8 = 31 hours per week. So I think I should only be able to take another one 5-credit course at most. I have to make a choice between CMPS 221 and 290S. Personally I think I have a strong OS background so I might not need to take 221. But my professor said why not try the first class of both courses before making the final decision? I think it's a good idea so that's what I will go.