KSU Department of Computer Science: Prospective Students

A Letter to Prospective Applicants

Dear prospective applicant:

Thank you for your interest in the computer science graduate program at Kent State University!

The Computer Science Department offers the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.), Master of Science (M.S.), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in computer science.

The Master's program is intended for those students who want a professional education in computer science beyond the Bachelor's level, and is our most popular program. Many of our courses rotate into the evening on a regular basis, which makes this program particularly accessible to non-traditional students who work locally.

The Ph.D. program, in contrast, is designed for students interested in becoming professional scholars, college and university teachers, or independent research workers in private, industrial, or government research institutions. Our Ph.D. program is one of only four CS Ph.D. programs in the state public university system, and the only one in northeast Ohio.

The Computer Science Department has 19 faculty, approximately 100 graduate students and approximately 250 undergraduate students, and is experiencing strong growth in student numbers. The department has been targeted for significant enhancement by the State of Ohio and Kent State University, and will be increasing its equipment holdings and staff considerably in the near future.

In broad terms, the major areas of faculty research are distributed and parallel processing, networking and net-centric
systems, and computational science, graphics and visualization. Other active research areas include bioinformatics,
database and data mining, geometric and graph algorithms, image processing, and software engineering,

Current information about our university, department, graduate program, faculty, facilities, etc. can be found at the following web sites:

Kent State University -- http://www.kent.edu
Department of Computer Science -- http://www.cs.kent.edu
Computer Science Graduate Program -- http://www.cs.kent.edu/programs/grad

Students entering our Master's program are generally expected to have a Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related discipline, with a grade point average of 3.0 out of 4.0. GRE is strongly recommended for admission and used as one of the criteria for financial aid consideration. We do require the TOEFL for international applicants.

We expect applicants to our program to have mathematical proficiency through Linear Algebra and Discrete Mathematics, and to have taken computer science course work that minimally includes Data Structures, Structure of Programming Languages, Operating Systems, and Computer Architecture.

These admission requirements are described online at Masters Admission and PhD Admission, respectively

If you are interested in our program, we recommend that you complete your applications for admission and for financial support as soon as possible. While it may be possible that the university and the department can process an application as little as 4-6 weeks before the start of the semester, it would be desirable to submit applications well before that date, especially for international applications. Also, please note that the application fee cannot be waived or deferred.

The application process is described online at Application Process. If you request that we mail a hardcopy of application materials to you, please note that those request emails should be sent to the Graduate Secretary (cs-gradinfo@cs.kent.edu), NOT to the Graduate Coordinator.

Financial aid is sometimes available in the form of Graduate Assistantships (GAs). A GA for the academic year (Fall and Spring semesters) carries a stipend that ranges from $13,000 for an entering Master's student to $18,000 for a post-Candidacy Ph.D. student, plus tuition. When the budget permits, a GA also receives summer support ($4,333 - $6,000, plus tuition). Other forms of support, such Research Assistantships or Part-Time Instructorships, may also be available.

Applications for financial aid must be received before the deadlines of January 31 (for Fall applications) or September 15th (for Spring applications). Students who receive awards will be notified by early March, or late October, respectively. Unfortunately, due to the large number of requests, we can only notify applicants who will be awarded an assistantship.

See the financial scholarship or assistantship application process described on the graduate website.

We appreciate your interest in our program, and we look forward to considering your application!

Hassan Peyravi
Graduate Coordinator
cs-gradcoord@cs.kent.edu