Master at Cambridge

In this post I just want to give you an insight of how a MPhil (Master in Philosophy) in Computer Science is at Cambridge. I'll try to give all the aspects that come to my mind based on my 3 weeks here.

There are 3 terms (English partition probably..) equivalent with the old school trimesters. As a research master, we clearly have a lot of research to do.

We need to choose 6 courses (among 30 or so) over the first two terms (I have chosen 4 in the first term). For the remaining term, and part of the second one, we need to make this big research project. For some this could be considered as the graduation project (what we did at the university).

Each student gets a so-called "course advisor". You don't get to see much this person, but it is there "in case you need its help". I am not too sure what this means, clearly he/she is not there to do your homework. Actually I think I'm lucky because I've got to see my advisor already, as most of my colleagues didn't.

There are 3 types of courses: reading (Rxy), practical (Pxy) and lectures (Lxy) - xy are two bits given to differentiate the courses. On the reading courses you need to read a lot of papers (sometimes I get the feeling that I'm reading even more than when I was working in research). On the lectures you have the typical classes where the teacher speaks (I don't have any of those). In the practical courses, as the name says, you get to do smth practical. I am doing "Building an Internet Router", which is based on the Standford course and I find it really interesting as I am practically engineering the hardware of a router.

For the amount of work... well let's say that since I've started I didn't have more than a couple hours off. That is you are full. Actually if it would be to make everything perfect you couldn't afford to sleep, so basically you have to maintain a good balance between what you do and what you drop, while still keeping up.

On the facilities side I don't have any complain. We have a huge lab (Intel's lab) shared with the other undergraduates. Then there is the MPhil lab, where only we have access, which is very cool. Last but not least there is the MPhil room, where we have some nice sofas and a few computers. Overall the facilities are great, nothing to complain so far. Oh... and we have a relaxing room with a small billiard and foosball.

If you want to see more, check the website:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/acs.html

Just running out of time. I'll try to put updates (if anybody is actually interested in this stuff). I'll go on with seminars and may be colleges next time.