[soc.college] Univs in Canada

marshek@ut-emx.UUCP (The KIller Tomato) (04/22/88)

Hi there,
Which are the best Canadian Schools for higher studies in
EE/CS at the Ph.D. level ?
Factors for consideration
1. Faculty
2. Funding
3. Misc. Facilities
Shirley

cd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Clarence K. Din) (04/25/88)

In article <1804@ut-emx.UUCP> marshek@ut-emx.UUCP (The KIller Tomato) writes:
>
>Hi there,
>Which are the best Canadian Schools for higher studies in
>EE/CS at the Ph.D. level ?
>Factors for consideration
>1. Faculty
>2. Funding
>3. Misc. Facilities
>Shirley

I don't know this for sure, but I believe the "Top Three" in Canada
for Computer Science are: The University of Waterloo, The University
of Toronto, and McGill.

(My uncle's Canadian, so he should know.)

-Clarence

cd@bu-cs.bu.edu

tjhorton@csri.toronto.edu (Tim Horton) (04/26/88)

In article <1804@ut-emx.UUCP> marshek@ut-emx.UUCP (The KIller Tomato) writes:
>
>Which are the best Canadian Schools for higher studies in
>EE/CS at the Ph.D. level ?
>Factors for consideration
>1. Faculty
>2. Funding
>3. Misc. Facilities

As an EE'er from Waterloo, now a CS'er at Toronto, I think that THE
factor for considering gradschools is:  WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO THERE?

Faculty ain't worth beans to you if nobody's interested in your area
(a given researcher's active research area is typically quite small)
Individuals normally have strong biases toward certain things, and it's
not worth it to set out on uphill battles of such magnitude (if none of
them are interested, you may as well have no "Faculty" at all).

Funding depends.  Different schools have very different priorities.
- Toronto, for instance, pours it's money into their idea of "world-class"
  faculty and grad research facilities (while criminally negligent to
  undergrad facilities, BTW).
- Waterloo likes to develop things for industry, and has computer facilities
  coming out it's ears at all levels.
etc. etc

For example, some people mentioned Toronto, Waterloo, and McGill:
- you might want to do computational vision; What kind?  Depending on your
  preferences, the right place would be one or the other of Toronto or McGill.
- you might want to do silicon compilers; Waterloo would be the answer.
- you might want to do connectionism, knowledge representation, etc;  Toronto.
- you might want to do pattern recognition; Waterloo. (DON'T come to Toronto).
etc. etc.

Toronto, Waterloo, McGill, Montreal, Hull, Western, Queens, SFU, UBC, ...
they all have their world-class edges, and their softer points.

IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WANT.  Reputations are generally way over-valued.

If you want well-supported business machines you go to IBM, **but**
if you want inexpensive desktop calculators you *don't* go to IBM.
If you want something state-of-the-art you *do not* go to IBM!!! :-)