Master of Engineering in Computer Science Degree Requirements

Total Credits Required

A student must complete 30 credits.

Any work that contributes to these 30 credits must begin after entering the M.Eng. program --- courses and other work completed before entering the program cannot be counted retroactively. Any exceptions to the above must be pre-approved by the Director of the CS M.Eng. Program. None of the 30 credits may be counted toward any other degree program.

Distribution of Credits

All 30 credits must be from courses which are both "technical" and "advanced".

"Technical" courses include most graduate level (400 and above,) although not all of the courses offered by the Engineering College, the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and the ''Information Systems'' program at the Johnson Graduate School of Management. The M.Eng. Curriculum Committee determines whether a course is considered technical.

For Computer Science courses, "advanced" courses are numbered 400 and above. Courses outside of CS are usually considered "advanced" if they are at the 400 level or above, however, the M.Eng. Curriculum Committee has final say on whether a non-CS course is considered advanced.

Three to six of the 30 credits must be earned as project credit: (see the section "Project" below)

All projects must be accompanied by a written report due on the last day of final exams and must be taken for a letter grade.

No more than 6 credits of Project work will be counted towards the 30 credit total.

Project credit will not be counted towards the required 15 CS course credits.

Project grade must not be lower than a B to count towards project requirement.

At least 15 of the 30 credits must come from Computer Science courses that are not:

seminars, independent studies, or

M.Eng. research project (CS790).

Note: No more than 21 credits may be taken in one semester.

Grade Requirements

A minimum of 28 of the 30 credits required must be taken for a letter grade. Or more simply only two credits may be taken under the S/U grading option.

No course with a grade of less than C- can be counted for M.Eng. credit.

A grade of B or better is required for all the credits associated with the project.

A cumulative GPA of at least 2.5 must be maintained to stay in the program.

Registration

M.Eng. students must be registered as a full time student with the Graduate School while taking courses and performing independent research under the course CS790.

Early admission students are considered undergraduates and shall register with their undergraduate school until their undergraduate degree is earned.

Students are expected to complete the program in two semesters, exceptions will be made only for extreme circumstances and only with approval of the program director.

The M.Eng. Project

Three to six of the 30 credits must be from the M.Eng. project which is an application of computer science techniques to practice (for example, a software or hardware design, or the solution of an engineering problem).

All M.Eng. projects must be supervised by a Cornell faculty member or researcher and include a final report.

You may satisfy the project requirement in one of the following ways:

Complete an individual M.Eng. project, and register for CS790 with at least three credits for this project (your project supervisor will decide the exact number of CS790 credits you should register for). Some CS courses are particularly useful for finding individual projects (e.g., 501, 519, 632, 612, 614, 664, 674). However, please note that the programming assignments and/or projects contained in these courses do not by themselves satisfy the M.Eng. project requirement.

Take a two-credit 400-level or 500-level Computer Science Practicum course (e.g., CS413, 415, 433, 473, 515), and complete a larger project than normally required. You should also register for CS790 with at least one credit to account for the increase in the project size.