Admission for Graduate Students
The Department of Computer Science offers rigorous doctoral and professional master degree programs that balance theory and practice, draw recent research results into the classroom, and prepare students for career-long learning and improvement. Graduate students in our programs come from the best universities in the world, and they engage in hands-on research with some of the top scientists in the field today.
Among the computer science faculty are directors of university centers, members of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Medicine, National Science Foundation CAREER award recipients, and fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a variety of other organizations.
Faculty and students in the department have a broad range of research interests in the areas of algorithms and artificial intelligence, computer engineering and systems, and programming languages and software engineering.
Admission Process
Computer science graduate student admission is handled by the Computer Science Department. If you are interested in graduate studies in computer science at Rice, you are welcome to apply online. Although most applicants for computer science graduate programs have backgrounds in computer science or math, the graduate admissions committee encourages highly motivated students with undergraduate degrees in related disciplines to apply for admission.
If you have questions about either graduate studies at Rice or the application process, peruse the responses to frequently asked questions or email the graduate admissions committee.
Financial Support
Graduate students enrolled in the Ph.D. program are fully supported by graduate fellowships or research assistantships funded from a variety of sources, including departmental funds, research grants, and external fellowships. This support typically includes a monthly stipend and graduate tuition. First-year doctoral students are supported by the department. In subsequent years, doctoral students are supported by research funds or external fellowships. Typically, the research funds are provided by the student’s advisor.
Doctoral students are encouraged to apply for external fellowships; students who gain external support receive an additional internal supplement. A few external fellowships to consider include the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, the DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. See the Rice Internship Initiative for their list of graduate school fellowships; Rice's Fondren Library also provides information about graduate fellowships.
Graduate students enrolled in the MDS and MCS professional masters programs are not eligible for financial support from either departmental funds or research grants. Visit the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies cost of study page for information about current tuition, fees, and housing costs.