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Is it possible to get admitted in a phd in computer science with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering? If the answer is yes, then would a graduate student in theoretical computer science who has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering experience difficulty understanding the computer science?

Susan Niknam
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    I knew an individual that went from biology BS straight to a Theoretical CS graduate program, without any undergrad cs courses. What they ended up having to do is take the prereq undergrad courses that were needed to have a good enough grounding for the grad program. So if you have a good grounding in math and you are ready to work a little extra sure there are programs that will probably accept you. Do you have a specific area of interest? Grab some texts/journals and see how you fair in reading them. – scrappedcola Jun 23 '17 at 14:31
  • A large number of people go from EE to CS AFAIK – xuq01 Jun 24 '17 at 08:08
  • I don't see a problem. I'm in the school of electrical engineering. Our students go on and do thesis in medical and radiation physics, computer science and computational biology. Also, in computer science, a lot of academics have an undergraduate in electrical engineering. – Prof. Santa Claus Jun 25 '17 at 02:10

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This is definitely possible, but the question how much remedial or independent study will you need?

If you're in Theoretical computer science, you will need a good handle on:

  • Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Discrete math
  • Induction and formal logic
  • Graph Theory
  • Formal languages
  • Complexity theory (P vs NP, etc.)
  • Computability and the Halting Problem
  • Reductions, both for computability and complexity

In addition, you will probably be expected to be able to program fairly well and fairly cleanly, to not be tied to specific programming languages, and use tools like version control and shell scripting. My experience is that engineers are usually able to pick up CS content pretty fast, but often write messy code, and often are uncomfortable in Languages other than C

Some of this you may be able to learn in your program, as some countries have courses as a part of their PhD programs. But some you may need to study on your own.

Joey Eremondi
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