Advice on applying Graduate School: Do you know the power of reference letters
Advice on applying Graduate School: How to get Financial aid for your graduate studies
Advice on applying Graduate School: How to choose the Right Schools for You
Advice on applying Graduate School: How to Plan Your Application
Advice on applying Graduate School: "How can I make my application more competitive?"
Advice on applying Graduate School: Going Overseas to do a Postgraduate Degree in Computer Science
What are the right reference letters for you? Think for a minute... Do you know the answers? If you are unsure about your answers, you probably should continue to think for a while.
Wrong Ideas about Reference Letters Foreigner students tend to have two kinds of wrong ideas about recommendation letters.
(1) Applicants with the first kind of wrong idea regard reference letters as something not that important. They think that as long as they can get two or three letters signed by their professors, make sure the grammar is correct, and send them out on time, they are fine. They believe that their scores will determine their fate regarding their admission and financial aid.
(2) Applicants with the second kind of wrong idea think that they need "powerful" recommendation letters. While it is true that reference letters should be "powerful," these applicants have wrong ideas as to what is considered "powerful" from an American's point of view. They often try to get a letter signed by a "famous" Dean of their department, or Chief of their working unit.
Correct Ideas about Reference Letters (1) Reference letters are extremely important. If you have high scores, admission officers want to also see evidence of your academic ability from your reference letters. They want to know you are not somebody who is only good at taking tests. If you apply for an Assistantship requiring certain skills or working experiences, admission officers hope that your reference letters will praise you for those skills or experiences. In short, good recommendation letters confirm your qualifications and, better yet, provide additional information about you that application forms and scores do not.
(2) In preparing reference letters, focus more on content. It is true that famous people may help to get attention from admissions officers. But how many profs in your own countries are so famous that even Americans know about them? If the letters do not contain the kind of information needed, they are useless. Furthermore, if the contents are so badly written or the "famous" person really does not seem to have good reasons to write the letter, admissions officers may think that the letters are fake. So focus on the contents and make sure the letters confirm your qualification and provide additional, useful information about you.
(3) A good reference letter should be reasonable and specific. Reasonable means that the person writing the letter knows you well and has the qualifications to evaluate you. A famous professor has the qualification -- but if she has only met you once, she does not know you well. Her writing a letter for you is unreasonable; it won't help you.
Most reference letters are filled with vague praises. That is bad. A good reference letter cites examples, provides specific information, and tells little stories about the student. Without the specifics, an admissions officer's doubt comes back to the question: Does the author of the letter really knows the student well?
Only reasonable letters with specific information can convince admissions officers. Only these kinds of reference letters can be considered "powerful."
How to Prepare Good Reference Letters Believe it or not, good reference letters may take 1-2 years to prepare! Here is why:
You need to get to know people who are qualified to write references for you. You need to impress them -- to let them know about you as much as possible, so that they eventually will be willing and able to write specific reference letters for you. All this takes time. You should start doing this as early as when you are a junior in college, in the case of applying to graduate schools.
Also, you need to know more than three persons who can write you references. That way, when one of them refuses to write a letter, you still have others to back up. This takes time as well.
Finally, when the time comes for you to ask for reference letters, be proactive and be direct! Not only ask for your references' permission to write a letter for you, but also tell them what you want in your letter. If they say that they cannot write the kind of things you want, go talk to another person. Your goal is to have the right kind of content in your letters!
You can rush to get reletively high GRE or TOEFL scores, but you won't be able to quickly obtain good reference letters and the writing ability and communication knowledge needed for preparing them. That is why you should start early!
The term "financial aid" has two different definitions.
Most US schools use "financial aid" to mean the US Federal Student Loan (low interest loan), Federal Work/Study Program, or Federal or State financial assistance (free money) to students from low-income families. This is need-based financial aid good only for US citizens and permanent residents. And it is widely available in US schools. That's why many schools sometimes boost a very high percentage of financial aid. But, it means nothing to you, as foreign students are not eligible for applying.
In other cases, "financial aid" is used to mean any kind of financial assistance, both need-based and merit-based, from both the school and outside sources. The merit-based financial aid includes TA (teaching assistantship), RA (research assistantship), GA (graduate assistantship), and Scholarship or Fellowship (both are free money for students).
It's almost always the case that foreign students can only apply for merit-based financial aid. But be aware that not all merit-financial aid is available for foreign students. For example, every year Cornell University offers 40 MBA students scholarships, but they are for citizens or permanent residents only.
For most schools, your application for admission also serves as your application for financial aid. Many schools may require additional one or two pieces of material for financial aid and may require you to submit your application before certain dates, which are usually earlier than the admission deadline.
Basis for Awarding Financial Aid So, on what basis do schools award their financial aid to applicants? There are two categories: (1) Academic and other types of excellence, and (2) the skills that an applicant can offer to the school.
Star students: Every class needs to have a few "star students." With star students being around, other students might feel good about themselves because they have high-caliber classmates. The star students will probably also provide more intelligent classroom discussions and quality papers that teachers can show to other students. And in the future, successful star students may help the school develop a good reputation.
To attract potential star students, almost all US schools use Fellowships or Scholarships. As you can see from the above description of the purpose of having star students, your application for a Fellowship or Scholarship needs to show your excellent academic record, unique working or personal experiences, good writing and oral communication skills, and a certain level of leadership.
Assistants: When you are applying for admission, you only need to be a quality applicant. But when you are applying for an assistantship (a TA, RA, or GA), you need to show that you have the skills to do the job.
For example, if a school is looking for TAs to teach undergraduate Mathematics classes, you'd better have good scores in your math courses. In many of the RA cases, school professors are specifically looking for certain skill sets and working experiences, which could be computer skills, lab experiences, etc. You have to find out what they are looking for and show in your application that you have what they want. Some assistantships, such as some RAs and most GAs, need no specific skills or experiences. In those cases, schools tend to give the assistantships to the best qualified applicants.
Applying Strategies and Tips Here are some useful strategies and tips that many Chinese students have successfully used in preparing their applications:
(1) Be an investigator! The above observations tell you general information of the kind of things US schools are looking for from applicants for financial aid. You need to find out details for your target schools so you can tailor application according to their needs. How to conduct the investigation? Please read the Step 5 of the 9-Step Guide.
(2) Probability helps. Apply to more schools and different kinds of schools! If all your targeted schools are top schools, you may find out later that none of them will offer you financial aid. You need to apply to some less competitive schools or to more schools to increase your probability of getting financial aid.
(3) Be flexible and know all the opportunities. Don't stick to a few schools or the only field that you want to get into. If your goal is to get financial aid, be flexible! Also, there are many opportunities that few people know about. For example, applying to MBA programs is so popular now that it's hard to get financial aid from an MBA program. But if you apply for an MS in Finance, you may easily get financial aid.
(4) Networking with insiders. For students who want to apply for an assistantship, the easiest way is probably to get some help from within the schools. If you know somebody who is studying in the school, he or she might be able to recommend you to certain professors or tell you what to do with your application. This is very effective!
(5) Nothing is final with financial aid. The most inaccurate information in a school catalog could be the information about assistantships. In many cases, schools won't really know how many assistantships they need until long after the application deadline passes. Also, professors have always applied for all kinds of research grants and some of them may suddenly come -- for example, in August. So, if you keep contact with the school even when they have refused you financial aid, you may get it later because of the unexpected money. Alternatively, after you have arrived in school, you can talk to the school and the school may give you one then.
More and Easier than You ThinkMost applicants think that it is extremely difficult to get financial aid and are puzzled by the awarding process. So they put all their energy into scoring high on the standardized tests (GRE and TOEFL), hoping this will bring them good fortune. This is precisely the wrong approach!
There are a lot of opportunities for financial aid -- and you don't have to score even 2,000 on the GRE to get one. The keys are to (1) know where the opportunies exist and (2) what the schools or professors want and then to (3) prepare your application tailored specifically for them. To keep taking tests does not do any of the three important things for you.
Remember, there are always more financial aid opportunities than you think and getting finanicial aid is easier than you have imagined if you take the right approach. But you do need good communication skills and in-depth knowledge of the American system!
What are you currently doing to find the right schools for you? Do you simply look at some kind of school rankings and decide that you are only going to apply to several second-tier schools and then randomly contact them? Or do you single out all the schools with the lowest application fees and think you will at least save some money?
These are not the ways to find your perfect schools!
In order to decide which schools you should apply to, you need to do two things right: (1) Have a clear objective in selecting your schools; and (2) Know how to research US schools and spend a lot of time doing it.
Objectives in Selecting Your Schools You need goals and objectives for almost everything you do for your applications. And they have to be clear and specific. The same is true with your school selections.
In selecting your future schools, your objectives can be many. Examples: (a) Your objective is to go to the best schools. (b) You will settle for whichever schools offer you a scholarship. (c) You plan on paying the tuition on your own so you want a school that is affordable. (d) You know that you will have to work part-time at a restaurant; therefore, big cities with a lot of Chinese restaurants are the right ones for you. (e) You want to go to Boston because the person with whom you are secretly in love is there.
You can have any kinds of objectives for choosing your schools and you can even have multiple objectives. For instance, you might want a scholarship and at the same time you might only prefer big cities. That's fine. But no matter what objectives you have, the objectives must be clear and specific and then you must find the schools that meet your specifications.
Do you have clear objectives in selecting your schools?
How to Research the US Schools There are so many schools in America. How should you go about researching your ideal schools?
Most students use the school rankings as their main tool. But, this is not the best approach. The best approach is (a) to acquire general knowledge about American university system and then (b) to do in-depth research on the individual schools that are on your list of potential targets.
General Knowledge about American Universities:
(1) Private vs. Public: Private universities are usually considered much more prestigious than public universities. Private universities have quality professors who are actually teaching while many public universities have their best professors mostly doing research. While top private schools are extremely competitive, average private schools are easy to get in because they want your money. Public universities normally have more RA and TA positions available than private ones because they don't have enough budget from the government to pay for real professors. So they'll pay you.
(2) Geographical Differences: Universities in the Southern US normally charge much lower tuition than their Northern counterparts. Universities in boring states such as Alabama or Iowa are much less competitive in terms of admissions standards even though some of them are top-ranked schools. (For most Americans, those places are seen as not much fun.) California is an extremely difficult state for students to apply.
(3) Big vs. Small: Generally, small schools are much more likely to pay close attention to your application and your situation than the big ones. They are likely to be more flexible too. For example, they might be more willing to write a letter to the US Embassy for you or to add some additional money to your scholarship when you have problems with your visa. Of course, they may have fewer scholarships; this, however, is not always the case. But at the same time, they may have fewer applicants as well.
Methods to Research Individual Universities:
(1) Knowing the Obvious: Get school catalogs, go to the schools' website, and read books on American schools to know as many official details of the schools as possible. Is the school that you are researching a private school or a public one? Is it big or small? Where is it located? Do they fit the general descriptions listed above? How are they going to help you meet your goals?
(2) Figuring out the Untold: Look beyond rankings, application fees, and deadlines. When you study a university, don't just write down what is required for an application. Instead, read between lines in a school catalog. What kind of students are studying in this university? Are they rich kids or average US citizens? Do they have a lot of international students? Is this a school with mostly White students? What kind of professors does the school have? Are they more specialized in research or teaching? If you have answers to all these questions, you should be able to imagine the real conditions of the school and therefore decide whether you will like the school or not and whether the school will like you as a student.
(3) Personifying Schools: Know the school like a human being. A school is like a person; it has its own personality. Some schools are always motivated and aggressive. They are eager to pick up a good student on the spot. Some schools are arrogant and they won't give you much special help. Other schools are very liberal; they like to have more minority students and international students. Different schools have different educational philosophies. For example, some top schools will let you in easily but have high standards for graduation. Some schools like Harvard care not only about academic performance but also about family connections.
(4) Confirming Findings: If you can, you should confirm your research results through some channels. For example, if you know somebody who has studied in that school, talk to him or her. You can also try to send an email to the school or one or two professors there to see how they respond to your inquiries. You should always review, confirm, and adjust the schools of your choosing.
Always with Objectives in Mind Remember: Whatever you do to research the right US schools for you, you need to be aware of your own objectives in choosing a school. You need to constantly evaluate the schools against your objectives to see whether they meet your requirements.
With this approach, your application will have a better chance to be accepted by the schools that you have selected.
We all know that we need a plan for our application so we won't be late in meeting the application deadlines. "Experts" tell us to request school catalogs in August, take the GRE exam no later than December, and mail out applications by February 15. Is this the right way to plan our application process? Yes, but it's only partially right.
If you think that planning consists of simply allowing enough time to finish everything required by the applications, you have missed the critical point! Planning your application is about being very clear about what you want to achieve (and when), knowing how to achieve it, and having an alternative plan if your original one fails.
In other words, a good plan has three parts: (1) Goals and objectives, (2) strategies and action plans to achieve those goals and objectives, and (3) alternative (backup) plans in case things fail.
Goals and Objectives The most important part in a plan is its goals and objectives. Without them, you are wasting your time.
Let's assume that you have thought through major issues about whether you should pursue an education in the US or not. Let's say that the conclusion is that yes, you should. And you have also assessed your qualifications and decided that you want to get into one of the best universities by August 2000. This is your goal.
Now in order to achieve your goal, you need to make your application competitive.
For example, you want to:
1. Publish 1-2 new research papers by the year end; 2. Have two strong reference letters ready in two months; 3. Score at least 1,900 on the October GRE test; 4. Rewrite your application essay to make it more convincing; 5. Take one more course to strengthen your existing academic background.
Little goals such as those five above are called objectives. Objectives are the necessary requirements for achieving your goal. According to your plan, you believe that once you fulfill all or most of the objectives, you should be able to achieve your goal and get into one of the top American universities.
Criteria for Goal Setting: There are two criteria as to whether you have done an adequate job in setting up your goal and objectives.
(1) Are the goal and objectives clear and specific? Ask yourself questions such as "What is my goal in preparing this application?" If you know nothing more than the names of the schools to which you are applying, you don't have a clear goal. If you are applying to all kinds of schools -- from the worst to the best -- with equal energy, you don't have a specific goal and you are only trying your luck like a stupid gambler.
You also need to be clear and specific about your objectives. Don't simply fill out an application form or get an application essay done on time. Think about what you want to achieve by finishing them! If you know that you want your references to show your research potential and you understand that you're taking an additional mathematics class to build a stronger quantitative background, you are clear and specific about what you are doing.
(2) Are your goal and objectives practical? Is your goal of applying to the best schools realistic, given your background and the time you have available for preparing your application? What is the probability that you will get financial aid if you change your major? It would be ideal that you can reach all the five objectives listed above. But if you realize that it is impossible to finish even half of them in a short period of time, your objectives are impractical. You need to modify your objectives or reduce the number of them for your plan.
Strategies and Action Plans Once you have developed clear, specific, and practical goals and objectives, you have to come up with right strategies and specific action plans with time estimates for completing them.
To devise a winning action plan, keep asking yourself the following three questions:
(a) What is the best way to meet each one of my objectives? For some people, the best way to get a high GMAT score might be to study alone...while others might do better by going to a preparation school.
(b) How much time do I need to accomplish this specific objective? You shouldn't just have an objective of writing a strong essay and assume that you can accomplish it in three days. You may need three months to practice your writing before you can even write an adequately good essay. Without good estimates of the time required for actions, you will fail at the end.
(c) What is the probability that my action plans will work? If the chance is low, is it because the objective is impractical or the strategy/action is ineffective? You will only realize the impossibility of reaching some of your objectives or flaws in your action plans after you have started to pursue them. Therefore it is extremely important to keep evaluating your plans and redefining them accordingly.
Alternative Plans Mostly, nothing will work as perfectly as planned. Therefore a good plan always has alternative plans to handle failures or unexpected situations.
If your primary plan is to get into one of the best schools in the US, what do you do if it fails? Your alternative plans can be many. For example, you can apply to some average universities in addition to the best ones. If your primary plan fails, you can still be able to go to a second-tier school. Or you can wait for next year to re-apply. In that case, your alternative plan is to try one more time.
You also need alternative plans for achieving your objectives. If you have difficulty in improving your writing skills, should you hire a private teacher to help you? Alternatively, you could give up on the idea of writing a great essay and, instead, try to get a quality recommendation letter to improve your competitiveness. To have an alternative plan also means that when you plan on taking the GRE test in October, you know you will have a second chance to retake it in December if your first try fails. (This is one of many alternatives.)
Remember this: if you reduce 10% of your time for preparing the TOEFL or GRE test and instead, use the saved time for planning, your probability of getting to America will increase 100% or even more. So, develop a sound plan for your application!
What are your answers? To be serious with your thinking, you can write your answers here to share with other BeBeyond members.
The first thing comes to mind is, of course, the scores. Get as high as possible scores and you will be accepted and will get financial aid. This is true in many cases. But as we mentioned before (1) High scores DO NOT always guarantee you a place in or financial aid from an American university. Neither do they warrant you a visa. (2) An application with low scores CAN still be competitive.
You might have also read from some school application guidebooks that you should list all the awards that you have amassed from high school, college, and everywhere else. There are at least two potential problems with that advice.
(1) If every applicant lists a number of similar awards, how can the very similar awards make you stand out among others others? It will be tough!
(2) Some awards might send a wrong message. For example, if you are applying to an engineering school and you list overwhelming number of awards in music, the admissions officer might question your academic interests: Do you want to become a musician or an engineer? In this case, list one or two awards in music might be perfect to show that you are a student with some interests in different areas.
So what should you do to make your application more competitive? The answer is simple: Think. Continuously think for yourself how you can make your application more competitive, given your background and situation. Don't just passively fill out your application forms.
What are the aspects of your application that will make you more competitive? The answer is that almost anything that impresses the admissions officers while is relevant to your study goals will do. For some people, it could be their passion for the field they are pursuing. For others, it could be a convincing, detailed reference letter. You may have low GPAs and average GRE scores, but your working experiences are impressive. So emphasize it! The great thing about applying to US universities is that you can always be creative about your application. You can even turn your weakness into your strength because unlike the Chinese educational system, the US system uses more flexible admission criteria.
One of my friends, Mark, an American who got his M.D. from University of Chicago, was a trouble student in high school because of his family situation. Before graduating from high school, he realized that he needed a quality higher education for his life. He wrote an essay that talked about how came to this realization from being a lost high school student. His maturity made him stand out among many other applicants and his writing showed that he had academic potential. He was admitted with a very low GPAs.
Finally, you can also improve your competitiveness by doing a lot of things. For example, take some additional courses, publish a paper, work for certain jobs, etc.
This document is intended to be, as the title would suggest, a guide for South African students who are interested in getting a postgraduate degree in Computer Science overseas. What is actually is, however, is the collected expertise of a few of us - almost all from the (legendary!) Wits CS Honours 2001 class - who've done it.
I decided to setup this guide as a way to save that collected experience, because the two most important hurdles you have to overcome before you decide to get a postgraduate degree overseas are fully realising that it's not only possible but actually very feasible, and then understanding how to go about doing it. This information is usually obtained by word of mouth, which immediately leads to the obvious problem that people who have recently decided to study overseas are by now usually very far away. Every time one of us goes back home, we make a point of visiting Wits and talking to the current batch of Honours students, but that isn't really enough.
To make a decision like this, you need to know that it's an option early, and you need to get a good grasp of the shape of that option. That's what this document is for. When some of the members of my group of Honours students decided to study overseas, it took us a very long time to collectively gather some of this. I've written this guide so that you can get a very good start in one place.
It's worth mentioning that much of the information here will port to other disciplines, particularly the other Mathematical Sciences and the Engineering disciplines, and maybe even further. I can't vouch for that, but most of the general advice and all of the scholarships I've listed are not specific to Computer Science.
2. Why Study Overseas?
There are a couple of good reasons to study overseas.
You want to become an academic, in which case a PhD from a good overseas University will in all likelihood significantly boost your career. It will also benefit you in other ways - it will expand your view of academia, give you exposure to other methods of research, teaching, fundraising and administration, and generally broaden your horizons.
It's a career boost, even if you plan to go straight into industry. South African employers like the sound of a foreign degree, especially in something useful, and they also like the implied life experience. Having the extra experience and a broader knowledge of the subject is always good.
It's a fantastic personal experience. Living and studying overseas, meeting people from all over the world, and learning about the way that things work overseas (in industry, academia and life) is tremendously personally enriching.
You want to study for a little bit more (or you're not quite ready to start working) but you want a bit of an adventure. This is pretty much the same as the last point. :) Many people only start to really enjoy their studies when they start to really get into the heart of a subject, or when they start doing research. Some people who start out this way decide after their experience that they really do want to become academics (although obviously many of them decide that they really don't).
There are also one major downside. For however long you decide to study overseas for, you're going to be away from your family and your old friends. It's unlikely that you'll be able to afford to fly home more than once or perhaps twice a year. You should be aware that when you leave home and come back much later, everything may be completely different to the way it was when you left it, for all sorts of reasons.
3. Which Degree and Where?
The UK MSc degree is mostly a single year Master's degree, almost always half coursework and half research project (although some are coursework only). These degrees are intensive, and a good opportunity to get deeper into an area you're interested in. In the UK they're often used as conversion courses for students wishing to switch disciplines, since you can go directly into a PhD there with just an undergraduate degree. The UK also has another Master's level degree, called an MPhil, that is usually a two year research only degree similar to a mini-PhD. Sometimes this degree is conferred when a PhD student submits a thesis that isn't of sufficient quality or depth.
The British PhD (or DPhil at some Universities, notably Oxford and Sussex) is a three year research only degree, during which your only goal is to produce a thesis (although if you do not have an MSc you may be asked to do some courses to complete your background). You're usually given a year to come up with a research proposal, and then two years to complete it. You should be warned that many people don't finish in three years, and end up taking four or five. This happens for several reasons, not least of which is the freedom given to you during your degree - you are required to submit yearly progress reports, and that's about it, unless your supervisor feels like they need to keep a close watch in your progress. Your funding, however, will almost certainly only last three years (although most universities don't charge tuition fees for longer than that). Nevertheless, finishing in three years is definitely feasible if you put your mind to it, don't slack off, and maintain focus (anyone who thinks that is easy has never been to Edinburgh). The quality of the UK PhD varies; the best ones are as good as the best in the world, but some of the lower end are probably below what would be considered sufficient in the US.
In the US, the MS is usually a professional degree, and terminal in the sense that it does not lead to a PhD or get your credits towards a PhD unless it is awarded during your enrollment in a PhD programme. It's much easier to get into a very good MS programme than it is to get into a very good PhD programme, but it's harder to get funding for since the relevant School us unlikely to fund you.
The American PhD lasts for between four and six years, and usually consists of a breadth component and a depth component. The breadth component usually consists of coursework covering the primary areas of CS (often Systems, Theory and AI) and takes up about the first two years. It is usually terminated by a set of Qualifying Exams. Failing your quals gets you kicked out of the PhD programme (many offer a second, but never a third, chance), and passing them gets you into PhD candidacy. The coursework you do during this phase usually gets you an MS along the way to your PhD (although it sometimes requires a small research project that is considered your Master's thesis), and if you already have a recognised MS or MSc then you can often skip some of it. After candidacy you are required to write a thesis, which takes at least two years, but possibly up to four.
Canada is somewhere between the two systems. You are required to get an MSc before you go onto a PhD, and it is similar to the American MS in that it takes about two years and has substantial coursework and research components. It's usually easier to get funding from your target Department though, because it is required for a PhD. After an MSc you apply separately for a PhD, which requires a few more courses and is followed by a thesis, with the whole degree taking another three or four years.
Most people proceed by deciding what kind of experience they want - if they're in it for the life experience, or want to do a Master's degree to help them decide whether to do a PhD, they mostly go for a UK or Canadian MSc at an interesting place and a University that matches their broad research interests and career goals. Students who want to do a PhD are generally more concerned with individual supervisors (advisors in the US) in terms of research match, reputation, personal interaction, ideas and personal dynamism.
It's worth noting that it's sometimes difficult to switch Universities between your MSc or MS and PhD, especially from the UK to the US (although not necessarily vice versa). Inevitably, you'll like one place and one University more than the other, and one academic culture more than the other (American academic culture is very different to the British tradition, which is what we're used to in SA).
4. Getting Funding
The first thing you should do when looking for funding is go to the Financial Aid and Scholarships office at your University and ask for all the information they have about scholarships for studying overseas (at Wits this is called the International File, and most of it is online here). It usually has quite a few decent funding opportunities, and will tell you when your deadlines are. You should also go to the NRF and have a look at their list of international funding opportunities, as well as their fellowships for PhD study overseas. It's essential to plan well ahead - scholarship applications are often due more than a year before you would actually start your degree (so you should start planning at the beginning, not the end, of your Honours year). Also, it always pays to check out the funding opportunities available at the Universities you want to go to - some have their own special scholarships for international students, students from third world countries, etc., which you might be eligible for.
The funding options open to you depend heavily on where you decide to study, and which degree you decide to go for. What you're looking for is colloquially termed a "Full Ride", which means tuition plus a stipend that's sufficient to survive on. Most scholarships will also pay for your flights and some relocation expenses.
If you're going to the US for an MS, then you'll almost certainly have to get a scholarship, most likely a Fulbright. Since the MS is primarily a professional degree in the US, most schools expect applicants to find their own funding, or pay their own way.
If you're going for an American PhD, then you can also apply for a Fulbright, but most good schools will find funding for you if you get in anyway - either in the form of a Teaching Assistantship (TA), where you have to do things like tutor a class, grade tests and exams, etc., or a Research Assistantship (RA), where you're essentially paid for your contribution to a particular active grant. Some, but not many, Schools will also be able to offer you a Departmental Fellowship.
This leads many students to think that they don't need to worry about funding at all. However, you should be aware that the funding situation in the US isn't quite as wonderful as it sounds. Students with TAs, and sometimes those with Departmental Fellowships, often come under pressure to switch to RAships, so that the funding can be used to get more students. Students with TAs often find that they want to switch to an RA anyway, because they don't like teaching or because it takes up too much time. Students who have RAs are essentially being paid for their research skills, but they're almost always funded through research grants obtained by their advisors. These grants typically come from DARPA, the NSF, the NIH or NASA.
In such cases, you will be expected to work on the topic and the deliverables promised in the grant, and you may find that you have significantly less time than you thought to do your own research. This isn't a problem if you don't have a very strong and narrowly focused research interest, and in such cases it may actually help you find a research direction of your own, but if you have something very specific you're interested in you might find this frustrating (on the plus side, many advisors will be happy to help you write a grant covering your specific interests). You may also find that some funding agencies will impose constraints on your research, or that you find you're uncomfortable working for them (e.g., DARPA has recently displayed a tendency to see Universities as cheap contractors for building Killer Robots). For these reasons, I suggest that if you want to get a PhD in America you do your level best to get a Fulbright, because it will make these issues disappear.
If you decide to go to the UK for an MSc or an MPhil, then once again you're most likely on your own for funding. The most likely sources for Masters and PhD level funding are:
A Patrick and Margaret Flanagan Scholarship (administered by Wits or Rhodes), for women only. This can also be used in the US but applications for study at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, St Andrews, or Trinity College Dublin are preferred.
The Scottish International Scholarship Programme, which offers scholarships for permanent residents of certain countries (one of which is South Africa) who would like to do a one year Masters at a Scottish University.
All of these scholarships offer you a Full Ride, except the Patrick and Margarent Flanagan which sometimes only funds two years of study. Some South African Universities also have their own scholarships available.
It's also possible (but slightly harder) to get your target University to fund you for a PhD. This usually happens through the combination of an Overseas Research Scholarship (which pays for the difference between overseas and EU (or home) fees, but can only be applied for through one UK University) and a University or Departmental Scholarship, which pays for home fees and a stipend. It is also occasionally possible to apply for an open Research Associate position at the Department in question (these are advertised at jobs.ac.uk). A Research Associate post is a paid position where you're required to work on a particular funded research grant. Since UK PhDs are so short, it's almost certain that your thesis will be on work you've done within the scope of the grant, so it's a good idea to only consider grants that cover research areas you're interested in.
If you want to go to Canada, then you can often get a Full Ride for an MSc or a PhD from the Department, according to something akin to the American system, but probably with less pressure. You can also apply for a Commonwealth Scholarship to go to Canada, although far fewer of these are granted than the UK version.
5. Getting In
There's an awful lot of information on the Internet about how to get into a good CS postgraduate school. Most of this information is about American schools, but also applies to Canadian Schools, although they are generally slightly less competitive.
The American PhD application process at a very good school works something like this:
Everyone without reasonably good GRE scores gets cut.
Everyone who didn't do very well in their previous degrees (this means a first or sometimes upper second for Honours, ditto for an MSc) gets cut.
Everyone who doesn't have references that say that they're very good, that they have serious research potential, and that they're dedicated and interested, gets cut. References that say that you're good at coursework are not good enough; these schools are being asked to bet a large amount of money on your ability to do research, so they naturally prefer references that say that you have some research experience, or that you're at least likely be good at it.
This process usually leaves about four times as many students as the School can actually take. What happens next depends on the Schools; some schools (not many, an example is MIT) give your application packets to potential advisors, and they pick the students they're interested in. For these schools, you want your Statement of Purpose to be neatly aligned with your potential advisors research interests. Some of these Schools (notably USC) go even further, and require some sort of student-advisor relationship to be established during the admissions process. At such a school you should very specifically target a particular advisor, read their papers, and perhaps contact them directly when you apply. Other Schools (e.g., Carnegie Mellon) try to work out which students have good research potential instead and leave the advisor-student matching process until later.
So if you're serious about getting into a top-ranked American PhD programme, then you need to:
Do well at your Honours degree.
Get good scores for your GRE. PRACTICE. At the very minimum use all the free practice material you get to familiarise yourself with the style of questioning. If you can afford it, get a study guide and do as many example questions as you can.
Sometimes it helps to get an MSc, even if the programme website says you don't need one, and do as well as you can. You can even, if you like, do an MSc in the UK with the aim of getting into a good PhD programme in the US. An MSc helps because it gives you more research experience, a better chance to get very good references, and a strong shot at publishing something. Which brings me to ...
If you can, publish something. Having just one decent publication will almost certainly lift your chances dramatically, because it's proof that you are capable of doing research, and it distinguishes you from the majority of applicants.
Target particular advisors in advance, and write your Statement of Purpose with them in mind. Even in schools where potential advisors don't see it during admission, it's impressive to have thought about how and where you'll fit in, and it'll help you decide where you would be able to pursue your interests.
Obviously everything is much less competitive for Masters level courses, and at Universities with lower ranked Schools.
In the British system, if you have a good undergraduate degree, decent references and you can get funding then you shouldn't have any problem getting into to whichever school you like. The problem then shifts to how to impress funding agencies, which depends on the agency, but is usually centered around an impressive coursework record first, then solid references, then a good statement of purpose. Publications count, but not as much. If you need to get into a good Department in the UK and get funded, then you're in a competitive situation very much like that in the US, without of course having to do a GRE. Once again, just one good publication can make your application.
6. Making a Decision
After you've applied to a whole bunch of schools, and gotten into some fraction of them, you're faced with deciding where to spend the next few years of your life. For some people, this is an easy decision, and for others, it's an incredibly difficult one. Here are the factors you'll need to take into consideration.
Supervisor (or advisor) name and research match. Your supervisor is going to be the most important person in your academic life for the duration of your degree. Most students aim to find someone with a very similar research agenda to their own. It's also often a good idea to get a well known supervisor, someone who is recognised as good in the research community, because your name will be associated with theirs for quite some time. On the other hand, well known supervisors often have less time, less energy and are less enthusiastic about way out ideas than younger ones. Sometimes it's useful to land up in a Department with more than one potential supervisor. It's a good idea to contact potential supervisors by email once you've been accepted (this is often OK in the UK before you've been accepted). Your supervisor name and research match is much more important for PhDs than for MScs.
Department strength also obviously determines the academic value that you get out of your degree, and the amount of department name recognition that you'll get. This is very often field-specific; many strong Departments are in otherwise weak Universities. This is mostly important if you want to impress people within Computer Science.
School strength and name recognition is mostly important if you want people outside of Computer Science. If you want to get a good job after your degree, then having a degree from a famous University might count more than having a degree from a lesser known but technically better one.
Location and Setting are an important and often neglected aspect of your choice. Is it a country you're excited about living in? Is it an area of that country that you want to live in? Is it in a city, or a small town? Are there lots of international students? It's important to know that you'll be happy with the place that you live before you commit between one and five years to living there. If you're primarily after the life experience, then this aspect might even be the most important one.
Funding. When you're comparing offers, make sure that you understand and have clarified the funding situation with each. Email the University contact you've been assigned to and get them to tell you everything they know about the funding situation. Stipends, conditions, fees and general area living expenses vary widely.
Departmental Atmosphere can also be something you want to look out for - some Departments are very competitive and not very friendly. Others are extremely collaborative. You should know what kind of situation you're walking into before you make your choice.
You should make a decision based on some kind of weighted sum of the above factors. Everybody has their own weights, but not everybody actually knows what they are. If worst comes to worse, then a good piece of advice is to flip a coin, and then if you find yourself wanting to make it best of three, you know where you want to go.
One extremely important piece of advice: if you're deciding, visit all of your potential Schools. US programmes will often pay for you to do this (although in our experience they will place a cap on how much they will pay for visiting international students (e.g., CMU caps at $800, which is about all you will be able to expect, and may not be enough to pay for your whole trip)), but UK programs won't. When you visit, it's important to speak to your potential advisors and have a look around, but it's also incredibly important to speak to their students, and other students in the Department generally. Find out what it's like working for them, how happy their students are, how quickly they finish, and how much leeway they're given. If an advisor wants you as a student, they'll come across as friendly and helpful, but the kinds of personality quirks that you'll encounter much later might significantly affect the course of your degree. This seems to be less true in the UK than it is in the US.
