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I am now an alumnus of University at Buffalo. And this is a long overdue edit to this answer. I am cognizant of the fact that this will make reading this longer than needed for a brief read. But my target audience is someone who really wants to dig deep into the possibility of studying at UB. Also, in due time I will add a tl;dr portion.March, Spring break, 2014I have delayed writing this answer, only to give it the respect it deserves having been A2A. I will ask the reader to keep in mind that I presently have 1 year still remaining in my program and the views I express here are my own. I have zero bias in evaluating the current state and personally I have tried to keep this answer as objective as possible.Now to evaluate how good is the MS program (short for - MS in Computer science and engineering), I need to elaborate on it's relative performance compared to other universities around the world. I am not sure you are looking for that. If you are, then there are these websites which do a better job - Computer Science.I highly recommend reading Philip Guo's memoir about his graduate school experience before you start. It gave me perspective on the large gap between my mental framework during my undergraduate years and the preceding time running up to my first grad school semester. There was a huge difference. And so will yours be.I expect you want my perspective based on my interactions here and the general sense I get. I will do just that.1) Courses:Some of the courses offered here are the best in the world. Although, they are not as rigorously evaluated. What I mean by it is that the coursework per se is not as heavy as maybe it would be at MIT or even at University of Washington.However, there are exceptions. Let's name these courses as A-level. The OS course taught by Geoff Challen can compete with any other OS class globally. His academic history sometimes precedes his teaching prowess (He attended some of the same classes as Mark Zuckerberg did at Harvard). You can actually view his past courses on Youtube and get a feel of it.I quote this from our welcome session organized by the department last Fall. "If you take the OS class from Professor Challen, you will not see the light of day". We knew the director of courses was jesting but he was not far from the truth. The database course and Networking course are also, arguably, one of the toughest. Database systems is taught by Oliver. Oliver Kennedy. He is akin to a rockstar, but a really non-outspoken one. I'll give you a million dollars if you can make him smile. Don't get me wrong, he is very jovial and perspicacious in all aspects of life. But only in the classroom.Perhaps, one of the best professors to learn something from is Professor Dimitrios. He is an exceptional mentor and teacher. His research is something I cannot comment about, since I haven't worked with him. In fact, apart from Varun Chandola, I haven't worked with any other professor personally. The research section of the answer is down below, so I'll wait for then. Steve Ko is the best person to learn about Distributed Systems. Professor Demirbas also teaches Distributed systems at a B-level, but you would do well to take his version of the course when you have solid basic knowledge about distributed systems in advance or are doing research in the area.Then there are courses where you would expect a lot of work but they are administered with a grain of salt by the instructor, thereby not being as heavy. B-level. The algorithms courses fall into his category. The faculty teaching AI subjects are the best in the world. Like super. But apart from courses by Jason Corso (who is no more with UB; his departure was sorta controversial) and Varun Chandola, the other courses in AI are rather off the radar for someone coming in to do their Master's at UB. Pseudo data scientists are waiting to be formed when students take the Intro to Machine Learning class with Professor Srihari too seriously.The rest could be classified as C-level. Although, it is good to note that these courses might cover material which is top quality but may not have the best outcomes for the majority of people taking them. Either due to the inherent pedagogy of the course or the motivations of the students/instructor.The C-level courses are important too. Quoting again from our welcome session - "Even if I were to take 4 graduate courses at this moment, it would be very tough for me, even 3 graduate courses can be a handful...So don't take 4 hard courses". He was not jesting on this occasion. Another quote from a senior faculty I highly respect -Professor Miller - when asked for advice by someone on which courses to take this semester in addition to his: "...if you were my son, I would advice you to not take more than 2 programming based project courses. It is just not right. At this age you should explore things, visit places, conferences...". Another quote which I hold dearly from the same professor: "...consider this to be your internship, you are graduate students, I want to teach you things which you could use in the real world, by giving you a tool-box..."I have written a lot about courses. But the hard fact is that courses for a graduate student should not matter most. As graduate students, we need to look at aspects which are a level above grades in courses. We need to understand the philosophy behind them, observe the abstractions they help us develop and learn the various aspects necessary to do research. Research is the only thing that should matter. Even at job interviews, a company would want to see a graduate student that would contribute to the state-of-the-art at their organizations, not the same old bull students are fed down their throats during undergrad. Although, it is advisable to be aware of the basic concepts and I believe the courses in the MS program do just that in case you have not involved yourself with actual Computer Science in your previous lives.I kind of surmise from the question that you are not concerned with research opportunities. But they are available. By the looks of it the faculty is doubling every semester! Note however, that MS students have to really stand out to get those opportunities given the competition and large numbers. Plus, for new faculty to give funded research student positions is a toughie. Because faculty is not allowed to use the department funds for MS students - they believe a much better use for them would be for full time PhD students. They may employ their personal research funds. Although, largely only the senior faculty have those lying around. But they can be quite stingy and hard to approach. Understandably so.Rating: 3.5/52) Internships and full-time jobs:I understand that an internship at a reputed company is a very good opportunity to beef-up your resume for a full time job. It is a big concern for you and most students. Even the Phd students, as it is a good source of funding if they do not have a better one already. Overall, UB has a good reputation at most big tech companies like Amazon*. The other answers have already provided useful information about numbers. I will try to give you a different perspective.I am in touch with students who had not secured an intern position and they have full time jobs presently and are pretty happy with them. Internships for MS students are not easy at UB. Firstly, because we do not have co-op relations and that we compete with students who study in California. Secondly, companies in the NYC area are sparse. It is quite natural to hire an intern who will not require housing funds for his/her period at the company. And most companies prefer to do that. However, UB is a reputed name and you will not be hampered by that fact. I think that is a just description. General advice: apply early, apply in thousands, apply everywhere.Adding to what I had written above after securing a meaningful job, I still agree with all the points above. There is a hidden feeling of indefinite optimism in my tone when I wrote it. The unknown yet secure time, pre-graduation, still lay in front then. Now, I can with utmost conviction say that - getting a job that I expect to like is an inherently difficult question and means different things to people.There were vast spans of time after my last semester when I felt I would not get a decent job at all. And the thought that I might as well do the unthinkable, and call up my constantly encouraging investors (guardians/parents) to inform them of my incapability. There were many like I, who had to rough out the large share of the winter figuring the best way forwards. A small portion sealed their fates pretty early, and secured high paying jobs well before their last semester. Around a third found their calling by the end of the semester. A third picked up decent to great paying jobs in two months after the last semester. And then there were some who like me experienced the grind. Interviewed successfully and unsuccessfully for some time. And then started working, satisfied.I had a very different path coming. I started working at a startup, which failed, or I failed at it. One of the two. I traveled to the Mecca that is Silicon valley, and interviewed a fair bit. And then finalized on one which was a right fit for me in my stage of life. It is a testament to the american graduate school system that allows these hiccups to not stop someone trying hard, abruptly. Caveat being that it was a rosy time for the economy, and if stuck in that conundrum during the 2007-09 crises, things could have looked sea different. But I did choose an apt time, so it was part luck, part diligence.Rating: 3/53) Daily life at UBThis analysis is from a friend of mine. I agree with it. "Both the fall and spring semesters span 265 days. From the first snowfall in the first half of November to today it has been cold and wintery (it even snowed yesterday). This winter spans at least 155 days. 155/265=59% winter, 155/365=42% winter. It is an abomination, I say! We are just cold for half of our lives."If you can make peace with it then there is nothing wrong with Buffalo. Let me not keep this part just about snow and winter. There are other aspects of daily life. Food and housing are considerably low priced. UB makes their students feel at home and has constant chirp of activities in the student union; free food, games, dance, music and sometimes fashion shows and bubble water discos. Walmart and Aldis provide cost effective places to shop. UB provides bi-weekly rides to these places. During weekends, UB has shuttles to malls and watering holes as well circa 2014. Which is an awesome initiative. The housing opportunities are many and thus here come my mandatory line - choose well. Choose good roommates and area to live in.All in all, daily life is quite fun on campus. At least for me. You will always find people who will have reasons to moan. And some that will always have reasons to party. Keep your company balanced and healthy. And you will find that Buffalo and the neighboring places such as Niagara, Rochester, National parks can be fun. People are polite and Buffalo is called the 'city of good neighbors'. (Don't live next to a frat house though!)Rating: 3/54) MiscelleneousThere are certain things which cannot be clustered into the above three segments. Like the tech scene, the sports scene and the factor called settling in. Try to ease off when you get here and settle in. Speak to people, professors and other students. Be a part of UB and not an outsider. You will be staying here for at least 1.5 years; 1 summer, 2 falls and 1 winter. That is a long time in your life. Do not second guess your choice if you get here. Keep your mental strength and have fun.Buffalo's tech scene is witnessing a revival of some sorts. Western New York is experiencing a surge of start-ups and people want to see development in their home cities and not just migrate to California. Attend seminars open for students and professionals. I attended and presented the Buffalo Bar Camp 2014. That really helped me on the recreational front during the sordid Spring semester. Try to understand what technologies are in demand and what businesses are looking to build systems etc. It will give you a good perspective of gaps in tech businesses and where bleeding-edge CS can fill the voids.I am a sports fan, but I wasn't introduced to american football very well during my time here. The Bills (American football) and the Sabres (Ice hockey) are local teams which have a large fan base. Although an international student from UB would rarely brave the weather to go downtown and attend a game. Also, UB doesn't have a great sports legacy. The stadiums are rarely packed. So, that is kind of a bummer for me.Rating: 2/5I will make sure to add a tl;dr to this answer when I get the time. I believe the information above is quite sufficient to understand all the aspects you are looking at.:) It feels great to have a badge adjacent to my name with the topics section of University at Buffalo. I thank you guys!If you want more information, please PM me. Comments or suggestions are also appreciated. I have a lot of unanswered question remaining in my inbox, but I do try to answer as soon as possible.EDITS: Transportation in Buffalo and around UB can be a big hassle. This is even more of a hassle for students as they live on a small budget. There are services such as Zipcars and Taxis which can be used for mission critical situations.Some of the courses listed on the CSE website are being handled by RAs / Post docs / TAs. I would suggest finding out who is teaching before enrolling for courses.(*) It is now evident that Amazon had accelerated their entry-level college recruitment program from 2014. Owing to the fact that their business is scaling tremendously. It is fair to say (and my fellow classmates will attest to this fact) that the interview process has become highly inconsistent. Inconsistent meant differing levels of interview questions and stages. HR, imho, was holding A/B tests for their talent recruitment strategies.

I’m “established university faculty” and my wife used to teach high school, so I think I’m qualified to answer this one. And the answer is that this would be a disaster. Not because university faculty don’t know the material, or because they wouldn’t try to teach conscientiously, but because the skill sets are so different.High school in the US is a right and an obligation. The constitutions of every US state (as far as I know) mandate that everyone has the right to free education up to the 12th grade, the age of 18, or some similar cutoff. University education is a privilege; you don’t have to go, and you can’t force your way in (although some universities in some states have open admissions, meaning that if you have a high school diploma from a school in that state, they have to accept you—the university where my parents taught had that policy until about 20 years ago). And from a legal standpoint, high school students are children, and university students are adults. Ever since some Supreme Court cases in the early 1960s, universities generally can’t act in loco parentis (“in the place of parents”) and are limited in how much they can enforce rules of conduct. We can argue whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the way it is.So I’m trained in biology. I have a PhD. I have twenty-two years’ experience at teaching everything from freshman non-majors’ classes (which overlap in content with my old high school biology class far more than I’d be willing to admit to the taxpayers) to advanced graduate student seminars. I do a good job most days. I teach biology, like, fuck yeah. And before anyone chimes in with “university professors aren’t paid to teach, they just do weird research that nobody understands while pushing liberal socialist Marxism!”, I’ll note that I would not have gotten tenure if I hadn’t been good at teaching. Even now, although I would really have to flame out spectacularly to get fired, my teaching performance gets evaluated every year. And if it’s not good, there would be various neprijatnosti—“unpleasantries”, as they said in the 1960s USSR—to encourage me to straighten up and fly right. (And calling my second-tier university in a modest Southern state “Marxist” is so ignorant it’s just plain funny.)What I’m not trained in at all is, say, behavioral interventions. When my wife had a student who was disturbed in some way, and acted out in disruptive or dangerous ways, she couldn’t just kick him out of her class. She and the school staff had to work out some way to keep that student in school, and she had to know techniques for dealing with that student. If somebody were to act disruptively in my class, as a last resort I could call the campus police, and it would probably stop being my problem for good. There are university counselors and psych staff who could help that student (hopefully), and if that didn’t work the student might be expelled—but I wouldn’t have to be involved, not in the way that my wife had to be involved. I don’t have to develop the kind of classroom control techniques that my wife had to have. University students have generally learned how to behave in public, and their frontal lobes are finally starting to function. Those that can’t figure it out can be dealt with in ways that high school students can’t.I’ve also never had to visit students in jail, or help homeless students navigate sources of aid and social services. We’re usually not called on to know much about our students’ living situations or private lives or families. This doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic, or as helpful as I can be, when a student is in distress—and this does happen. But I’m not expected to intervene in the ways that high school teachers are. I’m not a front-line mental health advocate.If high school students are failing classes, or are not attending, the teachers get involved. There are meetings with the parents and interventions and IEPs and such. If a university student is failing one of my classes, or stops attending. . . I sigh and enter an F on the electronic gradesheet at the end of the semester. Again, I’m not unsympathetic, and I’ll try to help if I can. (Don’t tell my students, but I’ve been known to find excuses to cut students some slack on grades, if I know they’re having troubles.) But again, at the end of the day, I’m not required to intervene. I don’t have the same duty of care that a high school teacher would have. I have the luxury of assuming that my students are mature and capable enough to get themselves out of bed and into class on time. Students can flunk themselves out of university fairly easily, and sometimes I never find out what the reason is.There are other differences. One that comes to mind is that when a university professor is caught having sex with a student, it’s a breach of ethics and often leads to the prof getting fired. When a high school teacher does the same, it’s a felony. High school teachers get extra training on how to be around teenagers without crossing boundaries, and they get it drilled into their heads that they must not cross them. This is not to say that university faculty who found themselves teaching at a high school would all immediately attempt to shag the cheerleaders. Most of us are a pretty conscientious lot. We do get training in avoiding sexual harassment. But it’s nothing like what high school teachers have to go through.So I submit that my local high school would not improve if all the teachers were replaced by faculty. High school courses that already had intelligent, mature, and relatively unproblematic students might improve quite a bit (as long as they were adequately funded, which is another issue entirely). But many students would fare worse, because university faculty are generally not trained or expected to handle the kinds of social and psychological issues that high school teachers deal with routinely.Good high school teachers are serious badasses who deserve a lot more than they’re paid. We university profs may know the minutiae of our own fields better than they do—but we could not do their job.

Well,it seems like a “only-people-who-have-been-to-kota-will-understand” question but trust me ,how my mother used her spare time there ,is something we should live our lives like!Whatever she does,she does with super enthusiasm.Getting involved into and learning new things is her favourite pass time. :))In the meantime ,when I would go to the classes,she would always do something that left me in awe when I came back.◆She would attend Ted talks.She would go to all career seminars, psychologists,would meet teachers(where I couldn't go due to time constraints) and come back with all the things that could motivate,inspire me or say could make me feel good instantly!◆She ran in a marathon that itself was organised for first time in Kota.◆There she won 5th rank in her category.The race was organised from 6:00 a.m to 7:00 a.m,she came back with lots of goodies,prize money,gifts,T-shirt etc and woke me up by saying, 'beta mera marathon mei rank laga,mujhe kya pata tha varna mai do-teen baar jo washroom gayi,khaya vo sab nahi karti toh first rank hi aata'. :PAnd I was like ,am I dreaming ,I am not even awake yet and she is back after doing all that amazing stuff! :D◆Did I forget to tell you what happened after that,she also got the free passes for this expensive and nice gym in Kota after she got the position.Annd…she went there with the utmost confidence(to put my confidence on shame) ,tried ,learned about all those gym equipments,exercised , tried steam bath and was excited like a kid while describing me about the same,and when the trial was over ,she wrote all the gym staff the letters ,that how amazing they were,how supportively and patiently they taught her .She gave them all sweets and personally thanked.This is how mothers are!Emotional and badass at the same time!◆She made food for my pg mates n number of times,mother she is!◆She explored around 200–300 parks there,literally!◆She found a yoga group in one such park ….and the rest is history.(she is super conscious about her and our health)◆she went to Delhi with the same group to attend the grand yoga camp.She actively took part ,when festivals were celebrated there.She is a writer and a poetess,and have been speaking in public since years,so she did anchoring,recited poems and what not and eventually became everyone's favourite,as expected. :D◆She made new friends, I mean Aunties from different states(:P),and would curiously ask them about the recipes of their state,only to try them at home and make me super happy.And also she would ask odisha wali aunty to buy some odisha sarees,south indian aunty to south indian sarees…would buy kota Doria (famous in kota)and all other stuff that held some cultural significance and now she have a collection of I think about 30 states. :PAnd please note ,she is least interested in shopping and clothing,but still she brought all this,for she said when asked, 'beta tere bahane mujhe ek alag jagah aane ko mila,paise toh aur kama lenge par pata nahi aisa mauka zindagi mei kab dobara mile'◆watched around 50 multilingual short movies/documentaries in Kota's first ever film festival starting right from the opening almost till end! :D◆she looovvess travelling,and capturing memories so whenever I had holidays,Sundays,extra classes,long classes ,she would rush to tourist places nearby ….or maybe not so nearby. :D now she have a long list of places she have been to including chittorgarh,boondi and more historic places during our Kota stay.And I am jealous,and why not?I was always left behind to study. :’(◆She is a kind of person,who explores every thing around,She went to the museums,forts,palaces ,natural places ,sometimes dragged me along to make me relaxed.Apart from this,she has done infinite other things too,which I don't even remember by now...But you know what the best part is,she would always be home before I came ,waiting for me for she knows how much I love someone to be present at home when I am back...andd also a hot meal always awaited me.She used her free time that she had got after ages because of her job, responsibilities of home,children, and many more things, like a BOSS! :)))Be a learner,an explorer, a tourist,a nature lover,a writer,reader ,collect some good stuff,meet new people,do some yoga,go to a gym etc etc etc in your 'free' time not me..My mother says this! :DGood day :)Edit:..Because I am too lazy to type it all.Mom is hyperactive ,you see! :PHere she is,it was a few days before her birthday! :D