SKILLS YOU WILL NEED AS A COMPUTER SCIENCE THESIS STUDENT

While there are no hard and fast rules that guarantee you have the background and skills required to complete a thesis in Computer Science, there are some indicators. Here is a list of some of these indicators.

• A good grade point average. This indicates that you have basic academic skills. It is difficult to specify an exact cut-off, but a 3.2 on a 4.0 scale is a reasonable minimum.
• The ability to write in the English language. Practice writing. Effective communication is essential in all disciplines. If you need help, contact the Language Institute or English Department.
• The ability to express yourself orally. You will be asked to present lectures on your work at the Computer Science seminar.
• Mastery of the computer language in which you will develop your program. You should not look at your thesis work as an opportunity to learn how to program. You should be very familiar with the operating system you will use and system utilities such as editors, document formatters, debuggers, etc.
• The ability to work with others. You must be able to work with your thesis advisor, and you may need to work with other faculty and students as well.
• The ability to take direction. Your thesis advisor will give you guidance, but you must do the work.
• The ability to conduct literature surveys. You must insure that your work is current and relevant even though it may not be original or unique.
• The ability to integrate ideas from various areas. This is key to a thesis. Extracting items of interest from many sources and generating new information by integrating these items in new ways is the essence of writing a thesis.
• The ability to think independently. Your work must be your own. Your advisor will not tell you what to do at every step, but will only suggest a direction. The rest is up to you.
• The ability to perform when imprecise goals are set for you, that is, you must be self-directed.

[ Source: http://cs.fit.edu/~wds/guides/howto/ ]