A MS can be a good use of time. For me, it was a good opportunity to: 1) Get a resume upgrade. I went from having a BA in Math from UC Santa Cruz to having a

A MS can be a good use of time. For me, it was a good opportunity to: 1) Get a resume upgrade. I went from having a BA in Math from UC Santa Cruz to having an MS in Engineering (Industrial) from Berkeley. Personally, this kind of thing irritates the crap out of me, and I don't think I'd put much stock in it if I were hiring, but it can make a difference. 2) I got to investigate a new field. I suspect that if you already majored in CS, you probably don't really need an MS in CS. You'll learn something, sure, but I suspect you'd learn more just by going out there and learning. But if you majored in Math (like me), and discovered you really aren't good enough at math to make a career of it, you can obtain a more employable major through an MS. A lot of MS programs will allow you to apply a certain amount of upper division coursework toward an MS - so you've taken data structures, compilers, operating systems - almost like you've double majored, except now you get to say you have an MS (note: some of us are on to this trick - some grad programs are a little easier on their students and give them a lot more leeway to pursue a specialized interest - it's the undergrads who go through hell and get F's if they can't hack it, so I personally don't view an MS as necessarily "higher" than a BS in CS - it depends on what the undergrad studied and whether he/she filled these gaps in the MS program). 3) As I said above, you can pursue your own interest. MS programs tend to be much more flexible than BS programs. When I was in grad school, I pretty much learned to hack. My coursework wasn't all that interesting to me - lots of proofs about optimality in convex sets. I thought I was getting away from pure math, turned out I was right back in the land of proofs (that's Berkeley for you, other programs in IE are much more management-ish or engineering-ish). But I got really into writing apps, and that was my focus. Fortunately, the MS program is so flexible that you can get away with this - as an undergrad, I was far too busy with, well, proofs about convex sets (heh). It's expensive, though. Fortunately, I got in before the price went way up - fees were only about $4k/year, and TA jobs kept the costs down. So I graduated with minimal debt and an OK experience. But I still gave up almost 2 years of earnings and had a small student debt at the end. If you can get this experience through working, eh, I'd probably just do that instead.