High Performance Computing studies in Edinburgh for students from the USA

^{Image shows students on Calton Hill, overlooking the city of Edinburgh. Photo by Chris Close.}

With the annual Supercomputing conference running in Atlanta this week, this is a good time to explain how our master's degree works for US students. I've chatted with a few of our own recent US graduates about what might be of most interest.

High performance computing (HPC) is an exciting subject and we are unique in focusing on this for the whole MSc, with an option for those who wish to apply HPC to topics in data science. Our students have access to large-scale HPC systems such as ARCHER2, the UK's national supercomputing service, which is operated by EPCC.

The University of Edinburgh is consistently ranked among the world's top 50 universities, and was placed 27th in the 2025 QS World University Rankings. The city of Edinburgh is one of the top tourist destinations in the UK, and all our US students say that they really enjoyed living and studying in such a historic city. The University campus is located in the centre of town, putting you right in the middle of Edinburgh's annual festival, the largest arts festival in the world.

In the UK a master's course lasts for a full calendar year from September to August, with two semesters of taught courses followed by an individual research project which is undertaken for around three months over the summer. This works very well for international students as travel and accommodation can be sorted once for a full year's stay in Edinburgh. You will spend all your time studying the MSc as, unlike PhD students, master's students don't have any teaching commitments.

There is of course no language barrier (other than perhaps non-familiar accents!) so you will be able to get to grips with the technical side of HPC right from the start. US students find the overall study experience fairly familiar, although assessment is typically a smaller number of larger assignments (eg two courseworks, or a coursework plus a final exam) rather than continuous throughout each course.

Fees and class sizes

Our fees are higher for overseas compared to UK students, but work out at under $50K for the whole year, which seems competitive with equivalent US programmes. Our class sizes are relatively small, with around 60 full time students per year, so you will have lots of opportunities to interact with our staff on a day-to-day basis. In particular you will have one-on-one supervision for your research project as our staff only ever supervise one or two students each. Our US students have often commented on how they really liked this aspect of our programme, perhaps compared to their undergraduate studies with classes of several hundreds of students.

After your studies are complete you will have the opportunity to stay on for further study, eg for one of Edinburgh's many PhD programmes, or stay on to work in the UK as you will qualify for a two-year graduate visa (which also includes health insurance).

For more details, application and contact information, see: www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/education-and-training/masters-programmes

I look forward to meeting you here in Edinburgh in September 2025!