101–110 of 128 posts
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Teaches you to think in ways that other courses won't.
Upper level proof based math courses are much better in my experience (speaking as someone with a BA in philosophy who has been taking math courses part time for the past few years)
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If you don't mind, could you share the university you went? I dropped out my bachelors in final year, and kinda old now. Spending 1 or 2 year for masters is okay for me now, but don't want to spent 4 years for bachelors again. Trying to figure out options.
University of London. There’s more than one Master’s degree that allows you to take individual modules as stand alone qualification and once you hit the limit you transfer to being a Master’s student proper. I did Finance. Last I looked the London School of Tropical Medicine also did this. If they offer a Postgraduate Certificate they’ll probably take your money for an individual module if you have any evidence you c…
I have a decade of experience in software development and a smattering of Coursera certificates in relevant areas. Doing a BSc feels like it would be, not a waste exactly but inefficient and overly expensive. But it looks like University of London they offer a PCert->MSc pathway for CS.
Did you do the micro-master because you didn't have (much) relevant experience in the field? How important do you think it was on your application?
Tangentially related to your question, but I figured it might help if you need to review math at some point. Given it has been a while since you last did math courses, I have a non-free book on CALCULUS[1] and another one on LINEAR ALGEBRA[2] that are written specifically for adults who need a condensed (but complete) review of the material. See PDF previews below. [1] https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSma…
Did you accidentally upload the entire books as PDFs? If not, then those are some really long previews.
The full books are 600pp and 700pp respectively (on small paper format 5.5"x8.5")
I went straight to work and didn't get to college until 41/42. I'm working on my undergrad and plan to continue to my masters. I've found it incredibly rewarding for two main reasons. First, since I have a career already, I'm free of the pressure to go to school for career purposes and can focus on something I enjoy, which also provides immense value to what I'm doing every day (I chose philosophy, much more relevant…
> (I chose philosophy, much more relevant and practical than I think many realize). As others have already asked, could you expand on this? Very interested.
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> (I chose philosophy, much more relevant and practical than I think many realize). As others have already asked, could you expand on this? Very interested.
> As others have already asked, could you expand on this? Very interested. I started undergrad in my 30s, and also majored philosophy for similar reasons. It really is the most rigorous non-STEM undergrad degree you can get. And for people (like myself) who can’t pass calculus, but are still fairly intelligent, it can easily be parlayed into a more technical graduate program.
I went straight to work and didn't get to college until 41/42. I'm working on my undergrad and plan to continue to my masters. I've found it incredibly rewarding for two main reasons. First, since I have a career already, I'm free of the pressure to go to school for career purposes and can focus on something I enjoy, which also provides immense value to what I'm doing every day (I chose philosophy, much more relevant…
Philosophy is essential, how it's taught is unfortunate. In my philosophy class it was almost all about the history of philosophy, not the reasoning behind it. Assignments and tests were all about time periods, the specific names of philosophical ideas, from whom they came from, etc. I'd rather have open ended assignments. Ones that give moral dilemmas, and challenge their solutions. Make me think about something In…
To give you good advice, it would be helpful to know where you are in your life: What country or region are you looking to do a MS or PhD in? Expectations for what you have to accomplish vary geographically. Are you financially supporting others? Are you independently wealthy? Why do you want to do a PhD or MS? For a PhD, what is your career objective (tenure-track professorship, teaching professorship, researcher in industry, etc.) An MS is often just a bunch of classes over about two years, whereas a PhD involves about four more years (in the USA) where you establish yourself as being capable of conducting and communicating independent research.
Myself and many of my peers treated the PhD program a bit like being in a monastery: you are taking a vow of poverty and there is little time for much more than your research once you complete your coursework. A PhD program will give you a modest stipend, but this is rare for MS programs. I've seen it done, but it is extremely hard to complete a PhD when also raising young children. I worked 60+ hour weeks most of the time, and often a lot more than that around deadlines. Now that I have a young child, it is hard to imagine working that way, unless my partner was almost entirely responsible for childcare, but that's going to be hard to do with the stipends given in the USA.
Keep in mind, just getting into a PhD program is challenging. In computer science in the USA, top-50 programs typically expect you to already have some experience in conducting research, as evidenced through having authored one or more peer-reviewed publications.
2 years later: finally finished, and built a nice network of codevelopers and industry professionals. I'm 43 this year, and a few others were my age or older. I submitted a week early due to summer holidays, and still got a distinction. (That doesn't matter to me, though, as the real proof in the pudding would be whether my games will sell or not.)
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, and built strong friendships along the way, and even sent the staff a crate of cider, because they're so awesome.
My motivation to stick around and do the work was very strong, as I really do want to phase out webdev and do more gamedev. It's sooo much more creative and suited to me as an individual. If I have to sit in a meeting where someone bikesheds how to connect a database to a website one more time, I'm going to scream, so it had to happen.
My partner was onboard with it, and I could afford to (as a contractor) take the odd day off to do more masters work, which really helped, as it was part time at 20 hours per week.
If you subscribe to my RSS feed, I'll be writing a post mortem on the programme soon: https://juanuys.com
My main advice is to do it for you, and really be sure you'll have time and passion for it throughout. A few of my cohort realised that it took too much time, or they didn't like the critical reflection element of some of the modules, and gave up. So, also check exactly what the modules entail, what needs to be delivered, etc. E.g. some of the younger students were disappointed that they weren't going to be "taught" Unreal Engine , for instance, but rather had to maintain a blog and write about their own learnings (as is the nature with master of arts, as opposed to science).
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> As others have already asked, could you expand on this? Very interested. I started undergrad in my 30s, and also majored philosophy for similar reasons. It really is the most rigorous non-STEM undergrad degree you can get. And for people (like myself) who can’t pass calculus, but are still fairly intelligent, it can easily be parlayed into a more technical graduate program.
Everybody can pass calculus. The only way one can fail at math is gaps in knowledge. If you managed to get through something like Kant or Hegel, you can get through any math subject provided you have the necessary prerequisites.