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Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

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101–110 of 121 posts

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting a BSc in Mathematics there and enjoying is a lot. The first year was easy, but to the third year it has become really serious.Tons of support with forums, tutors, videos, great learning materials.

How much ?

5000 GBP for Germany per year x 3 years. If you are in the UK it is cheaper. Now I am on my last year doing it half time since I work and it is demanding, and I pay 2500 GBP per year, but spead one year course in 2.

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#103

This doesn’t meet any of your criteria, but will be interesting to some: http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/ MSc in Software Engineering, from Oxford. Designed to be doable around a real job, over four years. No undergrad degree required. You need to be onsite for 11 weeks over four years. Modular, and you can fit to your interests and timetable. Cost was about £25k for the whole thing.

Thanks for the link.

Although fees seems a bit higher:

The projected total cost of an MSc at 0% inflation is £32,140 (or £27,380 for students accorded Home/EU status). The actual cost will depend upon the selection of modules and the total time taken to complete, but may be easily estimated. Any substantive change to this fee structure will apply only to subsequent registrations.

(from website)

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#104
post #88

I graduated from UIUC with a MSCS ‘14 (online). - Did my CS undergrad at top school on site ‘11 - Worked full time in Bay as software developer since undergrad graduation, 2011. - Employer paid MS tuition Pros: - I learn a lot better from doing than listening. I’d watch the lectures at 2x speed. Felt like I could actually pay attention until the end. - Learned how to read papers. - Challenged me to keep learning outs…

What company is paying for MS?

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#105
post #75

Do any of these programs offer a way to trade experience via testing for credits? I went the hands in way 20 years ago and have done really well with it, but I sometimes wonder if having the degree would be helpful.

You can challenge courses at most schools if you already know the material.

Thanks! Definitely something to check into then.

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#106

Surprised nobody has mentioned Open University which just happens to be one of the largest in the world - http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q62

I am getting a BSc in Mathematics there and enjoying is a lot. The first year was easy, but to the third year it has become really serious.Tons of support with forums, tutors, videos, great learning materials.

I did the same, I graduated about four years ago. Luckily I was on the old fee scheme so it was inexpensive.

The course materials were excellent as were tutors, I think Mathematics has always been a priority for them.

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#107
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can attest to that (graduating from it next Friday!). Few points - the main pitch for this is the cost, even if it was not a top 10 ranked MSCS program, it was still one of the most cost effective degrees in the US. The total cost for me was around $8,000 including everything (you can lower it if you take it less slowly than I did). The diploma is the same as the on-campus one by the way. I'm actually attending the c…

Don't be distracted by the rankings. Georgia Tech has an excellent computer science department. Rankings often include mostly-irrelevant details like the ratio of faculty to students. As far as I know, the rankings include essentially no information about the quality of instruction.

Agree that ranking is not that important, p.s. Pardon my english, it's not my first language, I might have wrote it badly. I meant event if it were not a top 10 program (which it is) it would still have been worth it, just for the cost. GA Tech MS in CS is current ranked #9 in USNews and World Report which makes it even a better bargain.

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#108
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm also graduating this week, started Spring 2015.) OMSCS is a part-time program by design, meaning you can only take up to 9 credits (3 courses) per term. Most students do it while working full time, although in that case, you'd either take one difficult course or two "easier" ones. Most courses took between 6-10 hours per week (actual time spent on the videos/projects as measured by Toggl). That means you have to…

congrats on graduating!! would you recommend it vs the other online masters' on here? i dont even know how to think about comparing one or the other if i'm supposed to ignore ranking.

I think the comparable others are Berkley's data science and Stanford Master of Science in CS (I think it can be achieved fully online, but as opposed to GA Tech, they charge full on-campus tuition). If you get accepted and can afford it, go to Stanford. But I'd say GA Tech is definitely the next choice. Stanford is ranked #1 GA Tech is ranked #9, does it really matter? I don't know, but #1 will cost you around $70,000 and #9 will cost you around $7,000. So if you ignore ranking, I'd say in terms of rigor, I don't have evidence that GA Tech is any less rigorous than Stanford. You do get a GRE waiver at GA Tech OMSCS, I don't think you do at Stanford...

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#109
post #27
post #20

When you're applying for online-only degrees, keep in mind what you're giving up. While the quality of the education may be comparable, much of the value of attending in-person is to build career-lasting relationships with smart, interesting, and trustworthy people. For many of us, sitting directly across from someone else while having a meaningful conversation is still unparalleled by what any communications technol…

(full disclosure, i work as an engineer at coursera) just wanted to highlight that one of the degrees that UIUC (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) offers, the Master of Computer Science in Data Science, is available on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/masters-in-computer-data-sc... the benefit of this is that the way we structure our degrees, they mostly end up being a collection of courses and spec…

Whoa. From UCB's DS admissions page:

For Master of Information and Data Science students starting the program in academic year 2017-2018 (July 2017 – June 2018), tuition will be $2,333* per unit, plus a $693.75* semester fee. Tuition is charged per unit; datascience@berkeley is a 27 unit program.

That's crazy.

Re: Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?

#110
Don’t want to be cynical. Why don’t the top 5 CS program online undergrad or masters degrees?

The cynical view is the De Beers conjecture. Artificial scarcity is used to maintain prestige, brand equity for the university (http://aei.org/publication/on-the-economics-of-diamonds-the-...).

The generous view is that they are just trying to find a way to ensure a high bar of quality and experience, and as soon as that’s possible they’ll all have options.

I believed MIT has come closest - you can in principal enter a program without a 99% percentile GRE score (or any GRE score) if you can do the work. You have to spend some time on campus, but in the end it’s an MIT degree without an asterisk. For some reason they’ve not picked Computer Science as one of the first programs.

Berkeley’s data science programs do not offer computer science degrees, and unfortunately are not even in the college of engineering. It’s a shame because a lot of the math/work there is a starting foundation for machine learning.

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