Does anyone have a good sense how online degrees are perceived by employers? Or graduate programs? I wonder if the pandemic will be shifting these attitudes.
I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
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Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#22Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
why bother getting the degree?
I don't have a degree. I feel that not having it has cost me some opportunities. Someone once said that when someone has put in years to get their degree they want the candidates they interview to have done that work as well.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#23Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
Any luck finding an online PhD? I've been looking for those. As much as I'd love to do a formal PhD program, I cannot with family, but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#24I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.'
This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading to imply that this is a path that most people can take.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#25That's brilliant. I wish something like this had been available back in the late 90s when I was getting my CS degree from Oregon State. I pulled it off in a couple years by taking a heavy load and working through summers, I'd have been ecstatic to find a fully self-paced program.
I also think the idea of capping it off with OMSCS is a great idea. I did that myself but 20 years later. And mostly just for entertainment rather than boosting my career.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#26This is very interesting to me. I have an EE degree but have been doing software full time since I graduated in 2009. Even though I am mostly self taught and feel competent enough compared to my coworkers, I frequently have pangs of self doubt around not having a CS degree. Mainly worry about not having a deeper knowledge of algorithms and data structures. I have been thinking for a while of an online CS degree and this looks pretty good!
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#27Wonder if he will go for a masters degree next.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#28Congratulations. It is somewhat surprising to me how some credits required vastly more effort than others. For example Algorithms 2 is worth as much as "Introduction to IT" - 4 credits each. Were there other restrictions on which credits you could use? In your opinion is this "fair"?
This is normal. When I was scheduling classes I would weight them by difficulty and have a cap for total course weight to account for it. Otherwise it's easy to overload on hard courses.
I certainly tended to do that as an undergraduate when I could. Credit hours or the equivalent correlate pretty loosely to difficulty and the time you'll need to spend. (And, of course it's even truer when you mix in non-engineering classes which aren't necessarily easy but were relatively speaking for me for the most part.)
>On average, I studied for 40 hours a week and completed a course every 3 days.
I will say that when I was in university, there were very few courses I only spent about 24 hours on. In fact, there are probably a fair number of courses which, even had I taken them a couple years earlier, would still have probably taken more time than that to do assignments and brush up for exams.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#29Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
Did you find any other schools that offer a similar opportunity?
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#30This is interesting to me. I attended a public/state university for 5 semesters studying computer science, and dropped out due to personal matters (while also getting paid employment during the internet boom in a relatively rural part of the United States.) My first paid job didn't pan out, but then I got my first salaried position as a web developer, and I've been employed ever since (though I'm currently furloughed…
This was my motivation for finally going back to school. I dropped out originally due to running out of money and having to take a full time job. Or rather I told myself I'd continue school part time, but never did. Lack of a degree was never a problem professionally so there was no reason to go back and spend a pile of money and a lot of time. But then I got to the point where I wanted to advance my knowledge of var…
Hey can I talk to you about that course? I’m switching into a new job in supply chain management (I currently work as a sys admin/IT admin) and feel pretty overwhelmed trying to figure out how that industry works