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I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

miguelrochefort.com

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Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#281

Post by D13Fd »

kevindong wrote: post #152
D13Fd wrote: post #64

For anyone who is wondering, the school he listed (Western Governors University) is unfortunately not ABET accredited as far as I can tell.

ABET accreditation doesn't mean much for CS however. For example, none of these schools are ABET accredited for CS: - UC Berkeley - CMU - Stanford - Cornell - University of Washington - Caltech - Princeton https://amspub.abet.org/aps/category-search?disciplines=19&d...

It means quite a lot if you want to use the CS degree for certain purposes, such as the U.S. patent bar as mentioned below.

I was pointing it out not to criticize the school generally, but because it is meaningful for some use cases that sound like "I need a CS degree, quick."

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#282

Post by jacurtis »

the_only_law wrote: post #251
baron816 wrote: post #109

Seems like the biggest accomplishment here is getting to the top of the front page on HN. But seriously, if you have 10 years of software engineering experience, what do you gain by doing a bachelors CS program?

I’ve heard many companies will not allow you to move past IC type roles without a degree, so if you want to go into management or something that’s an issue. Also, you have the immigration aspect mentioned in the article and throughout the thread.

This has been my experience. I built a career for 10 years without a degree. I was fine during my entry level and mid-level positions. I was able to outperform people that had bachelors degrees and get jobs.

But as I started applying for High-level and VP positions, I found that not having a degree got harder. I was mostly competing against applicants that have Master's degrees, and I don't even have a bachelors. My dad went back to get his degree at 55 years old. He found the same thing, the high-level jobs are very competitive and not having a degree really hurts at that level.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#283

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I'm confident now that degrees are just a shitty way of telling if somebody has read some books. You get the degree, and then you get a job, and begin the process of learning how to actually use what you read. Like first creating an entire software product, and then later making it actually work for a customer.

Rather than taking 2-4 years to learn how to write the software, and then 2-4 years to learn how to make it work for customers, why don't they do both from day 1? Why aren't universities just mock companies where you build fake products for fake customers, and teach you the theory as you need it? By the end you'd be an expert at working with teams as well as algorithm design.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#284

Post by fayten »

jventura wrote: post #194
trogdor3000 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.

When I say that the quality of the degree is not good, it is somewhat implied that the quality of the work of the person who did the degree is also questionable.. :/

Unfortunately you get this with students at every school. Many are just there to skate by and get a degree. The OP could also just know the material already and had no issue being able to pass as quickly as possible. This is something that is a huge benefit of WGU.

Also for what it's worth I took 8 weeks doing about 10 hours of work a week on Discrete math 1 and found it very interesting. My discrete math notes is a 1300 line org file that translates to a 29 page word doc. This doesn't include the many proofs and problems I practiced on a white board or on my iPad. I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#285

Post by miguelrochefort »

fastball wrote: post #263
miguelrochefort wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct. The path I took is not without compromises: - WGU is not ABET accredited. - WGU is not as rigorous as other universities. - WGU is not as prestigious as other universities. - WGU gives all graduates the same 3.0 GPA. I probably should point them out in my post. That said, I still believe WGU was the right choice given my circumstances. I don't value these things enough to justify taking 12 to 16 times…

Ew everyone gets 3.0 GPA? What's the point of that? Are all of the exams pass/fail?

I think it's a combination of:

* The school targets students with previous experience, which transfer credits that have no influence on the GPA.

* The school uses technical certifications (e.g., Oracle Oracle Database SQL 1Z0-07) as a final assessment for some courses, which don't cleanly map to a GPA.

* The school doesn't grade project-based courses (PAs), and instead requires students to resubmit their project until 100% of the rubric is met.

It's basically pass/fail. They won't even show students their grade on final exams (although Chrome's DevTools can reveal them).

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#286

Post by miguelrochefort »

yyyymmddh wrote: post #29
miguelrochefort wrote: post #2

Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.

Did you find any other schools that offer a similar opportunity?

Not really.

You might be able to cut your time/cost to graduate by half by earning credits on Study.com, Sophia.org, Saylor.org, StraighterLine.com and transferring them to a traditional university. I've seen universities allow up to 50-75% of a program's credits to be transferred in.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#287

Post by jventura »

fayten wrote: post #284
jventura wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say that the quality of the degree is not good, it is somewhat implied that the quality of the work of the person who did the degree is also questionable.. :/

Unfortunately you get this with students at every school. Many are just there to skate by and get a degree. The OP could also just know the material already and had no issue being able to pass as quickly as possible. This is something that is a huge benefit of WGU. Also for what it's worth I took 8 weeks doing about 10 hours of work a week on Discrete math 1 and found it very interesting. My discrete math notes is a…

> I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning.

Which gives ~75h-100h, way more credible than the 15h the author mentions in the post..

My students have 3h/week of Lecture, 2h/week of labs which is about 75h of classes (15 weeks). If we add ~60h estimated time for two projects, it's 135h. It means to me that you had enough time to learn the concepts and may have internalized some/most of them..

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#288

Post by [deleted] »

clavalle wrote: post #259
pokler wrote: post #24

I 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…

So many are in this boat, though; having the chops they've built informally but not having the paper to get in the door. I really like WGU because it focuses on competency rather than time in a classroom. I hope more educational orgs follow suit. That said, my wife, who is getting a Master's in Nursing from WGU, is learning plenty -- but she can focus on the actual learning while testing out of areas that she already…

[deleted]

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#289

Post by caspper69 »

jacurtis wrote: post #256
trogdor3000 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.

Most employers aren't going to see someone with a degree from "Western Governors University" any different than someone with a degree "Central Ohio University" or "University of Wisconsin - Stout". Even though one of these allows you to get a degree in 6 months for $3,500 and the other two are full 4-5 year degrees that total $60,000. Yes if you have MIT or Harvard on your resume it will be memorable and stand out, b…

This is overly simplistic.

There are tiers to everything. If you think it's MIT or Harvard, and then everyone else is a tossup, I've got some very bad news for you.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#290

Post by Jochim »

brighton36 wrote: post #17
rootusrootus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the author, but I will say that in my experience having the paper has helped open a lot of doors, especially early in my career, that I otherwise would have had to push harder to get through. It gives you a bit of default credibility. Perhaps unjustified, that's a matter of opinion, but it's definitely real.

Just seems like a competent GitHub serves the job better, at lower cost...

The first people to look at your CV probably don't know what Github is.

The degree is a checkbox for recruiters/HR who are looking to match a job spec before passing you onto the engineering team.

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