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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

#321

Post by simoneau »

aketchum wrote: post #105
simoneau wrote: post #21

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.

Im doing OMSCS at GaTech and once you graduate you just have a Masters degree from The Georgia Institute of Technology, it says nothing about online or in person or anything. My resume just says Masters Degree, in progress. People asked about it during my last round of interviews but nobody seemed to care it was online.

Good point. Existing institutions which are starting online programs have a huge advantage here.

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

#322

Post by brundolf »

dahart wrote: post #306
brundolf wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. I support broad and quality general education, I think it has value, but I don't suggest anyone put themselves deeply in debt for the rest of their lives over it. But to have any shot whatsoever at a decent job? Yeah, maybe. So if you have the opportunity to pay a fraction of the cost for the credential, even if it means teaching you…

> 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. Why do you say that, and how do you measure value? I have quite a few lifelong friends from undergrad, people I wouldn't have met or bonded with if I'd done school online. And it's not necessary to know people to get great jobs, but I feel like it helps; 4 of the 6 jobs I've had came about through my undergrad network. One of them, as a founder,…

Do you work in academia now? If so, yes, the story is wildly different for your case.

> I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job

That's a pretty crucial piece of value! For people who don't come from wealthy families, that entry into the college-educated workforce is often the difference between poverty and not-poverty.

The networking angle is an interesting one I hadn't considered, though personally, while I made several great friends in college, they and the other people I met there have had little to no effect on my job prospects. The closest thing would be that I went to a job fair while in school which eventually led to my first job, though there are plenty of job fairs that are open to the public (potentially even the one I went to; I can't remember). Of course it's possible I'm not the average case myself and that many people get networking benefits from their college experience; I can't say for sure.

> how do you measure value?

I do want to clarify that I'm focusing on financial prospects because in today's America, those are quite dark for many (most?) people. I'm not someone who dismisses the value of a real education, or the value of those relationships and experiences and memories. But I've seen several friends who put themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for those things, and will probably be paying the interest for the rest of their lives, and I just don't think that tradeoff is worth it.

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

#323

Post by [deleted] »

abfan1127 wrote: post #107
astura wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of every single one of those "how I paid off $100,000 in debt in 1 year" articles. It's always like "dad got me an executive job at his company and grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift so instead of living in it I moved in with my parents rent free and turned the condo into income stream. (Aren't I smart!?!) Since mom always had a gourmet hot meal prepared for me I could put all my income into my l…

I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now. Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.

[deleted]

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

#324

Post by simoneau »

simoneau wrote: post #21

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.

It does allow someone who is filtering Y/N for this to check Y. Maybe that's enough to open some doors.

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

#325

Post by jerry80 »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #312
jerry80 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on the degree! I took almost exactly the same path as you, and I also finished my WGU degree in 3 months. I got my BS to meet the admission requirements for GATech's OMSCS program, which I'm doing now. Do you plan to go for a masters next?

How's GATech's OMSCS? I'm thinking about applying.

The OMSCS material is great! I'm really enjoying the challenge of learning new things (I didn't learn much of anything new at WGU. That's not a knock against WGU's materials, which seemed good. It's just a reflection of my having worked in industry and self-studying for 15 years before applying).

I do think GATech could learn a few things from WGU. I found WGU to have much better administration. WGU was 10x better about enrolling, being able to get support, and such. Overall, WGU had less bullshit than GATech. I also really loved the ability to go at my own pace at WGU.

GATech uses a semi-synchronous model in that you're on a deadline for each assignment and exam. I don't like the subjective grading of the assignments, and sometimes they're ambiguous about what they want exactly. Seems to very a lot from class-to-class. I loved that at WGU you could have redoes - even though I never took advantage of that it was a lot lower stress knowing I could redo an assignment or exam. At GATech there are no redoes short of dropping a course.

Overall, I think WGU is the best value for a BS CS, and GATech is the best value for a MS CS right now - and really there aren't any close seconds.

If you want to discuss further, let me know, and I'll send you an email.

Also, off topic, but did you get any scholarship at WGU? Their scholarships are basically coupons. I thought everyone got one, and I was surprised to not see that in your accounting.

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

#326

Post by 908B64B197 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #320
908B64B197 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requiring a computer science degree to apply for a programming job has always been bizarre to me and this blog post is a great example of why. What folks don't realize is that it's a signal to noise ratio issue [0]. It's not perfect but saves a lot of time down the line. > "The bulk of the effort was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled." That's missing the point. A lot of Engineering is being able…

There are two horrors here: 1) most people who apply for programming jobs can't write FizzBuzz; 2) the traditional way to signal that you are not one of them will cost you 5 years of your life, and probably burden you with decades of debt. Employers of course worry about the first one, because the costs of too much interviewing come directly from their pockets. Students worry about the second one, because they pay fo…

> The fact that if you can learn in 3 months what the average student learns for 5 years, there is a possibility for you go get a signal that really only costs you 3 months of your time, and also proportionally less money, is a fantastic improvement over the traditional way where if you are faster, you just have to spend more time waiting... while still paying huge money for that time.

The author did code professionally for 10 years before getting his CS degree. And he did have an Associates Degree in IT to land those jobs.

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

#327

Post by dougmany »

greyhair wrote: post #302
Privacy846 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing what you can do when you earn way more than the median household.

This is one of the hardest things to explain to people. Here is a thought experiment. Lets assume that the minimum required to live in a given place is $20K. So now you have two people, one makes $30K, the other makes $40K. How much more does the second one make compared to the first? Twice as much. At $30K, you have $10K disposable. At $40K, you have $20K disposable. And someone making $60K is making four times the…

When we were looking for an apartment between selling and buying houses, I was surprised by how there is a decided floor to rent prices. Like nothing exists below a certain point. Somehow I felt we could just get a super cheap place because I thought housing price would scale with income. I was surprised when I found out it didn't. So your cost of living example holds up in my experience.

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

#328

Post by joshspankit »

jacurtis wrote: post #237
debaserab2 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on finishing the degree and being proud of the effort you put into it. If you don't mind me asking: what motivated you to pursue it?

I am in my mid-thirties right now. I dropped out of university in my early-twenties to pursue a career. I saw a lot of initial success in my career and was flying up the corporate ladder. But I always felt like I had this skeleton in my closet or dark secret of not having even a bachelors degree. Early on in my career I could compensate for not having a degree with my experience and work history. I was mostly competi…

In your experience, what‘s the max(0) position you can get to without the degree?

(0) max in this case being a general term since as you mention it’s possible to get to the higher levels. Essentially where’s the point at which it becomes much harder.

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

#329

Post by bonoboTP »

abfan1127 wrote: post #317
bonoboTP wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was this "the hard way"?

going into debt in the first place is the hard way.

People say "I learned it the hard way" when in the end they lost something for eternity, went through suffering etc. Like a recovered drug addict with permanent health damage or someone who turned on the path of crime and spent his youth behind bars or something. To me it seems like you had a pretty good life, took on some debt to live even more carelessly and then matured and calmed down and channeled more of your disposable income into paying back said debt. I don't see the hardship based on your comments so far.

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

#330

Post by miguelrochefort »

jerry80 wrote: post #325
miguelrochefort wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's GATech's OMSCS? I'm thinking about applying.

The OMSCS material is great! I'm really enjoying the challenge of learning new things (I didn't learn much of anything new at WGU. That's not a knock against WGU's materials, which seemed good. It's just a reflection of my having worked in industry and self-studying for 15 years before applying). I do think GATech could learn a few things from WGU. I found WGU to have much better administration. WGU was 10x better ab…

Thanks, that's very comprehensive.

I wish I didn't have to wait until Fall 2021 to start studying at OMSCS. If I prepared early enough, I probably would have been studying there already. I also wish the program could be accelerated, like at WGU. 2-3 years seems far compared to 3 months.

Given that we both finished the program in 3 months, I suspect that we have similar skill-level and study habits. Do you find courses at OMSCS to be as difficult as others claim? How much time do you study in a given week?

I didn't receive any scholarship at WGU. I didn't know they were so easy to get. How much was it, $500/term?

Email me, I'd like to stay in touch.

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