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Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#161

Post by sarabande »

obmelvin wrote: post #156
rosstex wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"This is perhaps the cheapest Computer Science masters in the United States from a premier school." Actually, there are funded ones! Princeton and Cornell both have 2 year thesis-based M.S.E CS programs which are fully funded + stipend. I'm starting Princeton's in the fall. These are small programs though, I believe there's 12 of us incoming.

I don't know why one would even consider a non-funded research based graduate program. Even with my tuition waived and stipend I still almost feel ripped off despite being at a good school (UIUC MS).

Can you expand on this? Is it because of the opportunity cost of working during that time, or because you have to work so hard that the small positive amount of money you come away with is not worth your labor?

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#162

Post by tinduck »

throwawayaug15 wrote: post #47

Logging in as a throwaway. The program only costs $5k but it was one of the most expensive things I've done in my life. Got a job at Google directly because of this program (a few classes like CCA helped a lot with interviews). I'm aware of at least a couple dozen of us from OMS here. The program cost me dearly. It cost me my relationship with the SO and it cost me my health (staying up late nights, lots of coffee).…

The health issues are a serious problem. I ended up in the hospital with stress induced gastritis one semester. I was lucky I dropped the course, for a W, before the deadline.

This program is no joke, especially if you don't avoid certain courses. If I had one piece of advice for anyone in the program, you should trust the crowd source student reviews of the courses.

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#163

Post by chris11 »

throwaway98767 wrote: post #106
throwawayaug15 wrote: post #47

Logging in as a throwaway. The program only costs $5k but it was one of the most expensive things I've done in my life. Got a job at Google directly because of this program (a few classes like CCA helped a lot with interviews). I'm aware of at least a couple dozen of us from OMS here. The program cost me dearly. It cost me my relationship with the SO and it cost me my health (staying up late nights, lots of coffee).…

Can you elaborate a bit on what was said for the SCPD program "not being worth the time and effort"? (Googler here) I took ~4 classes, and they all seemed to be of high quality (applied for the full MSCS, but didn't get in, unfortunately). What are some of the opinions you've heard here?

I'm curious, do you know why you weren't admitted? I've gotten the impression that GT was wanting to make the course relatively available to the public. Is it still selective?

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#164

Post by OkGoDoIt »

isbellHFh wrote: post #158
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really Charles Isbell or someone pretending to be him? Account created within the last hour.

'Tis I. It gave me an excuse to create an account.

Welcome! It's Roger from '10 (of GTACM and Yahoo HackU and Inventure Prize fun times)

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#165

Post by gatechnoway »

Working pro with 12 years experience. Absolutely not worth it. Most of your classmates will have not coded before.

The classes are cheap. The hours are long. In the end your grade depends on teammates who haven't been vetted. Three teammates who can't code? You get a C and don't pass.

Course content is extremely dated. UML and SDLC paradigms from the 70's with xerox pdfs distributed to "learn" from.

This is a money grab.

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#166

Post by Yhippa »

forrestbrazeal wrote: post #24

The answer is highly context dependent. If you think the degree will magically open up a lot of job opportunities for you, you might be kidding yourself. However, if you love to learn and don't mind putting in the long hours, it can be rewarding for its own sake. (Source: current OMSCS student, hopefully graduating in December) I made an "informed decision tree" awhile back that goes into much more detail about my th…

> However, if you love to learn and don't mind putting in the long hours, it can be rewarding for its own sake.

I love learning. I took one MSCS class when I worked at a university and completed a Udacity Nanodegree. That said the one MSCS class I took was intense (Applied Cryptography) and I had to spend time in study groups on the weekend.

What kind of time commitment am I looking at for the OMSCS?

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#167

Post by b3b0p »

throwawayaug15 wrote: post #47

Logging in as a throwaway. The program only costs $5k but it was one of the most expensive things I've done in my life. Got a job at Google directly because of this program (a few classes like CCA helped a lot with interviews). I'm aware of at least a couple dozen of us from OMS here. The program cost me dearly. It cost me my relationship with the SO and it cost me my health (staying up late nights, lots of coffee).…

Very informative and thank you for commenting your experience.

Can you say which classes you took and/or your favorites or the ones you thought you got the most out of? Any you wish you had taken instead or the classes you did not enjoy or get much out of?

I've only heard of this program, but have not researched any details.

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#168

Post by lemonghost »

bulldog13 wrote: post #132
lemonghost wrote: post #8

I'm halfway through the OMSCS in the machine learning specialization. It has been a great experience so far and definitely worth it for me. A couple of things to consider: As you mentioned, it is more focused on Computer Science than Software Engineering/Development. There are a couple of Software Engineering/Architecture/Testing courses but I haven't taken them so I can't comment on how relevant I think they are to…

I am starting the machine learning masters this month...what order would you recommend taking the machine learning classes?

I'm taking ML in the fall and I've already taken ML4T and RL. So the order I went in was ML4T -> RL -> ML. My understanding is that's roughly in order of increasing difficulty (although I do suspect RL has gotten a little harder over the last year).

Both ML4T and ML have some RL component. So there's overlap. If you're new to python, then I'd definitely recommend ML4T first because it spends a bunch of time on Pandas/Numpy. ML4T is also easier to get into than ML if it's your first semester.

Take a look at the course review site also. It's really helpful in estimating difficulty:

https://omscentral.com/reviews

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#169

Post by uiwldiowd »

smartician wrote: post #137
uiwldiowd wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of in a similar position. I have a PhD in a field kind of far away from CS (although that's debatable) and am thinking of transitioning more into CS. The problem is that a second bachelors, while something I'm willing to do, seems kind of problematic for various reasons. Some of the curriculum in a typical CS bachelors seems like something I could benefit from tremendously, but some of it is very remedial. I…

Oregon State has an online CS post-bacc program, but it's not cheap: http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/online-cs-students

Thanks--that's very useful to know. It is not cheap, but might not actually be that much more expensive than some of the in-person programs I was looking into, with in-state tuition, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?

#170

Post by opensandwich »

I have finished the OMSCS program and in some ways I have mixed feelings about it. My background has been primarily in mathematics/statistics and I didn't come from a "tradition CS" educational background.

Did I learn a lot?

I learnt a ridiculous amount. For the time+dollar investment it is amazing. The program is definitely not easy either.

It has been amazing to learn the concepts in ML (Dr. Isbell) and AI (Dr Starner) courses and then a few weeks later think "I think I can actually use these concepts in my workplace".

Why the mixed feelings?

Not all courses had the same quality to it. From the top of my head, AI, ML were probably the best 2 courses. Other well ran courses I would add was computational photography, edutech, introduction to infosec (besides the rote learning...), however some of the other courses I had a relatively negative experience.

The degree does suck up a lot of time and I would say it is the real deal.

Knowing what I know now I can't say 100% that I will "re-do" OMSCS - to be fair on GaTech I'm not sure whether the challenges that I feel above are due to an online program and I personally would be more suited to an in-person program but the experience has definitely been better than Udacity's nanodegree and any MOOC which I have sat.

Overall I would say if you do it for the sake of learning and that alone - OMSCS is worth it. For any other reason please don't do it.

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