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Comment by jaredtn | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently enrolled in Georgia Tech's OMSCS program - http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/. 2-3 years of part-time work for $7000, and it's a fully accredited degree with no distinction from the on-campus degree. It's no pushover, a lot of work is required. But the opportunity to get a top-10 CS degree for under ten grand total is unparalleled.

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I’ll second this recommendation. I wrote a summary of my thoughts on the program after I graduated in 2017:

http://writing.maxrosett.com/reflections-on-the-georgia-tech...

Over on the OMSCS subreddit there is regular discussions of competing programs as well, like ASU, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, etc. Everyone is getting into the game, it seems, though I think that OMSCS still provides the best value. I'm on class #6 myself.

I've been toying with the idea of getting the OMSCS degree for a while. Just took a peek at the stanford offering based on your post. Holly wow, the cost of a single stanford course is almost expensive as the entire OMSCS course from GT.

Curious if any stanford grads would argue stanford alumni status is worth the additional cost.

This is the exact same though process I went through when looking - I would love to experience Stanford courses - but the single course being nearly the entire cost of the GT one...

I'm on subject #7 of the course this term - overall it has been a pretty positive experience, though you need to research the subjects you're taking on - OMSCentral is critical here.

I've so far avoided any subjects that require group work, and I'm really hoping to keep it that way.

Have a colleague who completed this last year, seemed to be a fantastic value. He had to drop to 4 days a week for a few of the more intense semesters, but seemed honestly proud of completing and brought back a ton of knowledge to the team.

What kind of team are you on, and what specifically did he bring back that was helpful?

(Context: wondering about the value of a Master's in CS for my future self)

I've got a colleague who is brushing up on his math before he takes on this very degree. I think he's going down to four days a week from next year, to accommodate his study.

Why is he brushing up on Math? Is he doing Data Science?

Because real CS degrees require a lot of it, and math exams are the main reason people wash out in the first 2 years. (There's some controversy around whether that should be but it is what it is.) And it's not a watered down version for CS students. In the universities I know, the first ~4 math courses are taken together by maths and CS students. I've heard "CS is applied math" a lot, and I agree with it. (If you want to become a programmer, you don't need to go to university.)

I get that CS degree requires Math because schools asked students to take Math courses but in this case we're talking about MSc (grad level courses).

I'd imagine if someone is specializing in Operating Systems, there won't be Math involved.

Set theory and graph theory came up often in my undergraduate operating systems and computer organization classes. I imagine it'd be even more so for graduate level classes.

Not saying you can't coast through without math if you're somewhat picky, but it would be a significant restriction. And for me the realization that most CS problems can be approached in a very rigorous, mathy way was one of the main takeaways of all the time studying.

Agree OS is less mathy, but even for operating systems you need statistics the moment you want to talk intelligently about performance (look how many people average percentiles, do coordinated omission, or insist on averaging results instead of looking at distributions). Btw random webdevs handling A/B testing tools would benefit as well. We're talking MSc? Ok, a basic OS class won't occupy you for long, it's 5% (actual number of one uni) of credits for an MSc only. Let's say you stay in the field... queueing theory is somewhat mathy? Advanced data structures needs experience with proofs, which is taught in maths.

Maybe other fields are safer?

Computer graphics and it's subfields need lots of linear algebra.

Crypto? Symmetric crypto needs probability theory, asymmetric crypto needs number theory, side channel attacks need linear algebra.

Robotics, signals and systems, sensor fusion, electrical networks all need lots of linear algebra.

(I've taken all of above courses at some point, but not all exams.)

I’m currently enrolled in this program.

Highly recommend it if you’re actually interested in going deep into the material. It’s a lot of work and I’m learning a lot even after several years of industry experience.

What's the admission process for SCPD for a non CS major is like?

I graduated from this last year! It is definitely a lot of work, excellent value for the price.

Can you help me understand how many hours/week you spent on it and how many years it took you to complete it?

omscentral.com

That's excellent, thank you!

Cohort #2 graduate here. Love the OMSCS program, and I've seen through friends how it's improved since my time. I don't know if it's the best out there but the cost/benefit is through the roof.

Any recommendations as to a distance learned BS to pair with this?

Sadly the options are very limited it seems. There are a handful of state schools that either offer them to people who have some existing college credi (not if you dont have any prior education) or offer made up bullshit sounding degrees for "continuing professionals". There are also for profit school and school that seem to not be outright scams, but might not be high quality (e.g. WGU)

So if you just want to check a box for grad school or to bypass ATS filtering, etc. you have a few options, otherwise you might be out of luck

source: did some research on going back to school late last year. I sould also mention my comment is within the context of the Is

University of London has a BS in CS, however it's a 3-year degree so I am not sure it would be relevant in the US.

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

BS degrees in the UK are a little different than in the US, 3 years is standard because a lot of what would be first year coursework in the US is covered and credited by their GCSE/GCE exams(somewhat similar to to how you can test out of lots of first year credits in the US with AP tests).

In any case I've never seen anyone with a UK degree have any difficulty having it being equated to a US degree for hiring purposes, and that online CS degree from University of London specifically requires 30 hours of college credit from US students so it still comes to 4 years in the end.

Athabasca University offers a 4 year, Canadian distance Computing and Information Sciences Bachelors. It's affordable, the whole thing is under $40K CAD ~= $31USD. Just a suggestion for the non-Canadian Hacker News set.

Does it have some form of capstone project at the end? It wasn't clear from the website.

My wife is doing the GT MS in data science (career change after after 20 years in microelectronics process engineering). Yeah, for under $10k it is definitely a good deal.

I do think there will be a glut in this field as everyone rushes into it, but I suppose it’s better than microelectronics, which is dead in this country (all back-end processing was outsourced to China).

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