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Comment by _wldu | Hacker News Reader

Spend $9,000 US dollars to get a MS in CS, Data Science or Cyber Security from Georgia Tech. It's a solid top 10 CS program. It will take a few years, but it is definitely a great investment.

If you don't already have an undergrad degree and/or want a quicker program, look at some of the reputable code/security academies that partner with major state universities. They cost a bit more 15K to 20K but are shorter (typically a year or less).

Finally, there are certificate programs (offered by professional training companies) in security, coding, project management, etc. that cost 5K to 10K and last from a week to a month.

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You make it seem like getting into the MSCS program at Georgia Tech is just a matter of money!

I didn't mean to imply that. Sorry. If you can get accepted and if you can complete the work, then it's a good program for you. But, yes, it is very difficult (as it should be).

If you take some of their online courses or a MicroMasters program and do well in them, they'll probably admit you to the online Masters program. Note: I work at edX.

While getting accepted is obviously not a given, the program's admission rate is very high. The founder, Zvi Galil, is on record speaking to the philosophy of democratizing CS education that motivated the program.

Which is a flowery way of saying that getting into OMSCS is much more about affording it than any other similar program.

Getting out with the degree, however, requires some serious commitment.

-Disclosure: I am currently a student in the program.

What are your exit opps / recruiting like with the OMSCS?

I second this - I'm 3 semesters into the online MS in CS program at GATech and it's been a huge level up for me. I highly recommend the investment IF you have the time - it is a large time commitment.

As a full time employee (9-5 job) in an MNC and father of new born do you think it is still doable? How many hours do you have to dedicate on a weekly based?

PS: Already have a Bachelors in Computer Science

It heavily depends on the courses you pick. I'm a full time employee (9-5 job) but no family and I usually dedicate a hour or two of my mornings and early evenings to the course as well as a couple hours every weekend, but I pick what others consider to be the more intense courses (compilers, distributed systems, operating systems). I also go all in on these courses since you get out of it what you put in.

This site is very accurate when it comes to the hours per week breakdown on courses: https://omscentral.com/ You'll see that some courses are drastically easier than others, the more intense ones being more rewarding. In all, you can make it as hard or as easy as you want and pick your courses that way. Having the BS in CS (I do) helps since you may recognize some of these topics from undergrad.

Thanks for sharing. Do you think it's doable without a CS background? I have a Math MS and do use some programming (mostly SQL, Python and some CLI) in my job but never had any formal CS education.

It depends on the courses you pick. With your Math MS, you might actually do really well in the Machine Learning/AI courses that they offer. The projects are mostly in Python and a lot of students do not have a CS undergrad, so you won't be alone there. https://omscentral.com/ is a good resource if you want to see per-course reviews on what the courses are like or how much programming you do. The systems engineering courses (compilers, distributed systems, operating systems) are heavy in C/C++, but the machine learning courses are heavy in Python (AI for robotics for example, which is a great course). You can go to Udacity or Youtube and check out the videos if you want to try it out.

Thanks. I'm actually more interested in the CS courses. Will take a look.

I thought that price had to be a typo... but wow you are not kidding. I wonder why it is so cheap? Seriously considering it.

Their MS program is cheap because the lectures are recorded and can be replayed many times at almost no cost. Their only cost to run the class is for support staff to grade projects and write and grade exams.

One downside to this model is that for some courses, like those with rapidly changing content, the lecture videos can go out of date after a year or two. GT needs to address this somehow. (Their ML and computer vision courses especially suffer from this.)

But their degrees are still a great value and worth every penny.

> One downside to this model is that for some courses, like those with rapidly changing content, the lecture videos can go out of date after a year or two.

Isn't that the case for almost every course, though? Curriculums take years to develop and change, and it's always easier to just reuse what you already have.

They can enroll 1000s of students every year. Why wouldn't it be cheap?

If only they would also provide F1 and OPT visas, I would be all-in. It seems like such a great program, but hard to see the value when most of the local employers probably don't even know what it is :/

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