What was your background when you applied and how tough is entry? (I see that there is a 99 application average over the past three years with 70 acceptances?)
And how much is the cost?
You get a degree from Oxford at the end, which definitely opens doors. Of the ten modules I did, 2-3 were exceptional and stay with me today. 2-3 were trash. There rest were OK. It's an excellent excuse to get familiar with the subject, and the one-week onsite format followed by the six weeks of coursework is excellent.
> would you recommend it for an American? Is it even possible for an American to fly in for the week-long intensives like the other comment on here says?
Yes, we had quite a few Americans in my cohort doing this
> What was your background when you applied and how tough is entry?
I essentially flunked out of high-school, but I had ten years of solid commercial experience under my belt, and some interesting open-source contributions and tech talks at conferences, and they let me in. I suspect I had the potential to interview well as I also was awarded an academic prize at the end for highest overall marks...
However they also had this really interesting system when I was there where you could essentially earn your way in: they'd let you come and do the SEM module (challenging, but not nuts), and if you passed, they'd let you in as a real student.
> And how much is the cost?
£41,080 over four years for a non-UK resident
I don't know how tough is the entry because I have not seen the other applications. What I did appreciate in the application process is that since the target audience is working professionals, you can get 3 letters of recommendations from people that you worked with, not necessarily academic recommendations (for someone who has been out of uni for a while, makes the process much less painful).
Some other selling points of the programme for me:
- 1-week modules, instead of one evening per week - much easier to organise if you don't live in Oxford
- No exams - for each module that you attend, you have one week of lectures, followed by an assignment that you have 6 weeks to submit the answers. Assignments demand a lot of time to complete, but I find it much more manageable when you are working than cramming for one big exam
- Flexible curriculum - to complete the course, you need to complete 10 modules plus a project (like a Master Thesis) in 2-4 years. But you have complete freedom to pick and choose any course from those that are offered (http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/courses/subjects.html). So you can customise the programme according to your interests.
- Time flexibility - you can complete in 2-4 years. There are 3 terms per year, so you can attend one module per term and finish in 4 years, or if you have more time available, attend more modules in a term and finish in less time.
The downside of the flexible nature of the programme is that you have less of a feeling of "class of '19", or whatever the year of your intake. You will bump into people that are taking their first or last modules, and some of them you will only see once. You will still have the chance of going out for a beer with them, so I don't mean that you won't have a chance of networking.
- It is in Oxford, which is a pretty cool town to visit, and as a student you have free access to places like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Humfrey%27s_Library#/medi...
I’m curious to hear about the SEM (I assume Software Engineering Mathematics) method of qualifying perhaps as a post-graduate (non-matriculated) learner — this taken from the other commenter. This seems like an ideal way to test out the structure and style of a classroom and qualify by achieving high marks before committing and fully applying to the program. Is this a thing that you’ve heard about? There isn’t anything on the website about qualifying for the program through this.
Also, what was the application interview like?
> an ideal way to test out the structure and style of a classroom
My understanding is that all the courses are explicitly available to anyone who wants to take them and can be booked by members of the public, although expect there to be priority to matriculated students for very popular courses (of which SEM is _not_ one). They were about £1,400 each last time I checked.
I don't think I'm giving away anything I shouldn't by saying that SEM is the first 10 chapters of http://www.usingz.com/ taught in classroom form (see the course desc at: http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/pro/subjects/SEM.html and compare to the TOC of Using Z), and certainly I benefited by having read and understood it first (which was very challenging, but also SEM has kept coming in useful at the weirdest times in my professional career).