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Comment by rsanders | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, at least for the moment an undergrad degree is a prerequisite. More generally, you have to be admitted to Georgia Tech as would any other graduate student.

I think there will be quite a few companies willing to pay $7000 in tuition assistance so their employees can get a MS.

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> More generally, you have to be admitted to Georgia Tech as would any other graduate student.

I don't think they said that. In the faqs they say you don't need to take the GMAT.... which every graduate student has to take.

I think the GMAT is only required for MBA programs. When I was admitted to Georgia Tech as an Aerospace Engineering graduate student in 1992, I didn't need the GMAT, just the GRE.

Ah, I stand corrected.

You're right -- that was phrased ambiguously. I should have said "there will be an admissions process similar to that for the non-online MS CS". I don't know what the exact requirements will be.

Tech's MSCS is pretty competitive in terms of admissions. I assume this will be somewhat broader in its acceptance?

A large part of the credentialing value of a degree is that the person was skilled enough to be accepted onto the course, if they make entrance less competitive it will likely significantly reduce the market value of the degree in credentialing terms.

True but some degree of selectivity must be related to capacity rather than qualification. They probably have an abundance of applicants with enough skills to get through the program but their capacity forces them to be even more selective than that. Those are the people that would likely be well served by this program.

Well, there's no real scarcity of teaching faculty and other resources in a MOOC format, so that pressure will be removed. But I don't know how the standards will be set. I'm not sure Georgia Tech knows that yet, either.

According to http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/14/georgia-tech-a...:

> Georgia Tech said it does not plan to lower admission standards to find 6,000 or so students for this track -- a number than is 20 times larger than its current computer science master’s degree program. Instead, Georgia Tech hopes to attract more qualified applicants from across the world, including inside the military and at companies – places that harbor nontraditional students who could not previously come to a traditional campus or find the money for a full degree, on campus or online.

Except no GRE, which is removing another unnecessary barrier to entry. The admissions process also seems to be an effort-based process of testing out of some initial curriculum. Much better than studying for a standardized test.

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