jsokol1

Yes, many of our students come in with either tangentially-related backgrounds or even unrelated backgrounds -- we look for students with outstanding analytics potential, regardless of background.

And yes, online learning and/or self-taught learning is definitely fine as hole-fillers; we just want you to have the necessary background to succeed, and however you get that background is up to you.

I'm sorry you didn't like the on-campus experience at Georgia Tech -- but the online program sounds like a clear win. For less than $10,000 tuition, you could've gotten a top-10 degree and your $20,000-per-year salary increase... all while still working, so you would've also accumulated raises and experience while finishing the degree.

Hi! I'm the director of Georgia Tech's MS in Analytics program (both on-campus and online).

GT's MS in Analytics degree is actually designed specifically for people who are going to go out and work in the analytics field -- it's not a pre-PhD degree, and our courses are targeted primarily at people who want to learn and apply analytics. We have an industry advisory board that helps us target course and program content, and we're constantly working to make sure our coursework is focused to the right cohort. We even have a required applied analytics practicum (both for on-campus and online students) where our students work on analytics projects for a wide range of companies and organizations.

Perhaps other degrees are different, but the MS Analytics is a very practice-focused degree.