by guiambros
4 subcomments
- Current OMSCS grad student; three down, seven to go. Loving the program so far.
The content is great, and most of it is available on Open Courseware, YT, etc, but here's what else you get by officially going through the program:
- the amazing community of TAs
- the assignments
- the feedback on reports & projects (either automated, or through TAs)
- the collaboration with other students on Ed, Discord, Slack, etc
- the forcing function of deadlines, having to study for exams, etc
- free access to academic libraries, IEEE, ACM, O'Reilly, etc
- access to software and services, educational packages from GitHub, Wolfram, Google Colab Pro, student discount in a bunch of places, etc
Another underrated aspect is GT's ability to preserve rigor of the program overall, despite the scale and number of students in some courses (the most popular ones have 1,000-1,500 students per semester).
If you're on the fence on applying, I strongly recommend you do. The program is affordable enough that there's no harm in trying for a few semesters to see if matches what you're looking for.
Glad to answer any questions.
by rahimnathwani
2 subcomments
- OMSCS requires ten courses to graduate. I completed one course (with an A grade) before realizing that, even at a pace of one course per semester, it was not a high enough priority for me to devote the time required to do each course well.
That course was great, though, and I definitely learned some things I'm glad to have learned!
IMO the instructional materials are a small part of the value. The things that stood out to me were:
- the assignments
- the autograding of programming assignments
- giving and receiving peer feedback about written assignments
- learning some LaTeX for those assignments
- having an artificial reason (course grade) to persist in improving my algorithm and code [on the problems taught in that course, I wouldn't have been self-motivated enough if they were just things I came across during a random weekend]
- I have taken three of those classes as part of the Online Master of Cybersecurity program. They were all excellent. I can say that the assignments were an important part of the learning experience, for instance the practical experience of attacking weak RSA keys.
I would not let the lack of assignments, tests, and quizzes stop you from trying these if you are interested. At a minimum, they would give you a feeling for what the program/s are like, and possibly encourage you to enroll into the online degree program, which is an exceptional value.
by grantgallagher
1 subcomments
- I’m an OMSCS grad - the dedication to making higher education in CS more accessible is something that really sticks out to me from those in charge (shoutout to Dr. Joyner who heads the program). Although not every course is on the Open Courseware (nor course work), there’s still a lot of good material, and if you like it enough, the program is a nice little side quest in ones journey through computer science.
- I once considered applying, but I gave up because collecting letters of recommendation was a major hurdle. My academic advisor from university has already retired…
How do you all deal with this?
- I wrote about my experiences in OMSCS here https://schneems.com/2017/07/26/omscs-omg-is-an-online-maste.... It took about 7 years, but I finally got my degree.
- In the past they made videos available via Udacity, which were removed after Udacity turned their focus to short & easy (which often means superficial) courses for enterprise training instead of "serious" university courses. I guess that was not a viable business.
Of course they did not come with any assignments, just like these courses. Can't blame them, but other universities offer much resources -- for the same topic, you can often find a course offered by another university that provides videos hosted on YouTube, full assignments and labs, even exams. The only thing you are missing is TA/office hours and the course credit. In other words, unless you actually want to earn credits and work towards a degree, I suggest that you skip OMSCS videos unless there is no alternative.
- UTexas seems to be crushing it in the ML/AI space as they offer far more recent courses with deeper topics; for everything else OMSCS is probably a better choice even though it has a relentless pace of busywork making even easy classes draining. Stanford OTOH is like GT and UT merged together (both crazy difficult projects and a lot of math), but at 2x the pace. UT is way more relaxing than either, one can take 3 courses alongside a job and be fine, which is next to impossible at GT and Stanford. Conversely, if one wants to continue by doing research, Stanford and GT are much more useful due to ample opportunities to do so.
by oaxacaoaxaca
1 subcomments
- I was in the very first cohort of this program. I loved it but had to drop for personal/family reasons after finishing three courses. Someday I'd love to jump back in! I highly recommend it to anyone who might be interested.
- I have been considering the OMSCS program for some time but one of my reservations is the network one misses out on by working side by side with students and faculty vs online ed.
For context: non-traditional student who transferred to UCSD for college, two of those years were spent during Covid. Moved back to Bay Area. My network isn’t as big as someone who maybe went to San Jose state. And so they prob have an easier time finding jobs. I worked with other students through discord and so on, attended virtual office hours with professors and TAs (who were the reason many of us passed these classes, I’m sure) but never truly built a relationship that lasted beyond the quarter because zoom, essentially.
And if I go back to grad school, I would really love to build relationships with others around me. Wondering how others have managed with this regard?
- AOS destroyed me lol. Video Game Design is excellent. Graduate algo is a requirement for everyone and has great lectures if you're looking for an introductory course.
by dannyfreeman
6 subcomments
- I would like to get my masters from georgia tech's omscs program but between work and 2 kids I dont see how I'll ever have the time
- Very cool, thanks for posting this. I've had a number of colleagues try to level up through programs like this with mixed outcomes.
- I didn't quickly find the entrance requirements for the OMSCS program and the other similar programs. I know someone who has an undergraduate arts degree and is learning programming and CS voraciously, but not in any organized fashion.
by jbverschoor
0 subcomment
- Is there a way to do the actual degree in double the speed / self-paced?
by legerdemain
1 subcomments
- Has anyone tried the courses in the ML or core CS areas? What'd you think?
by bayareapsycho
0 subcomment
- This program was so good, I was most of the way through it before it managed to help me land a better job. But now I have no idea if I'll ever finish it because it's pretty time consuming
The best two classes are AOS and HPC imo. Very grateful to Profs Ramachandran and Vuduc
AOS (and its prerequisite) gives a really strong foundation for working on infrastructure.
HPC pushed me farther than any other class I've done, it's very unique, helped me land my current gig
by photochemsyn
4 subcomments
- I really can't imagine that these online degrees have any real value in the modern world of LLM-assited coding - there's no way anyone looking at a resume would think such institutional online degrees still have any value. Perhaps there is some educational value for the student, but even there the only real value is the organizational structure - you might as well form an online study group on discord for free, and get the same learning benefit, just have an LLM write up the syllabus for a course based on a good textbook, no instructor overhead needed.
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