A Practical Guide to OMSCS
Published Apr 23, 2020
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There are a number of resources out there in the internet world about how to succeed in OMSCS. While these series of posts will primarily be used for some personal self-reflection, I hope that it can offer some practical time-saving advice for others enrolled in the program.
What is OMSCS
OMSCS is Georgia Tech’s part-time graduate program for computer science, delivered entirely online. Most students work full-time while taking 1 or 2 classes per semester. The program is also absurdly cheap, costing less than 10K. The real price, as any student will tell you, is your time, social life, and sanity. After graduating, you will have a master’s degree that is identical to the one you would get if you enrolled on campus, i.e. it does not say ‘online’ anywhere on your diploma.
What can I expect?
The most common types of questions that are asked on /r/OMSCS are along the lines of ‘what are my chances of getting in?’, ‘how difficult is the program?’, and ‘how much time does X/Y/Z class take?’. The reason that this is so difficult to answer is because OMSCS, relative to other graduate programs, has a low barrier for entry. You don’t need to have taken the GRE, nor have a computer science degree. Because of that, everybody has a different background and everybody’s experience with OMSCS will be unique. So I can only give a brief summary of myself, and I will leave it to the reader to decide if they can use my experience for a benchmark for their own.
About Me
I do not have a computer science undergraduate degree, though I took a number of courses as electives while in college. These include a data structures course and an algorithms course, both of which I took pass/fail and both of which I nearly failed. After school, I worked as a software engineer for several years. I also at one point took some accredited graduate courses in discrete math and introductory operating systems. They were both very light on work, and I would be hesitant to attempt to speak knowledgeably on either those subjects.
In a nutshell, I’d say I’m familiar with the software development lifecycle without any practical confidence in any specific language, framework, design pattern, etc. I know enough to get by, and have yet to be found out.
About Me
Many enroll in the program for practical experience in their career, a salary bump, or a career change. For me, I’m hopeful that this credential on my resume will open doors in the future. But for now, I am mostly taking courses because learning is fun.
Helpful Links
Students sometimes give very practical information as to how to tackle a class. Unfortunately you’ll often have to take many reviews with a grain of salt. The time and difficulty estimates are also useful, not in their absolute values, but they provide a good estimate as to how time-consuming a class is relative to other classes.
Good place to ask general questions.
Every class will have its own channel. If you have a homework related question, it’s often the best place to get an help from a smart classmate. Otherwise, there’s not much reason to be on it.