5 ms·

Has anyone here graduated from this program? I'm curious about the instruction quality and career prospects in comparison to in-person programs from similarly p

Has anyone here graduated from this program? I'm curious about the instruction quality and career prospects in comparison to in-person programs from similarly prestigious schools.

alanfranz 8y ago
Not graduated yet, I'm about at 40%. So far it's very interesting and well done from an educational point of view. There're some rough points still - you can see the classes were originally taught at the brick-and-mortar university and they have been "ported" to online, plus sometimes there're some glitches between different systems being employed, but the overall quality is astonishing, especially for the price. Probably an in-person MSc will be a bit better than OMSCS, but it will cost 7x-8x and would require people to move around the country.
- plants 8y ago
  That's about my experience too, having done only two classes so far. One of the largest downsides (in my experience) is never meeting/hearing from the instructors of the courses- the TAs are almost solely responsible for running the classes. I went to a large state school for undergrad, so lack of instructor facetime has not really been an issue for me. I've also found many of the udacity lectures to be so-so, but the GA tech projects really help to drill information into your brain and can be quite time-consuming.
  - JBReefer 8y ago
    Yeah, people who think online ==== easy will not have a good time. I love OMSCS, I'm about to start HCI this summer. It's great because I have a mortgage and a career - the amount of debt to go full time would be staggering, and the cost of attending private classes would ruin my long term financial goals. Also, I just really like it.
  - downey 8y ago
    I'm on my 9th class, one more to go. I found that Machine Learning had decent involvement from Isbell (he'd chat with us on Slack) and that Operating Systems and HPC and excellent professor participation -- they would hold weekly office hours (video conferenced) and were active on the forums. There were 1 or 2 of my earlier classes that did feel phoned in, though (but did have strong TA involvement at least).
jlamberts 8y ago
I graduated from the program in December. Overall, the program was absolutely worth it for me. Based on my experience I'd say that the online program isn't quite at the same level of instruction quality as an equivalent in-person program simply due to the number of students in each class. However, for me personally the lack of cost (both real cost and opportunity cost from lost work years when pursuing a fulltime MS) more than made up for it. I haven't interviewed or applied for jobs since graduating, but it's worth noting that the degree itself is the same as the one awarded in-person. If you get involved in the community, the network is also surprisingly good; the slack channel has hundreds of students at all sorts of places.
cgearhart 8y ago
I was admitted to the program in the pilot cohort in 2014 and graduated in 2016. I left my civil service job as a mechanical engineer with the DoD 3 months later to take a job in SV, and I just started a new job two weeks ago at a FAANG company as an ML Engineer. I think having an MSCS from GT helped me get here. I don’t know if my experience is considered typical. I worked as a TA in the algorithms course and then in Computational Photography while I was there. The algorithms professor was actually how I found the SV job I moved here for. I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere already, but I can confirm that TAs run most classes—but it’s also worth pointing out that TAs in OMSCS are often comically overqualified, and 90% of the work in running a course is logistics (due dates, extensions, grading, etc.). I think it’s as valuable as a resident program if you can’t justify leaving your current job or taking on debt to finance an advanced degree. Just make sure you try to learn everything you can while you’re in it.
- milosdog2 8y ago
  wait so even TAs are remote? they just hold office hours from their home or whatever?
  - cgearhart 8y ago
    The program did not initially allow remote TAs, but they started allowing it after a year or two. The latest data I’ve seen is that about 50-60% of the TAs are also OMSCS students and the rest are from the resident program in Atlanta. It was my experience that GT professors preferred to have a senior TA or head TA from campus (usually one of their PhD students), but they were comfortable letting most of the graders be remote. Some online TAs earn a reputation for being awesome and wind up as head TAs, and some profs don’t mind having fully remote teams, etc., but that’s the gist of it.
  - jki275 8y ago
    TA quality is highly variable. Some of them are amazing, some of them are totally worthless.
epmatsw 8y ago
I’m about halfway through and also did my undergrad at GT. Overall I’ve been pretty disappointed. The lectures are just YouTube videos played through Udacity, and the quality has varied from okay to bad. TAs make a big difference, but the quality there is a huge range. Some classes have had really good interesting active Slack communities, while others are basically just a Piazza page with people asking for help on projects. If you were disciplined and didn’t care about the degree at the end, you’d get a lot more bang for your buck just by watching the YouTube videos and reading the textbook, since that’s basically the level of instruction you get.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > If you were disciplined and didn’t care about the degree at the end, you’d get a lot more bang for your buck just by watching the YouTube videos and reading the textbook, since that’s basically the level of instruction you get. Comparing it to my Master’s which has even less faculty involvement I doubt it. Watching videos and reading the textbook leads to the feeling you know something. Doing projects and preparing for exams, that leads to genuine learning. You learn far more working through past exam papers or doing all the questions in the textbook than you possibly could by trying to absorb information passively.
- jki275 8y ago
  Absolutely not. You would not get any of the class interaction, you would not get any of the projects, and you would not get any of the feedback from the projects. You would miss a ton of knowledge by missing those. Also, the slack community makes the entire program -- you really learn a lot watching the people who know the material help people out through the projects.
mrosett 8y ago
I graduated 2 years ago next month and will say that doing the OMSCS was the best professional decision I've made. There's one unusual thing about my case though: I have a lot of prestige on my resume (Ivy league school, BCG, Google), so I mostly just wanted a) the learning and b) to say I have an MS. I don't know how I would feel about the program if I were more concerned about prestige. A quick plug for my writeup: http://writing.maxrosett.com/reflections-on-the-georgia-tech-online-ms-in-computer-science.html http://writing.maxrosett.com/reflections-on-the-georgia-tech...
- milosdog2 8y ago
  what do you do at BCG if you dont mind me asking?
  - mrosett 8y ago
    I was a standard management consultant, hired right out of undergrad. Nothing technical - powerpoint and excel all day.
- mhb_eng 8y ago
  Another 2017 OMSCS grad with a unique career path chiming in. I was a MechE by background, but had some pre-existing computer science education from dabbling with robotics. My primary goal was to broaden my skillset and achieve the M.S. designation. To be honest, the M.S. has been nearly useless (nobody asks/cares), but I'd do the program again in a heartbeat, as I'm now a VC that is at least somewhat conversant in many of the technologies we are encountering.
  - mrosett 8y ago
    Interesting! I actually work for a non-profit now that does a lot of VC-ish work by making seed investments in early-stage companies.
jki275 8y ago
I'll be roughly half-way through at the end of the semester. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and well worth it. The quality of instruction varies wildly. OMSCentral is a student-run review site that covers the courses well. The logistics depend almost entirely on the quality of the TAs in the courses -- there are courses like AI4R where the professor is heavily involved and answers all student questions, but the majority I've seen the professors are very hands-off and the TAs handle all student interaction.

Has anyone here graduated from this program? I'm curious about the instruction quality and career prospects in comparison to in-person programs from similarly prestigious schools.

alanfranz 8y ago

Not graduated yet, I'm about at 40%. So far it's very interesting and well done from an educational point of view. There're some rough points still - you can see the classes were originally taught at the brick-and-mortar university and they have been "ported" to online, plus sometimes there're some glitches between different systems being employed, but the overall quality is astonishing, especially for the price. Probably an in-person MSc will be a bit better than OMSCS, but it will cost 7x-8x and would require people to move around the country.

plants 8y ago
That's about my experience too, having done only two classes so far. One of the largest downsides (in my experience) is never meeting/hearing from the instructors of the courses- the TAs are almost solely responsible for running the classes. I went to a large state school for undergrad, so lack of instructor facetime has not really been an issue for me. I've also found many of the udacity lectures to be so-so, but the GA tech projects really help to drill information into your brain and can be quite time-consuming.
- JBReefer 8y ago
  Yeah, people who think online ==== easy will not have a good time. I love OMSCS, I'm about to start HCI this summer. It's great because I have a mortgage and a career - the amount of debt to go full time would be staggering, and the cost of attending private classes would ruin my long term financial goals. Also, I just really like it.
- downey 8y ago
  I'm on my 9th class, one more to go. I found that Machine Learning had decent involvement from Isbell (he'd chat with us on Slack) and that Operating Systems and HPC and excellent professor participation -- they would hold weekly office hours (video conferenced) and were active on the forums. There were 1 or 2 of my earlier classes that did feel phoned in, though (but did have strong TA involvement at least).

jlamberts 8y ago

I graduated from the program in December. Overall, the program was absolutely worth it for me. Based on my experience I'd say that the online program isn't quite at the same level of instruction quality as an equivalent in-person program simply due to the number of students in each class. However, for me personally the lack of cost (both real cost and opportunity cost from lost work years when pursuing a fulltime MS) more than made up for it. I haven't interviewed or applied for jobs since graduating, but it's worth noting that the degree itself is the same as the one awarded in-person. If you get involved in the community, the network is also surprisingly good; the slack channel has hundreds of students at all sorts of places.

cgearhart 8y ago

I was admitted to the program in the pilot cohort in 2014 and graduated in 2016. I left my civil service job as a mechanical engineer with the DoD 3 months later to take a job in SV, and I just started a new job two weeks ago at a FAANG company as an ML Engineer. I think having an MSCS from GT helped me get here. I don’t know if my experience is considered typical. I worked as a TA in the algorithms course and then in Computational Photography while I was there. The algorithms professor was actually how I found the SV job I moved here for. I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere already, but I can confirm that TAs run most classes—but it’s also worth pointing out that TAs in OMSCS are often comically overqualified, and 90% of the work in running a course is logistics (due dates, extensions, grading, etc.). I think it’s as valuable as a resident program if you can’t justify leaving your current job or taking on debt to finance an advanced degree. Just make sure you try to learn everything you can while you’re in it.

milosdog2 8y ago
wait so even TAs are remote? they just hold office hours from their home or whatever?
- cgearhart 8y ago
  The program did not initially allow remote TAs, but they started allowing it after a year or two. The latest data I’ve seen is that about 50-60% of the TAs are also OMSCS students and the rest are from the resident program in Atlanta. It was my experience that GT professors preferred to have a senior TA or head TA from campus (usually one of their PhD students), but they were comfortable letting most of the graders be remote. Some online TAs earn a reputation for being awesome and wind up as head TAs, and some profs don’t mind having fully remote teams, etc., but that’s the gist of it.
- jki275 8y ago
  TA quality is highly variable. Some of them are amazing, some of them are totally worthless.

epmatsw 8y ago

I’m about halfway through and also did my undergrad at GT. Overall I’ve been pretty disappointed. The lectures are just YouTube videos played through Udacity, and the quality has varied from okay to bad. TAs make a big difference, but the quality there is a huge range. Some classes have had really good interesting active Slack communities, while others are basically just a Piazza page with people asking for help on projects. If you were disciplined and didn’t care about the degree at the end, you’d get a lot more bang for your buck just by watching the YouTube videos and reading the textbook, since that’s basically the level of instruction you get.

barry-cotter 8y ago
> If you were disciplined and didn’t care about the degree at the end, you’d get a lot more bang for your buck just by watching the YouTube videos and reading the textbook, since that’s basically the level of instruction you get. Comparing it to my Master’s which has even less faculty involvement I doubt it. Watching videos and reading the textbook leads to the feeling you know something. Doing projects and preparing for exams, that leads to genuine learning. You learn far more working through past exam papers or doing all the questions in the textbook than you possibly could by trying to absorb information passively.
jki275 8y ago
Absolutely not. You would not get any of the class interaction, you would not get any of the projects, and you would not get any of the feedback from the projects. You would miss a ton of knowledge by missing those. Also, the slack community makes the entire program -- you really learn a lot watching the people who know the material help people out through the projects.

mrosett 8y ago

I graduated 2 years ago next month and will say that doing the OMSCS was the best professional decision I've made. There's one unusual thing about my case though: I have a lot of prestige on my resume (Ivy league school, BCG, Google), so I mostly just wanted a) the learning and b) to say I have an MS. I don't know how I would feel about the program if I were more concerned about prestige. A quick plug for my writeup: http://writing.maxrosett.com/reflections-on-the-georgia-tech-online-ms-in-computer-science.html http://writing.maxrosett.com/reflections-on-the-georgia-tech...

milosdog2 8y ago
what do you do at BCG if you dont mind me asking?
- mrosett 8y ago
  I was a standard management consultant, hired right out of undergrad. Nothing technical - powerpoint and excel all day.
mhb_eng 8y ago
Another 2017 OMSCS grad with a unique career path chiming in. I was a MechE by background, but had some pre-existing computer science education from dabbling with robotics. My primary goal was to broaden my skillset and achieve the M.S. designation. To be honest, the M.S. has been nearly useless (nobody asks/cares), but I'd do the program again in a heartbeat, as I'm now a VC that is at least somewhat conversant in many of the technologies we are encountering.
- mrosett 8y ago
  Interesting! I actually work for a non-profit now that does a lot of VC-ish work by making seed investments in early-stage companies.

jki275 8y ago

I'll be roughly half-way through at the end of the semester. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and well worth it. The quality of instruction varies wildly. OMSCentral is a student-run review site that covers the courses well. The logistics depend almost entirely on the quality of the TAs in the courses -- there are courses like AI4R where the professor is heavily involved and answers all student questions, but the majority I've seen the professors are very hands-off and the TAs handle all student interaction.