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I got into grad school with an unrelated bachelor's, so I know it is in fact possible. I did it by kicking ass on the GRE, agreeing to take an entrance exam (th

I got into grad school with an unrelated bachelor's, so I know it is in fact possible. I did it by kicking ass on the GRE, agreeing to take an entrance exam (they stapled several final exams from their undergrad CS curriculum together) and then being on a provisional basis for the first year. Like Randy Pausch said, the brick walls aren't there to keep us out - they're there to give us a chance to show how bad we want in.

fooandbarify 16y ago
Wow, thanks. That's encouraging. If you don't mind me asking, how unrelated was your bachelor's? And from what school? What sort of references did you provide? And did you get in right after your undergrad, did you have applicable industry experience, etc?
- bartonfink 16y ago
  No problem - happy to help. My bachelor's degree was in Latin, my master's was in Computer Science. I took a bit of a dive in terms of prestige, though. I went to Wake Forest University on a full academic scholarship for college, and went to UNC-Greensboro (an offshoot of the UNC you've probably heard of) for grad school. Like I said, it's a bit of a dive but I didn't exactly have the sort of application necessary to storm the gates at a first rate institution. I just wanted something that said "computer science" on it to stop the weird ?'s about my Latin degree. My references were a couple of managers from a software internship as well as one of my favorite professors from Wake for academic chops. I didn't take any computer science at Wake, so there weren't any relevant profs I could have pinged. I didn't get in right after my undergrad degree - I graduated college in '05 and didn't start grad school until '07. I had about 15 months experience as a software developer when I applied - one year as an intern and then roughly three months with another company. I'm not sure whether that helped sway the admissions committee, but it did paint a sign on my back with the other students as the guy who could always help if they had a programming or systems ?.
  - fooandbarify 16y ago
    Cool, that is also encouraging. I'd like to work for a while to gain experience and hopefully pay off some debt but most people say it's harder to get into grad studies when you've been out of the system for a bit. As long as harder != impossible, I'm okay with that.

fooandbarify 16y ago

Wow, thanks. That's encouraging. If you don't mind me asking, how unrelated was your bachelor's? And from what school? What sort of references did you provide? And did you get in right after your undergrad, did you have applicable industry experience, etc?

bartonfink 16y ago
No problem - happy to help. My bachelor's degree was in Latin, my master's was in Computer Science. I took a bit of a dive in terms of prestige, though. I went to Wake Forest University on a full academic scholarship for college, and went to UNC-Greensboro (an offshoot of the UNC you've probably heard of) for grad school. Like I said, it's a bit of a dive but I didn't exactly have the sort of application necessary to storm the gates at a first rate institution. I just wanted something that said "computer science" on it to stop the weird ?'s about my Latin degree. My references were a couple of managers from a software internship as well as one of my favorite professors from Wake for academic chops. I didn't take any computer science at Wake, so there weren't any relevant profs I could have pinged. I didn't get in right after my undergrad degree - I graduated college in '05 and didn't start grad school until '07. I had about 15 months experience as a software developer when I applied - one year as an intern and then roughly three months with another company. I'm not sure whether that helped sway the admissions committee, but it did paint a sign on my back with the other students as the guy who could always help if they had a programming or systems ?.
- fooandbarify 16y ago
  Cool, that is also encouraging. I'd like to work for a while to gain experience and hopefully pay off some debt but most people say it's harder to get into grad studies when you've been out of the system for a bit. As long as harder != impossible, I'm okay with that.