3 ms·

I think an accelerated bs/ms might be another exception you should consider. (This being when a bs student can do another year immediately following to get thei

I think an accelerated bs/ms might be another exception you should consider. (This being when a bs student can do another year immediately following to get their ms.) It makes sense on ROI as many companies have HR departments more likely to get you into the interview process, and then it’s often a slightly higher starting role. Also, from a knowledge standpoint, some graduate classes help practical abilities only. A 500-level databases course, for example, isn’t research-oriented. It just teaches more advanced topics that might actually matter in the workplace (an intuitive understanding of how/where to use an index, more complicated examples of projects with database connections, etc.). I fall into the case of your first exception, so I’m not actually sure undergraduate courses don’t teach these things. I’ve had a few 500-level classes that had absolutely no research orientation (“object oriented design and development” is another example of a class where the projects are just super-complicated examples of what you experience in industry). Pursuing an accelerated degree shows that the student wasn’t careless in thinking research was something they wanted to do.

morelisp 4y ago
Undergraduates in CS can fill their senior year with 500 level courses easily. Motivated ones also much of their junior year. Why would I take the applicant who did it five over the ones who did it in four? Worrying about the “MSc” label at the end for the same work is just credentialism.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Credentialism is bad, yes. It’s important to get over prejudice that less education is worse, yes. Saying that an ms student with the same gpa (adjusted for graduate grade inflation) from the same university as a rule is worse than a bs is ridiculous. You’ve gotten things twisted past overcoming prejudice. It’s great that programming as an industry has lots of room for people who go without education, but your logic is delusional. Of course a 4 year student who accomplished the same as another who took 5 is better, but that doesn’t justify your statement that started this.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Your confusion in this thread stems from the assumption that there is only actually enough CS to cover 4 years for a good student and 5 for a mediocre bs+ms. This is complete bullshit because the truly motivated undergrad would spend the senior year doing 500s and then the next year doing a bunch more for more breadth. At any of the large CS universities, there are usually 4+ masters tracks you can go down (security, hpc, p/l, HCI, algorithms, etc). Someone who quits with just a BS has no interest in going further theoretically. The absolutely did not cover all of the topics available - let alone get into research.

morelisp 4y ago

Undergraduates in CS can fill their senior year with 500 level courses easily. Motivated ones also much of their junior year. Why would I take the applicant who did it five over the ones who did it in four? Worrying about the “MSc” label at the end for the same work is just credentialism.

comfypotato 4y ago
Credentialism is bad, yes. It’s important to get over prejudice that less education is worse, yes. Saying that an ms student with the same gpa (adjusted for graduate grade inflation) from the same university as a rule is worse than a bs is ridiculous. You’ve gotten things twisted past overcoming prejudice. It’s great that programming as an industry has lots of room for people who go without education, but your logic is delusional. Of course a 4 year student who accomplished the same as another who took 5 is better, but that doesn’t justify your statement that started this.
kortilla 4y ago
Your confusion in this thread stems from the assumption that there is only actually enough CS to cover 4 years for a good student and 5 for a mediocre bs+ms. This is complete bullshit because the truly motivated undergrad would spend the senior year doing 500s and then the next year doing a bunch more for more breadth. At any of the large CS universities, there are usually 4+ masters tracks you can go down (security, hpc, p/l, HCI, algorithms, etc). Someone who quits with just a BS has no interest in going further theoretically. The absolutely did not cover all of the topics available - let alone get into research.