It is all over, finally finished my last assessment for OMSCS program. Some of the common questions I got was:

  • Was this worth it? How difficult is the program? Why this program? Would you
  • recommend this program to someone else?

Overall if I was to rate my experience, I have to say that OMSCS is a bit of a mixed bag. It is difficult to compare with another course or program since this is my first program which I worked through whilst working full-time. With that mind please consider some of my comments.

Is such a program truly International?

One of the huge selling points of OMSCS is that it was billed as an international program; you can be anywhere and still study in this program. Without a doubt the distance education and the price were definitely reasons why I joined the program. What I found was that this program was extremely isolating; and the reality is that it is more of a reflection of doing any study via correspondence than the program itself. In that sense I do not blame OMSCS at all for this.

It was clear after a few semesters of the program that the majority of the students were not international, but rather local students (from memory ~70% of students). This created an interesting dynamic where if people were to favour US students, it would lead to other students at a loss. This meant that sacrifices had to be made for group projects and considerations would have to be made regarding deadlines and assignment opening dates. The one approach (most) courses used to was to release everything and set deadlines for everything using the “anywhere on earth timezone”, I felt that in most scenarios this was a reasonable compromise, though it meant you normally wouldn’t actually look at anything till probably 8 hours after an assessment was released, (since 12am anywhere on earth is ~11pm AEDT).

On Rigor and Difficulty

Most people felt the program was rigorous, and in general I would agree with that assessment. Besides a very weird and negative experience in CS6505 which I eventually dropped (my proof was marked as incorrect due to their weird rubric, even though several PhD students in the field of Mathematics verified the proof to be rigorous enough, and I myself am a Math major).

The courses in general were a tad easier than my undergraduate experience, probably a solid 7/10 of effort required. There are probably two reasons for this.

  1. Programming in generally is my stronger suit
  2. Undergrad was very, very hard

None of the courses really contained too much Math, but at the same time gave you enough to encourage you to explore more. There was definitely an expectation that everyone would be Math literate when starting the program rather than having a program which would help with your Math skills.

Surprising Elements

There is without a doubt that my computer science foundation has become stronger by finishing this program. The depth and breadth of my skills has definitely improved; more than what I would have gained with an education in Australia, since Australia (and UK models in general) are more specialist orientated compared with US which is more generalist. Within the course of the degree I have managed to cover five different areas of computer science (at least what is considered to be five different areas for the purposes of breadth requirement for PhD at Georgia Tech)

  • Software methodology and engineering: CS6300 Software development Process
  • Network and communications: CS6250 Computer Networks
  • Machine learning: CS7641 Machine Learning, CSE6242 Data and visual analytics
  • Intelligent Systems: CS6601 Artificial Intelligence
  • Learning Sciences and Technology: CS6460 Educational Technology

Major projects

I would say there were three major projects that I did for this degree

  • Scene Completion with a large dataset of images
  • Web app for health informatics
  • Paper for educational technology which was on “Duplicate Question Detection Using Online Learning”

The paper writing course was well put together and I would definitely follow a similar model to produce papers!

Recommendations

The value proposition for a life long learner is definitely strong for the OMSCS program. You will surely learn a lot and develop lots of knowledge and skills. However for career progression and particularly for international students there is still a big question mark.

As for now, my recommendation for fellow Australian students looking to further their careers is to look elsewhere, and consider other avenues unless you wish to aim for a hard commitment with little to gain besides self-glory.