CS or related Bachelors, which way to go?

[hels-at-work]

Hello all!

Your Location: US, Oregon
Your Age: 30
What kind of degree?: Bachelors

RA Credits / Other: None, besides sophia

Sophia Learning Credits:

Environmental Science
Introduction to Information Technology
Introduction to Relational Databases
Introduction to Web Development
Project Management
US History I
Visual Communications


Any certifications or military experience?
None

Budget: Ideally not more than a few thousand a year. I can receive up to $5k/yr in tuition assistance (with caveats), and would like to limit how much is spent beyond that.
Commitments: Full time work, several sports, a partner.
Dedicated time to study: 1-2 hours/day. Possibly more on weekend. 7-12/week total.
Timeline: ASAP, ideally
Tuition assistance/reimbursement: 5k/year, if I can make a compelling argument that the course will help me improve in my performance of my job as a Software Engineer.

Goal?: I am currently employed as a software engineer, but some of the higher positions in my company require a degree. The degree needs to be in Computer Science, or in a subject/area close enough that I can make a good argument (ie: IT, Math, Software Engineering, CIS, etc).

The Sophia classes I took were originally in service of following the SNHU CS Degree Plan on the wiki, but if there's another degree elsewhere that would allow more transfer credits, I'm open.

I would ideally like to avoid proctored exams as much as possible, my hours and hobbies can make scheduling those very, very inconvenient.

Thank you very much for any guidance or suggestions about which way to go!

[bjcheung77]

@hels-at-work, Welcome to the board, great intro post with the addendum, template, and some extra info. I was wondering, in your shoes, would you go for a 'one and done' option such as Pierpont BOG AAS with Info System emphasis, UMPI BAS MIS/PM double minor plus 4 classes that go towards the MAOL, and then finish with the MAOL? Proctoring shouldn't be too much of an issue, you can schedule it anytime you can/want as it's just recording yourself doing the exam, if that works, then TESU and Study.com BACS/BS CIS combo would work...

If you can get tuition assistance or reimbursement with this option, it'll be the better mix/match option of certs, degree, experience, you'll be well versed in Business, MIS/IT, Management, Organizational Leadership. If not a one and done option, then I suggest your current path of SNHU then ladder to HAU MBA, you'll be well versed in Business and Computer Science. It really depends on how you want to work on things and the energy, money, time, or the ROI/Value, and then personalize the degree path to suit you... Decide and reply back!

[ItsNeverTheLionsYear]

In addition to what BJ said, if you're good with proctored exams that you schedule yourself, the WGU BSCS might be a prime option for you. Since you have SWE experience, if you max out transfer credit you could like knock it out in one or two 6 month terms, and if you time it so that those terms fall in different years you'd be 100% covered by your work's tuition assistance outside of the cost of taking the transfer courses.

[hels-at-work]

@hels-at-work, Welcome to the board, great intro post with the addendum, template, and some extra info. I was wondering, in your shoes, would you go for a 'one and done' option such as Pierpont BOG AAS with Info System emphasis, UMPI BAS MIS/PM double minor plus 4 classes that go towards the MAOL, and then finish with the MAOL?  Proctoring shouldn't be too much of an issue, you can schedule it anytime you can/want as it's just recording yourself doing the exam, if that works, then TESU and Study.com BACS/BS CIS combo would work...

If you can get tuition assistance or reimbursement with this option, it'll be the better mix/match option of certs, degree, experience, you'll be well versed in Business, MIS/IT, Management, Organizational Leadership.  If not a one and done option, then I suggest your current path of SNHU then ladder to HAU MBA, you'll be well versed in Business and Computer Science.  It really depends on how you want to work on things and the energy, money, time, or the ROI/Value, and then personalize the degree path to suit you... Decide and reply back!

I can certainly survive a proctored exam if it doesn't necessarily require a synchronous appt with another person.  

A possibly important aspect I failed to mention is that the 'higher positions' are not necessarily on a management track, but rather more advanced flavors of 'engineer'. So a Bachelor of Applied Science or the BACS/BS CIS could work, but any masters program would need to be more technical than managerial in nature, like the OMSCS. Other people in similar positions to the ones I am aspiring to have degrees like BS CIS, BS CS & MS Computational Sciences, MS Information Systems, BS Mathematics & MS Mathematics (no idea on focus).

If I were following the first path you suggested, I would:

Do the Pierpont BOG AAS with the area of focus of Info Systems
Do the UMPI BAS with the suggested double minor
Possibly move on to a Masters program

And the second would be to complete the SNHU BS CS, then the MBA at HAU.
And the last would be TESU BACS/BS CIS double degree?

The last two sound like they would be the closer to my ideal path as they have more 'technical' sounding degree paths.

Besides the TESU path having the bonus of a double degree, is the primary benefit of TESU vs SNHU that it would allow a greater amount of transfer credits? In any case, deciding between the TESU path and the SNHU path would probably come down to time for me. If one route has the opportunity to be significantly faster (obviously dependent on my own dedication to the task), that would be ideal. If they're likely to be roughly similar, then I would likely go the TESU route, as the double degree would look very nice on an application, and the knowledge wouldn't hurt either.

The WGU degrees did look promising when I first started researching all of this, but I shied away because of the idea that if I accidentally take 13 months to complete it, I could end up paying quite a bit more. And my work will only reimburse me for individual courses once they are completed & passed, so I am concerned that WGU wouldn't work at all (though that's an admin issue to figure out with my company). However, if that offered possible speed over the other routes I'd be very open.

tl;dr - the more 'technical' the degree title the better. If I were to ultimately pursue a Masters (fairly likely), it would be something akin to OMSCS or WGU's IT one. Speed is preferred, even if it comes at greater expense.

Thanks again!

[ItsNeverTheLionsYear]

We've had users get the TESU BACS and get into OMSCS on almost entirely alt credit, including long time user davewill. The commonality seems to be years of relevant work experience, which you have. The BACS specifically requires you to get academic credit in OMSCS's prerequisites, where other degrees might not.

You need 30 regionally accredited credits for a TESU BACS. If you want to play it really safe (which is what I wanted), you should get some of these credits in the OMSCS prerequisite areas:

* Intro to programming
* Object oriented programming
* Data structures
* Algorithms (often combined with data structures)
* Linear algebra
* Probability
* Statistics

If you want to cover the UT Austin MSCSO's prerequisites, you can include these:

* Discrete Math
* Computer Architecture & Organization
* Operating systems

Oakton college offers all of these except OSes at around $550/class. I think at least some of them can be taken through ASU Universal Learner, which would be around $100/class cheaper.

For the WGU masters, they seem to only care if you have a bachelor's degree at all, so that's always an option.

[Duneranger]

@hels-at-work, Welcome to the board, great intro post with the addendum, template, and some extra info. I was wondering, in your shoes, would you go for a 'one and done' option such as Pierpont BOG AAS with Info System emphasis, UMPI BAS MIS/PM double minor plus 4 classes that go towards the MAOL, and then finish with the MAOL?  Proctoring shouldn't be too much of an issue, you can schedule it anytime you can/want as it's just recording yourself doing the exam, if that works, then TESU and Study.com BACS/BS CIS combo would work...

If you can get tuition assistance or reimbursement with this option, it'll be the better mix/match option of certs, degree, experience, you'll be well versed in Business, MIS/IT, Management, Organizational Leadership.  If not a one and done option, then I suggest your current path of SNHU then ladder to HAU MBA, you'll be well versed in Business and Computer Science.  It really depends on how you want to work on things and the energy, money, time, or the ROI/Value, and then personalize the degree path to suit you... Decide and reply back!

I can certainly survive a proctored exam if it doesn't necessarily require a synchronous appt with another person.  

A possibly important aspect I failed to mention is that the 'higher positions' are not necessarily on a management track, but rather more advanced flavors of 'engineer'. So a Bachelor of Applied Science or the BACS/BS CIS could work, but any masters program would need to be more technical than managerial in nature, like the OMSCS. Other people in similar positions to the ones I am aspiring to have degrees like BS CIS, BS CS & MS Computational Sciences, MS Information Systems, BS Mathematics & MS Mathematics (no idea on focus).

If I were following the first path you suggested, I would:

Do the Pierpont BOG AAS with the area of focus of Info Systems
Do the UMPI BAS with the suggested double minor
Possibly move on to a Masters program

And the second would be to complete the SNHU BS CS, then the MBA at HAU.
And the last would be TESU BACS/BS CIS double degree?

The last two sound like they would be the closer to my ideal path as they have more 'technical' sounding degree paths.

Besides the TESU path having the bonus of a double degree, is the primary benefit of TESU vs SNHU that it would allow a greater amount of transfer credits? In any case, deciding between the TESU path and the SNHU path would probably come down to time for me. If one route has the opportunity to be significantly faster (obviously dependent on my own dedication to the task), that would be ideal. If they're likely to be roughly similar, then I would likely go the TESU route, as the double degree would look very nice on an application, and the knowledge wouldn't hurt either.

The WGU degrees did look promising when I first started researching all of this, but I shied away because of the idea that if I accidentally take 13 months to complete it, I could end up paying quite a bit more. And my work will only reimburse me for individual courses once they are completed & passed, so I am concerned that WGU wouldn't work at all (though that's an admin issue to figure out with my company). However, if that offered possible speed over the other routes I'd be very open.

tl;dr - the more 'technical' the degree title the better. If I were to ultimately pursue a Masters (fairly likely), it would be something akin to OMSCS or WGU's IT one. Speed is preferred, even if it comes at greater expense.

Thanks again!

Dont bother with UMPI, none of the degrees are technical at all. WGU or TESU or SNHU then ladder to a more technical masters. The boilerplate advice here is not going to apply to you. Personally, I'd do SNHU or WGU..

Proctored exams are usually synchronous (some arent though)...its not that difficult. You can make proctoring appointments at 2am...I did it while working a 60 hour a week job.

[bjcheung77]

Oh the horror! That reminded me of the triple exams I booked back to back to back on a long weekend. I did them on Proctor U too, but lucky, no issues at that time, started at 10pm, finished at 4am... Anyways, I'm going to leave it to OP to decide how they want to mix/match the trifecta of certs, degree, experience as the degree name doesn't actually define your application to a Masters or to a job, rather the classes or content taught and if you have a strong enough application.

[hels-at-work]

Thank you very much all! This has been instructive, and given me much to think about. I'll probably crunch some numbers, see what the differences are for speed and price, and go from there. Insight from other folks in the position I'm aspiring to have said the more 'technical sounding' the degree title the better. It's sad but it sounds like it's a real 'style over substance' situation. But there's some good options at all of the schools discussed here for that path.

Very much appreciate everyone's insight and time!