TESU BACS course selection for OMSCS

[warre]

Hi,

Your Location: Belgium
Your Age: 25
What kind of degree do you want?: BACS
Current Regional Accredited Credits:

Unknown, awaiting verification from spantran

Current ACE, CLEP, or NCCRS Credits: None

Any certifications or military experience? No

Budget: As cheap as possible, I'm fine spending +/- $5k
Commitments: Full-time job, no other commitments.
Dedicated time to study: On average 4 hours per weeknight, more on the weekends so totalling around 35 hours per week I'd estimate.
Timeline: As fast as possible, ideally within 6 months.
Tuition assistance/reimbursement: My workplace does not partner with any institutions but I may be able to use some of my training budget to partly reimburse the studies, max $2k reimbursement if I can use the entire training budget.

I'm an international student and am pretty sure OMSCS will not accept my 3-year degree as being equivalent to a U.S. 4-year degree. At least according to my own government the degree sits between an associate's and an academic bachelors (which is 4-year equivalent). I'm still waiting for spantran to complete my course-by-course evaluation, so I can go on to apply to TESU to get a BACS to fulfill this 4-year degree requirement.

My previous degree is CS - Applied, meaning I didn't get any math whatsoever (I know ridiculous). I did have programming, sw architecture, OS (which included a little bit of DS&A). I know GaTech admissions likes to see accredited courses for e.g. DS&A. Hence my plan is now to do the flat-rate 16 credit term, taking:

• MAT-2700 - Discrete Mathematics
  
• COS-2410 - Data Structures
  
• LIB-4950  - Liberal Arts Capstone
  
• "filler" courses amounting to 7 more credits
  

I'm hoping to get your opinion on my degree plan, maybe someone who has taken above mentioned courses can help me assess the course load. I am pretty good at math and have done a lot of leetcoding so I guess I'd be decently prepared, but any insights are certainly welcome.

Cheers!

- warre

[bjcheung77]

@warre, Welcome to the board, that's a very good intro post but it's missing the addendum and template details. Generally, I've been asking people to fill in all the info in both the addendum and the template in order to provide us a bigger overall picture of your scenario. As each persons situation is unique, with more details, the better we can assist you further, you missed the sticky thread link just directly above your post, I'll link you to it here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Area-works

[jg_nuy]

FYI - the flat rate semester is now 15 credits, so you'd only need 2 more classes of 3 credits to reach the 15.

[warre]

@warre, Welcome to the board, that's a very good intro post but it's missing the addendum and template details.  Generally, I've been asking people to fill in all the info in both the addendum and the template in order to provide us a bigger overall picture of your scenario.  As each persons situation is unique, with more details, the better we can assist you further, you missed the sticky thread link just directly above your post, I'll link you to it here: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...Area-works

My bad bjcheung. Do you prefer I take down my post and repost in the proper format?

[bjcheung77]

My bad bjcheung. Do you prefer I take down my post and repost in the proper format?

No, you can always edit your post, it's still missing the info on the addendum.

[jg_nuy]

For the BACS, you will also need Calculus I, in addition to Discrete Math.

[warre]

Can you elaborate? Why do I need to take Calc1? I was originally planning in transferring credit form sophia.org / study.com / ... for this course. Or do you mean it's better for OMSCS admissions to have taken an accredited calc course?

[jg_nuy]

Can you elaborate? Why do I need to take Calc1? I was originally planning in transferring credit form sophia.org / study.com / ... for this course. Or do you mean it's better for OMSCS admissions to have taken an accredited calc course?

I was just noting that you need Calculus I for the BACS at TESU, not indicating where you should take it, since you said you had no math as part of your previous work. Sophia should be fine. Discrete math is available on Study dot com. This is one of the degrees that my older son is pursuing at TESU.

[warre]

Yes I understand. My question is if it would be better for me to take discrete math and data structures at TESU itself, so I have those courses from an accredited university, to strengthen my application to GaTech's OMSCS. I don't know if GaTech check's the transcripts this thoroughly, but I would not be surprised if they'd deny admission and recommend taking accredited CS prerequisites (again data structures and discrete math seem like the most important ones to me) before retrying.

[jg_nuy]

Yes I understand. My question is if it would be better for me to take discrete math and data structures at TESU itself, so I have those courses from an accredited university, to strengthen my application to GaTech's OMSCS. I don't know if GaTech check's the transcripts this thoroughly, but I would not be surprised if they'd deny admission and recommend taking accredited CS prerequisites (again data structures and discrete math seem like the most important ones to me) before retrying.

I would recommend asking these kind of specific questions directly to the admissions department of the graduate programs like Georgia Tech that you are interested in. You will find that they are generally pretty responsive, much more so than undergrad admission departments. Much better than guesswork in my opinion.