Part-time online masters in CS while working full-time: Part 1 — Whys
So, I finished my Masters in Computer Science from Arizona State University through their Online MCS program while working as a Software Engineer at Google.
Whys
Why will even do a masters?
TL;DR I want to be cool like them PhDs knowing cool things, with Masters program being a forcing function in the journey.
I have a perfectly fine job of being a software engineer (SWE) at Google. For full transparency, I was a Site Reliability Engineer when I actually started the program. But majority of the time of the masters, I have been actually SWE and worked in 3 different teams. So, why will I consider sacrificing about 90 weekends for further higher-studies for a certificate that probably doesn’t bring explicit value for my career?
The full-picture is incomplete without my time Cisco Research from 2016 to 2018. I was surrounded by inspiring people with beautiful minds and with excellent ability to analyse and breakdown problems into dimensions I didn’t know exists. Common factors among them: all of them had Masters or PhDs, came with extensive research background. Obviously, correlation isn’t causation. However, people with “deep” expertise tends to see dimensions in problem that other uneducated eyes can’t. And these folks tend to have extensive educational background. And I spend a lot of time in Stanford campus when I was in SF Bay Area. These are class people who were genuinely inspiring. I still remember attending a study session with Nick McKeown and his PhD students. I was too awestruck to remember the exact topic but I remember feeling lucky. Stanford campus is truly a magical place. And I know I am not the only person to feel like that…
These opinions got further reinforcement when I worked in Unified Traffic Engineering team (builder of TE system of Google WAN) and Change Management team (responsible for designing manuals and tools for safely deploying changes to GCP). Great educational background is cool.
I knew there is a ocean of unknown unknowns. Masters program can also be a fine forcing function to know a bit more about different topics.
Also, my wife will not stop talking about how much I will enjoy this. She was obviously right.
Why part-time?
Well, Google has best-in-class engineering opportunities and very good pay. So, even fully-funded masters will not be the ideal deal unless I get into school like Stanford, MIT, Caltech or Berkeley. And my limitations: my undergrad CGPA is embarrassingly low for these great schools. And, to me, anything below top 10 schools isn’t worth sacrificing my career at Google. So, a part-time masters may really be a profile booster and unique enabler for my grand plan (attempt to fetch that plan may yield NullPointerException).
Why online?
Covid. I started my masters during 2021. Online was one true option. Also, doing the MS in-person part-time means I am extremely geo-constrained. Local universities in Dublin, Ireland like TCD and UCD, as great as they are, didn’t pose themselves as top choices. I speak more on this below.
Why a university in US and why Arizona State University (ASU)?
Don’t get me wrong, Europe has a few great options too: ETH Zurich, UCL, Oxford, TUM comes to mind for Computer Science. All of them have fantastic postgraduate programs too (UCL specifically have amazing topics). But most of them have either non-existent or disappointing online options, mostly put together hastily as afterthought or as effect of Covid. IMO, UCD and TCD isn’t on same level as the aforementioned institutions for Computer Science.
US graduation programs are overall better recognised and provides some visa option boosts for future. Georgia Tech is definitely a top pick when it comes to online CS masters programs. ASU Masters program even costs a bit more, coming total to $15K. However, Arizona State had an interesting option, extremely relevant for me: I could start with a pathway.
Pathway programs of Arizona State allowed me to canary my life with masters through a 3 focused courses as part of graduate certificate program. I picked the Software Engineering graduate certification program. Credits earned through these certificate programs can be directly transferred. This also allowed me to skip the TOFEL/IELTS requirement as well. My CGPA gap was addressed as well.
My doubt about successful outcome of a full-commit masters program was based on my countless data-points on incomplete online courses I started previously to this program.
Next chapter(s) will be on “hows” and “whats” capturing how my life looked different while on the program, what courses I picked, what I feel I have gained and what would I have differently.
