r/OMSCS

Hi all!

I have seen many of the graduation posts and find them really helpful! So hope this one is helpful too.

0. Application

My journey of OMSCS begins in 2023. After I heard about this program (I really wish we can know this program earlier), I started to learn the edx courses about Java, data structure and algorithms. Then I applied for 2023 Fall and got an offer. However, during the verfication phase, I recieved another email saying my English test can not be waived. I checked the earliest time to take IELTS in my city and it was september so I was way passed the deadline.

But I still took the september IELTS english test and got 7.5 and then reapplied the programm again. By this time, I also finished the last part of algorithms. Thanks for my recommenders who are willing to write recommendation letter for me again! I reapplied and got in again for 2024 Spring.

I would say these edx courses really built my foundation and my confidence. I should be more confident on myself but I didn't. I didn't know if I am able to do this program well or if I could get in. But I told myself if I can finish this, I can finish OMSCS.

1. Courses that I've taken

2024 Spring: ML4T. This is a perfect course for beginners like me. It helps us to understand what the workload is and get touch with ML which can be used in work later. I've heard that the exams have been changed to close books so I don't know how hard it is now. But back then, the questions were also super long and designed to confuse AI. This sometimes also cause confusion for non-native english speakers too. The TAs in this course are super helpful. They have live walk through for every assignment which is amazing!

2024 Summer: SDP. I am so lucky to have a group that everybody is great and hardworking. One of the groupmates is even a professional project manager who orgnized our meeting very well. We also corporate between different time zones. Near the end of the course, I moved to the US. I am grateful they also accomodate my traveling time.

2024 Fall: DL. This course was recommended by my groupmates in SDP. I learnt a ton! I like how they orgnize the assignments and I feel like I undertand more after coding them. I watched Andrew NG's deep learning videos as suppliment and it helped a lot. The group work for this course is also fabulous. We chose a topic ourselves and we repeated a paper and tried to beat it by different algorithms.

2025 Spring: NLP + simulation. I used the black Friday to get in NLP. NLP is one of my fav courses. The lectures are new and popular and easy to understand. After taking DL, this course become super easy.

I took simulation to refresh my probability knowledge. I really enjoyed the course materials and I spent more time on this than NLP. I remember carrying my laptop to finish the final essay in hotel lobby in Shanghai and the airport in san francisco.

2025 summer: CN + Nvidia AI agent seminar +CS6999

CN is something I planned to take to gain more foundation in computing system side. But I have to admit that it is super dry. I also watched videos online to help me understand better. The assignments are fun and I also carried laptop to Orlando and do homework on air and hotel.

Nvidia AI agent is a seminar that takes more time than a course but it is totallt worth it. DL and NLP really helped me to learn this seminar. I succeeded to get all the certificates in this seminar which I think they are really good deal.

CS6999: I read a news in linkedin that some students in this lab published paper and then I reached out to one of the students to ask how to get in. Then I applied by emailing the lab and sent my CV.

2025 Fall: KBAI + CS6999

KBAI : This is a easy course that I think I should've taken eariler. It is a good idea to take this as first course too and you won't be too excited about this if it is near the end of your journey. This course does not click to me as others. I feel the cognitive part is too abstract to me. Maybe I am a born engineer.

2026 Spring: AI +CS6999

AI: I saved this course as the last one because I think it is difficult. But it turns to be not as difficult as I thought. This course also overlaps with simulation, KBAI, ML4T in different parts. so I actually end up using less time even than CN. In this course, you can skip one assignment and 2 chanllenge quizes. I chose to skip the first assignment as I was busy at that time and also heard that it is the most difficult one. lol.

2. Campus tour and graduation ceremony

My advice would be go if you can. David Joyner really levels up the experience. After the campus tour, I feel more connected to the Uni. During the graduation ceremony, I feel like OMSCS is a more important and large community than I thought. The video camera is the in the straight direction to the back. (There are so many and I end up finding the wrong one.) The walk is super fast. David Joyner handed the diploma to the Dean and then Dean will shake your hand and hand you the diploma. I wanted to shake hands with David Joyner too. But I saw him handing the diploma so I did not because I don't want to disrupt the process, which I regreted a lot. For future gradutes, go shake hands and take selfies as you want. You will also have chance to take pictures with David Joyner in campus tour and after graduation ceremony which I took my chance. To be honest, I think he is more popular than Buzz.

3. Other thoughts

The classmates are amazing and you might feel left behind or not smart as others constantly. But we will survive. Learn from others and don't compare from others.

Thanks reddict community for valueble advices and postes!

See ya!

Go Jackets!

Finally done after 5.5 years! My specialization was AI.

When I was a teenager living in Ohio, my dad and I made a road trip to Atlanta. We happened to drive by GA Tech’s campus, and my dad got really excited. “Hey, that’s Georgia Tech! It’s a really renowned school!” I don’t think I had ever heard of it at the time, but his enthusiasm stuck with me. He didn’t live to see me graduate, but because of his attitude about GT I am immeasurably proud of myself.

My background:
BA, English Literature and Creative Writing (Agnes Scott College, Georgia)
BS, Computer Science (Westfield State University, Massachusetts)

I don’t work in tech and I don’t particularly have any plans to. I did a software development internship in undergrad and I hated it. I have written some code to streamline tasks at my job, but it’s more of an admin position. I applied to OMSCS while deep in Covid lockdown. I desperately needed mental stimulation, and I enjoy school. 

Although I took some classes that are considered easy, I didn’t factor that in when choosing any of them. I chose only classes that I was genuinely interested in, and I refused to take any classes with a group project. Before starting, I had coding experience in Java, C, and C++, and I sped through Dr. Joyner’s Python course a couple weeks before starting my first class.

Spring ‘21: KBAI. I really loved this class, and I actually applied to TA it. I enjoyed the homeworks and I think this was a great class to get my Python skills up. When I first started, the RPM project seemed like it would be impossibly difficult, and actually doing it got me over some of my imposter syndrome. Grade: A

Fall ‘21: ML4T. I dropped this about 5-6 weeks in and I don’t particularly remember why.

Spring ‘22: ML4T. I thought it was a pretty solid class for a beginning ML student. I definitely learned some things that helped me in later classes. Grade: A

Fall ‘22: HCI. I am so glad there was a time when this class didn’t have a group project, because otherwise I never would have taken it. I loved the format this class had at the time, with the alternating weekly P (principles) and M (methods) assignments. The M assignments were similar to the final project, but broken down into pieces. This let students go through the design process once over a few weeks, getting feedback along the way, and then put it all together and do it again for the project. I ended up TAing this class for 5 semesters, starting at the same time as the wide release of LLMs. In my opinion, as students started using AI more and more, projects got worse. I’m not anti-AI, but I definitely noticed a difference in how much effort some students put into their learning. Some of the stuff I read was just ludicrous, like “I interviewed 50 people and compensated them $100 each,” with obviously fabricated quotes. I think people are really doing themselves a disservice by not actually going through the whole process themselves. Grade: A

Spring ‘23: AI. This class was a lot of work and I spent many hours pounding my head on the desk trying to figure out why my code didn’t work. I’m glad I took the challenge. Grade: A

Fall ‘23: Game AI. I was so excited to take this class, and I ended up really disliking it. The lectures were not engaging and I struggled to get through them. I enjoyed the first couple of assignments, but then I just stopped caring. Up until now, I fully expected to graduate with a 4.0. I just could not bring myself to put a lot of effort into the last couple assignments. Grade: B

Spring ‘24: AIES. I really liked this class! I know a lot of reviews say it’s useless, but I thought it was interesting. However, toward the end of the semester my life got really busy and I struggled to put full effort into the last assignment and the final project. Since I had already lost my perfect GPA I didn’t stress about it. Grade: B

Fall ‘24: RAIT. I don’t know, I’m interested in the topic, but wasn’t really feeling the class. My life was still pretty busy and I ended up dropping it.

Spring ‘25: Digital Marketing. I’m not really sure why this class is available to take, but I sell some things online as a side job and thought it might be helpful for growing my business. I’m not sure that most of the things I learned will ever really apply to me, but I liked the class. Grade: A

Summer ‘25: Intro to Analytics Modeling. Up until now I didn’t take any summer classes, but I really wanted to graduate in the spring of ‘26 so I needed to make up for dropping RAIT. I do a little bit of stuff with data at my job and thought this class would give me some beneficial skills. This class made me really feel impressed with OMSA students, because I worked pretty hard throughout the semester but couldn’t pull off an A. Grade: B

Fall ‘25: GA. I could have gotten away with not taking this, but I wanted to. I didn’t have a good algorithms class in undergrad and thought it was important that I take this. I liked it. Overall I really appreciate how hard I had to work, and there was nothing better than the “aha” moments when I figured things out. I did every homework and every suggested practice problem, though I always seemed to be running a few days behind so I didn’t actually hand in most of the homeworks. (They don’t count toward your grade.) The bad: I’m actually generally a really good test taker, but these made me so anxious that I did not do as well as I would have liked. Nothing worse than getting what amounts to about 8 points taken off your final grade for giving a non-optimal answer that still works. If I studied about 10 more hours per week I could have gotten a better grade, but I just didn’t have that kind of time. Grade: B

Spring ‘26: Network Science. This class wasn’t on my radar at all until it was recommended by a fellow student when I was taking AI. It was one of my favorite 3 classes, and I’m glad I ended my journey with a class I really liked. The quizzes were tricky, and I have to admit that after about quiz 9 or 10 I stopped doing the readings and my average started to dip a bit. I really enjoyed the homeworks. They were structured in a way that made me learn a lot without being overly tricky. I got to focus more on learning the concepts rather than wrangling with the code. Grade: A

Congrats to my fellow grads! I had a great time in Atlanta.

I've been at my SWE for 3 years (pretty chill, avg 40 hrs/week) and am starting OMSCS this fall. I'm planning to do only 1 class per semester. For those in the same situation, how do you manage your time? What does your typical day/week look like? What do you do to preserve your sanity/mental health?

The Calendar clearly says Final Grades are supposed to be available now online, but they are not. Does anyone know why it is taking longer?

For people who took this program to change careers towards software engineering or AI, when did you start feeling comfortable with your skills?

What I mean by comfortable is that you felt you could compete with people with undergrads in CS, or that you had "enough" knowledge to pass/get interviews in big tech.

For the MSCS program, how many classes have you taken per semester?

Would be nice to know if you do it while holding a full time job or not. I'm just curious what the ideal balance is for each situation because I know some people say you need to invest 20hrs+ a week per class.

been on the subreddit a lot the last few days. And the vibe of this program is very weird. To me

In terms of what the degree can do for you. I hear that:

Not very helpful career wise
Not very helpful academically if you want to do a PhD
More tedious than it is useful learning.

Don’t hear a lot of positive endings from what I’ve seen. Just a whole bunch of people who sound like they want to be out of their misery lol. Which I’m not judging, but It makes me wonder if it’s even worth it for me personally.

I am a career pivoter, I’m in tech just not in a technical role. I’ve been waiting to hear back since November and it’s been radio silence. But I’ve been hopeful through bc I’m like the program itself will be worth it. But from what I’ve seen, maybe not?

I keep hearing that the OSMCS should take 15-25 hours per week per class. What is most of that time spent on? Papers, projects, studying, or something else?

Been keeping up with the course reviews on OMSCentr@l (lol is this really a banned word) to see what’s changed in the courses I’m eyeing.

I have noticed, having been looking through the Recents, that some account is heavily trying to advertise their book (Deep Learning: From Slop In to Slop Out)

In most cases, appears the reviewer didn’t even take the class they post the review. I’m wondering if there’s a way to report these as spam.

I don’t know the whole history of the OMSCentr@l drama with it but my understanding is the original maintainer doesn’t really actively keep up with it anymore, so chances here are probably slim but I’m kinda sick of seeing these.

Hello,I am interested in the Robotics specialization, but before I apply to OMSCS, I would like to know what careers I could realistically go into after graduation.

Thank you in advance.

Congratulations to all of you who graduated today, go jackets 🐝

I know this is going to get a ton of downvotes, but I'm trying to leave this post at least for the people who are considering this program. Please do not take this post down; this is a genuine concern.

So as someone who enrolled in this program to genuinely learn the topics that I'm interested in, make a career pivot and apply that knowledge, I've taken a mix of some easier and some harder courses (a mix of systems and ML), but all of them were courses that I deemed necessary for my career goal.

I know some people here claim that there is no concrete evidence of OMSCS negatively impacting the value of the degree. But, of the very few people I know already (I'm an introvert), I recently came across a number of hiring managers/recruiters saying that they had issues with OMSCS students/grads (it's a small sample yes, but ratio-wise it's concerning to me). Apparently, these people don't have any CS background whatsoever other than OMSCS, only take easy courses or don't even register and never graduate, put GT on their resume/profile, and keep applying until they get an internship/job. Because of this, apparently, they are now trying to be more cautious with OMSCS grads.

I did some research on this and I was shocked at how the courses that some people took to graduate almost had no resemblance to any CS coursework whatsoever. I did not know you could just graduate taking only courses like that. I personally don't care what courses you take or what spec you are in. I don't care if you coast just to get that paper while I'm pulling all-nighters coding. But why should I, who took relevant courses in systems and ML for a career pivot, possibly get thrown into the same bucket as these people and be at a disadvantage in the job market?

Bottom line is this. I hate elitism too but it's reality. Recruiters/hiring managers not caring about your spec/coursework is also reality. But because of these people, it seems like I might be at a disadvantage in the job market too without given a proper chance to prove myself. If this issue is just swept under the rug like it is right now, I genuinely am not sure I can recommend this program for people with similar goals as me. Yes, school is for learning. But for me, it was also for a career pivot. And if people who are genuinely passionate, talented in CS do not select this program for the reasons I described above, that itself will be a negative impact to the value of this degree.

I'm not saying everyone needs to take GA, but some of these people's coursework do not resemble any type of CS coursework, let alone that of a T5-10 graduate level coursework. And I was able to find several examples within a short amount of time (I had to look elsewhere because I cannot find these type of people in the courses I take). And yes, I took GA and I'm graduating soon. I'm not telling you what else I took.

https://i.redd.it/wenwlaoeidzg1.gif

its not over yet...

edit: passed 😄

Hi all,

I started OMSCS in Spring 2026 and recently moved to Toronto for a summer internship, so I don’t really know anyone locally going through the program yet 😅

I’m already in the OMSCS Canada LinkedIn group, but it seems pretty quiet, so I thought I’d try here and see if there are any OMSCS folks in Toronto.

Would love to connect for study chats, course discussions, or just surviving the program together.

If you're in Toronto, say hi!

Final exam answers for the class I took this semester haven’t been released yet-is it common for classes to not release answers for exams? I’d like to check my work and what I got wrong/misunderstood. Have asked instructors on piazza and haven’t received a response

edit: answers were released for the midterm so not sure why they wouldn’t release for the final

Hi everyone,

I’m considering applying to OMSCS while doing a full-time MBA, and I’d appreciate a reality check from people who have actually gone through the program.

My background is not traditional CS. I come from economics/business operations. My long-term goal is not to become a full-time software engineer, but to become technically credible enough for Product Roles later on.

The rough plan would be to take OMSCS slowly, likely one course per semester, while doing the MBA. I’m not trying to speed-run the degree or collect credentials for the sake of it. I’m trying to understand whether this is a serious but manageable path, or whether I’m underestimating the workload.

I know OMSCS is rigorous and not something to treat as a side hobby. That’s exactly why I’m asking before doing something stupid with confidence, humanity’s favorite sport.

Thanks in advance for any blunt advice.

First of all, I'd like to say that I am very appreciative of this program and all the people who work hard to run it smoothly, and the fact that there are multitudes of ways that you can create your own personal "venture" through the course offerings, with each specialization being a degree on its own (in some other MS programs). With that being said, I had a question regarding the AI/ML coursework offered. I have recently begun the program and plan on going deep into this field of study through the AI Spec. Here are the courses I have planned to take so far:

AI, RL, ML, DL, HDDA (and SDP).

...But, it feels like that's it for the AI/ML depth? I guess I can take classes like Bayes, AI4R, etc., but these are all branching out (or leading up to) studying AI/ML, not going deeper into it.

And, for example, look at the Computing case, where it is a nice transition into deeper territory: GIOS -> AOS -> SDCC, DC

It would be nice to have some courses like Advanced AI/ML, Advanced Deep Learning, etc., to continue down this spec just the way we have for Computing.

So I am not talking about difficulty in terms of getting higher grades or fetching all knowledge from course cause I don't have plans to take all hardest course and even in harder course I don't expect to get exceptional grades. But in terms of efforts required and time spent. I am software engineer working in finance fields for a few years and I am taking this degree to be still relevant in the field and maybe learn few more things as the job I do doesn't require any deep expertise. I would rate myself a good software engineer 7/10 as I can get the job done working with codebases databases and design decisions. I see people posting it requires 15-30 hours for this course .And that's just for one course per semester. Is it manageable for working professionals??

Bombed my HPCA final, so going to make a C with a ~78% (pending grade confirmation once this Canvas ransomware issue is done with.) I'm aware that I can make this a "free elective" and have it count towards my degree, which is good news. I'll be covering the Core courses requirement with AOS / CN (and, of course, GA later on), as I intended to take those regardless.

In general, feeling down. I made an A in GIOS last semester, and this was my 4th course in the program. I had some personal issues going on this semester and, in general, didn't feel passionate about the hardware deep-dive of the course. Still, I got good info out of it that is helpful knowledge for how caches and processors work.

Feeling down because my 4.0 is now a 3.5, and I'm potentially going to lose employer funding (validating that with my employer) as their guidelines seem to state maintaining a 3.0 per semester. It's also a hit to the confidence, since I would like to take HPC and AOS while in this program, but if I couldn't get at least a B in HPCA... I don't feel confident in succeeding anymore.

Has anyone else made a C and recovered fine? Would love some encouragement, but constructive criticism is fine too.