I graduated with my bachelors in 1999, so it’s been a while. I recently have been taking a lot of online courses, and I’ve always wanted to get my masters, so I applied to a few places that offer online degrees. This year, a lot of the universities are removing the GRE exam requirement, so I thought it’s a good time to apply. Long story short, I got rejected from almost every place. My undergraduate is in Computer Science, and I applied for a Masters in computers science. I have been working as a programmer from 1999, working my way up all the way to Software Development Manager. I have a long list of softwares/applications I have built that are used by fortune 500 companies, so I have a strong resume. My GPA in undergraduate was 3.6, and I have plenty of certifications and courses that I have completed over the years for my work. So overall, I kind of believed I had a decent chance. My most rejection is from UT Austin, which was one of my top choices.
There are two caveats that I think could have hurt my chances - 1) the college I got my undergraduate from went bankrupt, and is out of business and no longer exists. And 2) I withdrew from a java course, because I had too many courses that semester.
Is it possible, these two things are hurting me? How do working professionals that maybe aren’t doing a lot of volunteering, and activities (that a typical college admissions profile includes) make a strong application?
It’s going to be the place you went. If it no longer exists, there would probably be issues with accreditation. It’s hard to tell from UT-Austin because they’re a hyper-competitive school anyway, especially for CS. You’d want to try a less selective school and talk to the CS graduate admissions. If you’re in Texas, Tarleton State has an excellent online masters program. University of Phoenix is another you could try.
yeah, that sucks - i mean, it was accredited when it was around, I don’t know why they can’t validate that. My GPA was pretty good, so it should count… thanks for the suggestion to be able to talk to the admissions - do you know any other schools that would be open to discussion about this topic?
My husband graduated from Rutgers in 1989 with a 3.4, communications major. He got into NYU and got his MBA in 2003. He did have his CFP and a few other certifications.
Which programs did you apply to?
Did you look at GTech’s OMSCS?
Is there any way to get verification of your previous attendance, degree, and transcripts?
Some state education web sites have information that may help finding places that have student records from closed colleges.
Research graduate programs mostly focus on relevant junior/senior level course work, research experience, and recommendations related to these. Professional graduate programs vary in what they look for, but it is likely that those in CS and related fields mostly focus on both your school record and experience in the field.
Harvard Extension School also has a Software Engineering masters that you enter by earning at least a B in 2 classes. You do need to write a thesis or finish a capstone for the degree.
Yeah, looking at that now, but that also is pretty competitive
I had transcripts, and the transcripts have been taken over by another university, so I did have valid transcripts - other than that, i don’t know what else they can use to validate.
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