Hi,
My son graduated in spring 2018 with a BSME (University of Vermont). He is thinking of making a move to software development and is wondering what the best options are. It appears that something like a SW Engineering certificate might be a good fit. He will be leaving his current position at the end of the calendar year and is interested in going back to school starting in January if possible. I think right now he’s leaning toward full-time, and it looks like a lot of these programs are part-time programs intended for people working days and taking the classes at night. His current job is a poor fit, and he wants to relocate back to New England, so getting a new day job and attending classes at night may not be that easy.
I don’t think he wants a “theoretical” MS, but a practical MEng or similar program might be an option too. Another options appears to be Bootcamps. I have a bias toward academia, but maybe bootcamp could be a better option for him.
Can anyone help us to get a lay of the land here and maybe give us some advice on where he should start looking? He’d like to study in New England, preferably MA/VT/NH if possible. Is this something that can be done in a year of full-time study, or is he really looking at at least 2?
And as an aside, as a 23-year-old graduate student, would he be eligible for financial aid as an independent student, or not until he turns 24? (I assume bootcamps don’t qualify for federal financial aid.)
Thanks!
One additional question – most of the university-based programs seem to not be through their “mainstream” colleges, but rather through more of a continuing education school, such as BU’s Metropolitan College and Harvard’s extension school and we have no idea whether those are “good” or not?
Graduate students are considered independent students regardless of how old they are, so even if he’s 23 he would still be independent. (But it might not make much of a difference; at the graduate level, most funding is merit-based, and there likely won’t be much non-repayable aid for a certificate program, a boot camp, or even a professional master’s degree.)
I work in tech; I am not a software developer, but I work with them all day. The amount of education needed to go from mechE to software engineering can be pretty minimal. A bootcamp could work, although I’d encourage him to select one that has a good track record of placing people in the kinds of companies and roles he really wants. A certificate program could also work well, or even just taking some classes non-degree (although it’s nice to have the certificate line on the resume). He probably doesn’t really need a whole master’s degree, unless he’s just really interested in getting one.
Does he know any programming? A lot of certificates and some bootcamps are designed for people who already have the basics of programming, so I’d check that out to make sure he has what he needs.
I’d imagine there are plenty of bootcamps in the Boston area - Boston’s a tech hub.
As for how to judge if a program is “good,” at the graduate level for a professional program, I’d focus on placement. The continuing ed schools at these top universities do tend to be quite good and usually draw faculty from their regular daytime programs - they’re simply organized under a different administrative unit so they can offer programs tailored towards working professionals. Talk to the career center or program staff to get an idea of what kinds of roles people land in after they finish up their program.
Thanks for the reply.
He does have some basic programming skills – he had at least one Matlab course as part of the MechE program (and TA’d for that class the next semester), plus a lot of “playing around” with coding as a kid in GameMaker, Lego Mindstorms, and similar environments. And he does a lot complicated excel spreadsheet “formulas” – so he has the basic mindset down, but not things like data structures, big-O notation, popular programming languages, software engineering principles (of good software design, testing, etc.) and so on.
In terms of financial aid, if he wants to go to school full-time he’s going to need loans to live on. He has some money saved, but not enough. But even that is probably not available for something like a bootcamp.