Quote:
Originally Posted by Barrin6
Did you regret taking this?
If you could only do this remotely, would you still enroll?
Are there a lot of internships available?
How does DePaul accommodate career wise for people out of state?
Scholarships or financial aid?
Are you currently interning? If so what are you doing?
How are most of your peers doing? What's the average age/background?
What could DePaul do better?
I would prefer not to have this be Depaul-specific. So, I'll answer the questions more from a going back to school to get a Master's in Computer Science with no prior background point of view.
1. Did you regret taking this?
No, I don't regret going back to school. I've mentioned in a few posts how formal education was key for me to develop a strong foundation. I sucked at first (look at one of my first programming posts in this thread!), but now I can learn anything for the most part...except for Electrical Engineering which I really seem to struggle with.
2. Are there a lot of internships available?
Yes, there are a lot of internships available in Chicago (I assume also in most other cities). My internship ended up being a career-changing opportunity--I really took off from there. It's amazing how much you can learn when you're surrounded by veterans who specialize in different areas (Linux, Databases, Development, scripting, automation, etc). for ten hours per day. My main project was to build a search engine for their intranet which ended up being a super cool experience.
3. Scholarships or financial aid?
I didn't really do scholarships or financial aid. I had a good amount of savings and my internship paid surprisingly well. Also, now my current job pays for a chunk of my tuition. Currently I have a (relatively) small amount of debt.
4. Are you currently interning? If so what are you doing?
I've been working full-time for almost a year now as a Systems Engineer. It's been a pretty cool opportunity--I finally seem to have a natural talent which is automation and learning random scripting languages on the fly.
5. If you could only do this remotely, would you still enroll?
Probably. I mean I do tons of free education which is remote. I will say that without meeting this one random kid in my first year, I wouldn't have made it nearly as far. I likely mentioned him in previous posts, but I really upped my game from working with him on projects and seeing him in action. Actually throughout my life that seems to have been a catalyst for me getting better at things--whether it was sports, computer games (ie- Warcraft and Starcraft), chess (I still sort of suck though), etc., there's always been someone way better than me that I've learned from watching.
Currently I have five courses left to finish my degree but am going to take a hiatus starting next quarter. There's so much I want to learn and get better at, and it's too hard to do that with raising my daughter (now almost two years old!!), working full time, and going to school.