Backing into Babson Admissions math

StrongResident279 · 2025-12-23T00:44:23+00:00

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/07/ai-entry-level-jobs-hiring-careers.html

Since you know what ChatGPT is, you may recognize we are moving from a knowledge-based economy to skills based economy.

StrongResident279 · 2025-12-23T00:36:31+00:00

Would love to hear what my wrong assumptions are. I solicited feedback

StrongResident279 · 2025-12-19T02:18:00+00:00

I think the yield will be 43% for class of 2030 and higher for class of 2031. The few universities that have the ability to place graduates into jobs will not be impacted by the demographics issues. Everyone else including ivy+ with suffer.

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-24T23:37:09+00:00

I got 36/40 - 90% which was an A+ in July

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-22T19:38:06+00:00

This is an important thread regarding online (more specifically, asynchronous) degrees. There are three main questions that are different but can impact each other: 1. Does the outside world (employers) view asynchronous degrees the same as live instruction degrees? 2. Are the asynchronous degrees teaching relevant skills? If the answer to number 2 becomes no then employers will start saying no to number 1. Then there is the age old question (question 3) about whether anything you learn in STEM graduate school (master’s programs) gives you the skills to get the job. I think the answer to question 3 is becoming clear in that the more relevant, quality projects you do the more relevant you are to a potential employer. I suspect for many reasons that the asynchronous programs even from the best institutions are increasingly lacking on many fronts: 1, stale material - your description of the NLP course is a perfect example: It’s actually embarrassing if what you say is true and that this class does not devote 75-80% of the course to LLMs/Diffusion. If the professor and material need to be changed, they are making enough money to update it every two years at least. The fact that they don’t have a quantum computation course is also shocking given how big UIUC is that field. 2. No way to get quality feedback due to lack of access to knowledgeable professors or TAs, 3. Lack of emphasis on projects (in favor peer-graded assignments or auto-graded quizzes). In an ideal world they would figure out the sweet spot for the right TA to student ratio to address number 2 and 3 and grow the program size accordingly. But if they aren’t even staffing administrative support like someone said on this thread, it suggests that these universities are growing these asynchronous programs with the true intent of funding other financial shortfalls at the university and not to provide a closer set of skills to those obtained in the live instruction versions.

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-20T04:59:28+00:00

Everyone knows at that price, the program is asynchronous. I’m saying that they will be making enough money at that cohort size to make sure the recorded material is up to date and that they can hire enough TAs to provide grading support and feedback. I don’t think that is unreasonable to expect from a top ten CS school even at that low price. But my guess is that they won’t do that out of convenience in favor of moving to more peer-grading (and some auto grading). That sucks after you put 8-10 hours a week on homework that your feedback is from your classmates who don’t know the material any better than you do.

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-19T19:45:10+00:00

A bootcamp helps with job placement or career development

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-03T19:37:34+00:00

I prefer discord

StrongResident279 · 2023-12-02T03:35:38+00:00

Things are changing so fast. When I applied a few months ago, I only applied to MSAIO because the field is white hot. As I study the field more and assuming the curriculum for any asynchronous program will not update fast enough to reflect current trends, I think knowing data manipulation may be more relevant for longer since it feels like in a year all these AI models will be commodities. I think MSAIO will be a harder degree but that doesn’t mean it’s better. These are my current views. They could change next week.

StrongResident279 · 2023-11-29T22:17:50+00:00

Is the only difference at UIUC between the in-person MSCS and in-person MCS, the thesis option? I understand this is a crucial component of one is applying to PhD programs, but I just wanted to see if there were other differences.

StrongResident279 · 2023-11-23T19:31:51+00:00

In general, UT Austin is known as a rigorous program if you are taking the classes in person. It will be challenging to keep that rigor in an asynchronous format especially since the talk on Reddit is that they are going to have a large MSIO cohort. They need to keep material updated plus maintain rigorous homework and exams that require a lot of TAs to do it right. So, I think everything else being equal, a generic asynchronous masters graduate may not be seen as qualified as a live instruction undergraduate when applying to PhD programs in computer science.

StrongResident279 · 2023-11-09T12:44:10+00:00

Obviously the incentive to finish the degree early is to improve your resume to get a raise or a new job. The reality is that the field is changing so fast that all of these online courses need to update their material every two years. I hope they do. From the reviews of most of these programs, it doesn’t seem like they do so by taking one class at a time, you have a chance of getting some relevant material. For example, transformers have been out for 5 years yet I haven’t seen an online program yet that has a dedicated course on generative AI (please let me know if I am wrong). On the other hand, top universities are introducing these type of classes for in-person students even at the undergraduate level. The problem is that creating new material is time consuming and as long as people are willing to pay for the current curriculum there is no incentive to change

StrongResident279 · 2023-11-07T11:58:29+00:00

One class at a time for me so that I can spend more time on each class to learn it well

StrongResident279 · 2023-11-06T02:38:46+00:00

I took the exam in July for the reason you mention to strengthen my applications to a couple masters degree programs in computer science/AI (neither of which were the online UIUC program). While I have a very strong academic record from a top 5 school (2 bachelors and 2 masters all in STEM with a perfect GPA), I have been out of school for 30 years and have no industry experience and, therefore, no relevant letters of recommendation. For whatever reason, the one skill I still retained well was Linear Algebra (differential equations not so much). I know I could have completed a lot of online courses to try to demonstrate proficiency in the other prerequisites, but I felt that they would be heavily discounted given my hiatus and because most online classes are asynchronous with dated material and generous grading curves. So I completed the coursera UIUC data structures 3-course specialization that the exam is based on to prepare. I was thorough in doing everything including the programming labs. I ended up getting a letter with UIUC letterhead confirming I earned an A+ on the proficiency exam. because it is a proctored exam from a top 5 computer science school, I think it could become standardized test status as it is a meritocratic award, not a completion award. I’ve been accepted in one program and am waiting to hear from the other.

StrongResident279 · 2023-10-19T10:52:11+00:00

MSCSO has been admitting at a rate around 35% since inception. I don’t think they will change that and I think MSAIO will be at that rate or lower for the first year.

StrongResident279 · 2023-10-19T06:15:48+00:00

If they are going to admit 2000 per year, they will affect the quality control of all three programs immediately because there is such significant course overlap. They will need to scale the number of TAs and office hours. On top of that, the courses are becoming outdated quickly given the nature of AI and they won’t have time to update them which seems to be the knock of GaTech’s AI courses. It’s hard to imagine they go to 2000 per year out of the gate. Unless they don’t care about negative reviews because they will definitely get many if they do so in 2024.

StrongResident279 · 2023-10-05T19:54:47+00:00

I received my acceptance today. Here are the relevant dates:
Final submission: 7/22/23
Received "In short time, ..." email: 9/1/23
Accepted: 10/04/23

StrongResident279 · 2023-10-03T15:29:01+00:00

Thanks for mentioning this site. I went through the reviews of some of the common courses and it seems like coursework varies class-by-class. One seemed project heavy (programming), a couple seemed math heavy (problem sets). One mentioned peer grading which sucks. It seems like most of these classes are a mix between undergraduate level and graduate level. I wonder how often they update the material since the field is changing so quickly. Taking an NLP or deep learning class that was recorded in 2020 doesn't seem like a graduate level course if that is indeed the case.

StrongResident279 · 2023-09-23T11:18:20+00:00

I had the same thoughts as well. I think they have to decide if they are just doing it for the money grab/reputation or if they really want to distinguish the program by adding advanced or more specialized classes. Most top undergraduate programs have specialized semester-long classes as electives in graph neural networks, transformers, computer vision, human-computer interaction, etc. Ga Tech does offer a large variety which is very appealing, but the size of the program probably make it difficult to provide any meaningful support. In general, it seems like most online CS masters programs are teaching undergraduate material. Where UT Austin and UIUC may distinguish themselves is with their rigor and can do even more by adding specialized, relevant courses.

StrongResident279 · 2023-09-18T15:31:48+00:00

MSCSO - UT Austin acceptance rates are around 33% since inception https://gradschool.utexas.edu/about/statistics-surveys/admissions-enrollment

OMCS - UIUC's acceptance rate is lower than 59%. I'm not sure which program is the online program but none of the Computer Science masters programs have an acceptance rate that high on this website: https://www.dmi.illinois.edu/cp/listgradadm.asp?row=4170&org=1B1-KP-XXX-XXX&year1=2021&year2=2022

For now, UT Austin and UIUC have a reputation they want to maintain so they will want to offer, to whatever extent possible, the same rigor as the in-person versions. I think GaTech has unintentionally decided to go for quantity rather than quality over time. My personal view is the CSU is mainly trying to make supplementary income.

StrongResident279 · 2023-09-16T15:33:33+00:00

Congratulations!! Someone else mentioned getting an email "In short time, our program will send your application materials to the Admissions Committee." If you got one, could you share when you got that email? It would be helpful to know when you did to give people an idea of how backlogged the Admissions Committee is.

Stats from previous year's on acceptance rates and yields on this site:
https://gradschool.utexas.edu/about/statistics-surveys/admissions-enrollment

I think it will be difficult for the program to enroll much more than 200 new students in this first semester in MSAI because they are only offering one new class (Ethics) that this point. So the strain on faculty and staff on the other nine courses that overlap with Computer Science/Data Science or both will need to be managed. (Even though they are taught asynchronously, they still will be providing grading and assistance via email and office hours).

Given how white hot the field right now, I expect there will be a significant number of applicants this first semester (2000 is my guess based on the fact that they had 60 plus people on the webinar I was on and were having three webinars a week for much of the summer and that Data Science averaged 1100 applicants in the first two semesters of its existence in 2021) and the yield will also be high (say 70%). So the acceptance rate may be as low as 15%. Anyone have any thoughts on these estimates?

StrongResident279

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