Graduating from college was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done
It’s quite different in other fields, but a CS degree is really not necessary to go far in a programming job. I’ve worked alongside brilliant 17 year olds in two of the jobs I’ve had since graduating. Sure, you might not work at google, but there are gobs of hard and interesting problems in locations other than Mountain View.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about going back to school. But I’m interested in too many things to make a serious case for a specific grad program. I’m also disinclined to stop working, so whatever I would do would have to be part time.
The problem? Almost every “good” school disallows incoming undergraduates (and god forbid, non-matriculated undergraduates) who already have an undergraduate degree. Certainly the overloaded UC system does (and for good reason) , Stanford does, MIT does, Harvard does, Northeastern appears to. I’d likely be able to get back into the University of Idaho, but .. it’s Idaho. I don’t really want to go back there for any length of time.
Extension classes aren’t I want - I don’t want classes geared toward professionals looking for either a little supplementary education in the evenings or the possibility of a career change. The UC system’s reliance on community colleges helps a bit, in that I can take all the calculus and diffeq that I want, but it’s assumed that CC students will transfer into the actual UC system after they’ve done their lower division classes. It’s a great system, but also doesn’t help me. I want upper division math and hard science classes. I want group theory and quantum mechanics and physical chemistry and stuff like that.
I’m also rather picky in that I don’t want correspondence or online classes if I can help it. I want real interaction with a professor and an engaged class. Studying on your own is ok (and is what I’m doing now), but I’m looking for a little more than that.
Any tips? Anyone know of a good school in either the Boston or SF area where I would have full access to the undergraduate catalog without entering a graduate program (and better yet, without entering an undergraduate program either)? I suppose when filling out an application I could just not put down the fact that I already hold a B.S.C.S., but from what I read some schools don’t take kindly to falsifying your academic records.
Anyway, back to OpenCourseWare.