Current OMSCS grad student; three down, seven to go. Loving the program so far.

The content is great, and most of it is available on Open Courseware, YT, etc, but here's what else you get by officially going through the program:

- the amazing community of TAs

- the assignments

- the feedback on reports & projects (either automated, or through TAs)

- the collaboration with other students on Ed, Discord, Slack, etc

- the forcing function of deadlines, having to study for exams, etc

- free access to academic libraries, IEEE, ACM, O'Reilly, etc

- access to software and services, educational packages from GitHub, Wolfram, Google Colab Pro, student discount in a bunch of places, etc

Another underrated aspect is GT's ability to preserve rigor of the program overall, despite the scale and number of students in some courses (the most popular ones have 1,000-1,500 students per semester).

If you're on the fence on applying, I strongly recommend you do. The program is affordable enough that there's no harm in trying for a few semesters to see if matches what you're looking for.

Glad to answer any questions.

▲

zero-sharp 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In reference to the open courseware, is there a way to either just download all of the videos in bulk, or view them as part of a single video? It looks like they're broken down into ~2 minute long video clips through the Ed platform, which is very annoying.

	▲	guiambros 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Annoying indeed. I created a script using ffmpeg to merge all the 2-min clips into a longer video per chapter[1], so I could watch the lectures on my commute. You may need to tweak for different courses, but I've used for ML4T, GIOS, and ML, and it has been incredibly helpful. [1] https://github.com/guiambros/vidcat
	▲	jay3ss 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You can download the lectures from many of the courses, but not all, from the site.

▲

rdudek 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You'll get there! Some of them you can take two at a time. I myself only need 3 more!

	▲	guiambros 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> ... you can take two at a time I wish! I travel quite a bit for work, so it breaks my legs every time it happens. Plus family, kids activities, etc. ML was brutal this semester, but hoping the curve will help a bit. But it's ok, slow and steady is the way to go. Besides, I'm doing this for the fun of it; I don't need the diploma for career or anything. See you around!

▲

compounding_it 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]