Applying to Master's programs after probation in PhD program?

<p>Long story semi-short: I was in a (top 25) Math PhD program, and did pretty well my first year, had a GPA comfortably over 3. My second year I was depressed and stressed out basically the whole year, and I got stuck in classes (my fault) that were too hard for me to take that soon given my background. Part of it was also that I either lost interest in graduate-level math (I'm still interested in math, but I have no interest in things like Sobolev spaces or algebraic geometry), or I had never really been quite as interested in it as I'd thought. Anyway, my GPA dropped down to around 2.9 after my second year. I know grad school grades are generally known to be just As and Bs, but at some schools, they don't inflate everyone's grades in the weedout classes the first couple years. In any case, I was placed on probation for having a < 3.0, and I left the program. I tried to hit the job market looking for analyst and programming jobs. Had some interviews, but nothing worked out, and now I've got a bit of a resume gap (and I'm not really a recent grad for EL jobs anymore).</p>

<p>I'm considering applying to Master's programs in Computer Science this fall. There are a number of programs with a presence in an area of CS I'm very interested in, and that I even did some research in back in college (but from the math side). I'm just wondering if I'd have a reasonable shot at getting in somewhere. Let's say top 50, or at least top 75. I have a strong undergraduate GPA (including several grad classes I did well in), strong GRE scores, a published paper from college, and programming experience with several languages. I also had strong recommendations from college professors, though I haven't spoken with them in a few years now.</p>

<p>I do have a couple of gaps in my CS knowledge (I've taken data structures, algorithms, and systems classes), but my plan would be to go to a college near my home (probably top 75 in CS) as a non-degree student and take theory of computation and a graduate algorithms course (I've taken undergrad algorithms) in the fall, and then Operating Systems and another class in the spring, and do well this fall (and in the spring) as evidence that I've turned things around. Hopefully even get a letter of recommendation from a CS professor there (is it a bad idea to ask for a recommendation before the semester is up if it's your first class with the professor?). Hopefully I can also build a respectable portfolio in the next 6 months as well.</p>

<p>Another option would be to spend the year studying CS nearby anyway while also working on developing a portfolio and hitting the job market again without the resume gap.</p>