<p>Hey everyone,</p>
<p>I graduated from the UW-Madison about 5 years ago with a degree in Accounting and a GPA of 2.82.</p>
<p>Since then things have changed. Three years later I enrolled in a local University and took about 20 credits in Computer Science and Calc I and Calc II. My GPA for all those classes is a 3.92. I have even earned 3 A+'s (not that it matters to ADCOMs). However, even still that only brings my GPA up to around a 2.95, still not competitive for grad programs. :-(</p>
<p>I have also done some AI research with a professor.</p>
<p>I ended up getting recruited for a job as a Java Developer before I could finish my CS degree and have been doing that for about 2 years.</p>
<p>My real passion is Comp Sci research and would like to get my Ph.D. The problem is, I work about 2 hours away from any University that offers a grad program in CS.</p>
<p>I have been looking online and saw that a few reputable research Universities have online graduate certificate programs in various CS topic and some have non-funded terminal masters degrees in CS. The ones that I am currently looking at are: Stanford Continuing Education, Harvard Extension School and University of Illinois-Urbana.</p>
<p>My question is would doing an online graduate certificate program or non-funded terminal masters from a REPUTABLE research university help to mitigate my low UG GPA, so I can get into a funded Masters or Ph.D program in CS?</p>
<p>I would like to get into a top 20 grad program, however, at this point, I am willing to settle on a top 100.</p>