Howdy,
I’ve been a lurker on College Confidential for years and finally a momentous chapter in my life unfolds as I finally signed up and am creating my first thread! Seeing the amount of unwarranted vitriol garnered from salty folks throughout the many years on the interweb directed towards HES, I’ve decided to shed some light from my research.
Some background: I have 3.93 overall GPA and 70+ credits from a combination of my time at a top 5 engineering university and community college (many of which I completed as dual enrollment student in HS), before stopping out to work full-time. While I enjoyed my time as a traditional student, a burning sense of guilt accumulated as I watch my parents hard earned savings go towards funding my education.
In an effort to be financially independent, graduate debt free, and learn in a way more suitable to my liking, I stopped out this past summer. I now work at a very reputable startup in the heart of San Francisco as a Principal Software Engineer and am looking to complete my bachelor’s degree part-time.
I’ve compiled a list of colleges that I am potentially willing to attend:
Harvard University’s Extension School
University of Pennsylvania LPS program
UC Berkeley
UCLA
Northwestern University SPS
Columbia GS
Stanford University
I weighed each college by the following factor:
- Quality of Education ~ relevant and rigorous selection of courses
- Flexibility ~ allows me to continue my full-time job as a Software Engineer
- Cost ~ I'm paying for my entire tuition and am looking to receive the best ROI
After weighing the pros and cons of each institution, I have come to the conclusion that Harvard Extension School’s Bachelor’s of Liberal Arts Program (ALB) came out on top for a nontraditional student like me. During my research, I reached out to alumnis from HES and received glowing reviews about the program. In fact, I would like to share one correspondence I’d the pleasure to exchange emails with who took the time to encapsulate his experience at HES (let’s call him Max). Max is a remarkable man who is now the VP of Engineering at a large startup and did his ALB at Harvard before receiving his masters at Oxford University. Here’s a summary of his experience and our exchange:
- Max first states that most of the classes are superb and extremely rigorous. In juxtaposition to his time in the master's program at HES, he thinks that the classes at HES were more challenging than the courses at Oxford. (with one or two notable exceptions).
- You're on your own. Everyone is working full-time so you won't have much of a network. In order to complete the program, you must be extremely driven and self-motivated to get through the work. After a long, grueling 10-hour work day, you come home doing homework or attending classes for years that will push you to your limits. He states, "It's probably the hardest part-time Bachelor's program in the country, so prepare yourself to eat some pain."
- Breadth of the courses will ensure that you leave learning a lot of things that have nothing to do with computer science (his concentration). The core classes ensure that you have a broad liberal arts education, so your writing and communication skills will improve alongside your Comp Sci skills. Max states, "I would say that the breadth of my education there was one of the most important things I took away from the experience."
- "Dollar for Dollar, it's the best choice you can make. I left with $0 of debt, and paid my own way through without loans on my own income as a software engineer."
- "As far as where you'll go? Who knows. But I'm now the VP of Engineering at a Series C startup that I helped build from scratch, so I don't think there are any limits on your potential by going there."
- Lastly, "you will encounter some snobbery about it not being "really Harvard" but I assure you, this is limited to a few blocks of Cambridge, MA and entitled jerks who don't appreciate how hard it is to get through an entire Bachelor's at a top-tier university while holding down a full-time job. If/when you bump into them, don't pay them any mind. In the end, you get a degree from Harvard University, just like my wife who graduated from Harvard Law School."
Part two is below:
Now, these entitled jerks Max talks about will usually point out the following:
- The open-enrollment policy that Harvard Extension School employs renders it nothing more than a glorified community college,
- It's not "Harvard"
- Cash cow program
- Better off at a state school than at HES
- No privileges in comparison to Harvard College students
Now these points do have their validity, but I’d like to dispel them now:
- Yes, the open-enrollment policy does render the School itself to be less selective, as long as you have money and a beating pulse, you can register for classes. BUT to be a formal candidate in the Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB) program, there is a formal admission process.
a. Complete three admission courses receiving a grade of B or higher. This includes the the notoriously difficult Expository Writing course, a requirement for undergraduate degree candidates at both Harvard College and the Extension School. While you’re completing your third admission course, you apply to the program.
b. An essay
c. Current Resume
d. Official Transcripts
There are approximately 1800 degree candidates in HES (528 undergraduates and 1,210 graduates) and 25,000 non-degree students. Facts provided from Harvard University Fact Book 2011 - 2012 → http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_fact_book_2011-12_final.pdf)
- "Harvard University Extension School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the twelve degree-granting schools of Harvard University..."
- Harvard University has 37.6 BILLION dollar endowment. HES is pocket change for the institution.
- Perhaps, if you are looking for a traditional college social life and whatnot. But if you are a nontraditional student with a legitimate career and have the ambitious desire to keep your full-time job, I'd argue otherwise.
- Once you are admitted to a Harvard Extension School degree program, here are the privileges -> https://www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/completing-your-degree/degree-privileges
a. Harvard Alumni - fully legitimate alumni of Harvard University with all the benefits of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA)
b. Harvard University photo ID card that grants you access to benefits like the Harvard libraries and Harvard museums.
c. etc. etc. etc.
Part three is below
Harvard Extension School is fundamentally a meritocracy that allows ambitious individuals who for whatever are unable to attend college or dropped out, a second chance at a high quality degree program. The computer science course selection is amazing btw, here’s a sample of classes that piqued my interest:
- CSCI E-20: Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science
- CSCI E-28: Unix/Linux Systems Programming
- CSCI E-32: Advanced JavaScript with Node.js and AngularJS
- CSCI E-46: Applied Network Security
- CSCI E-48: Secure Mobile Computing
- CSCI E-49: Cloud Security
- CSCI E-51: Abstraction and Design in Computation
- CSCI E-54: Concurrent Programming in Scala
- CSCI E-55: Java and the Hadoop Distributed File System
- CSCI E-56: Web Application Development with Groovy and Grails
- CSCI E-59: Database Design and Implementation
- CSCI E-61: Systems Programming and Machine Organization
- CSCI E-63: Big Data Analytics
- CSCI E-65: Mobile Application Development Using Swift and iOS
- CSCI E-66: Database Systems
- CSCI E-71: Agile Software Development
- CSCI E-81: Machine Learning and Data Mining
- CSCI E-90: Cloud Computing
- CSCI E-92: Principles of Operating Systems
- CSCI E-93: Computer Architecture
- CSCI E-97: Software Design: Principles, Models, and Patterns
- CSCI E-109: Data Science
- CSCI E-121: Introduction to the Theory of Computation
- CSCI E-124: Data Structures and Algorithms
- CSCI E-127: Introduction to Cryptography
- CSCI E-181: Machine Learning
Just look at that incredible list of CS and Software Engineering classes offered at Harvard Extension School. The mixture of theory and practice in these courses is simply amazing. It’s the best bang for your buck and I am grateful that such a program exists. For those who are potential ALB candidates concentrating on CS and as a Software Engineer who interviewed folks from Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley, Harvard, these are the core Computer Science classes I suggest taking (!! is a must):
- CSCI E-20: Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science (!!)
- CSCI E-51: Abstraction and Design in Computation
- CSCI E-121: Introduction to the Theory of Computation
- CSCI E-124: Data Structures and Algorithms (!!)
- CSCI E-61: Systems Programming and Machine Organization (!!)
- CSCI E-92: Principles of Operating Systems (!!)
- CSCI E-93: Computer Architecture
- CSCI E-59: Database Design and Implementation
- CSCI E-66: Database Systems
To wrap things up, Harvard Extension School is an amazing program that I think holds tremendous promise. Even if I were to gain admission into Penn, Cal, UCLA, etc., the sheer amount of quality courses, cost, flexibility makes HES the best program. I am confident that I will be able to go on to an elite graduate program from HES from my discussion with MIT and Stanford professors and I look forward to beginning my journey.
Hopefully my posts were somewhat helpful to folks learning about HES! Feel free to discuss about HES and whatnot below. I will post more about Penn LPS, Northwestern SPS, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Columbia GS once I have the time again in the future. Back to work haha.
I have actually looked at Harvard Extension for their masters, ALM, program in software engineering. The aspect I like about HES’s program is that most of the courses are directly applicable to a job in industry. You are free to take theory courses, but not there are electives in any technology you care to learn… Assuming you can get into all of the programs you mention, I would go to Cal-Berkeley though. It is tied as the best CS program in the US.