No, don't let people ever discourage you. That wasn't my intention.
I think I responded to myself and my friends j-school, all poor students with the wrong expectations. Largely journalism attracts and employs careless and self-righteous people, so I was a good fit.
In engineering though there isn't alot of room for that. And the opportunity before us is unprecedented, to build our capacity to do something special with our work.
And there's a risk that because it's so easy to sign up and get started, it'll be just as easy to fail and never try again, or worse get nothing out of it.
I've spoken to some people involved in program at Georgia Tech, and they're advice is to take other online courses because skills transfer. Plus they make us much better at what we do.
You shouldn't be allowed in right now because with your experience you would be unlikely to succeed.
This is intended to be a serious master's degree from a top ten university for people with strong practical knowledge. Unless you are a brilliant student, it will be very hard for you to pass the initial courses - those required to continue - especially because you probably will not be doing this full time. It's unlikely that you're a brilliant student because you chose to study journalism. I made the same mistake.
Udacity failed in their first attempt at accredited online courses with San Jose State. This was attributed to unprepared students with full time jobs.
Georgia Tech can't accept this. So for the demonstration classes over the next few years, they'll carefully choose the most motivated and capable people from all over the world.
That said, MOOCs likely respect the work of other MOOCs, and there are lots of courses on programming available. Udacity already has great ones (i'm currently taking debugging), and even these can be difficult to complete on time.
So it seems like using these to develop the discipline to complete the courses will be perfect preparation for you to take the Master's.
And when they begin to accept more students, they'll likely start looking closely at those who show demonstrated aptitude for working through online courseware.
I think I responded to myself and my friends j-school, all poor students with the wrong expectations. Largely journalism attracts and employs careless and self-righteous people, so I was a good fit.
In engineering though there isn't alot of room for that. And the opportunity before us is unprecedented, to build our capacity to do something special with our work.
And there's a risk that because it's so easy to sign up and get started, it'll be just as easy to fail and never try again, or worse get nothing out of it.
I've spoken to some people involved in program at Georgia Tech, and they're advice is to take other online courses because skills transfer. Plus they make us much better at what we do.