workload at devry

I only personally know one person attending Devry, and his load is fairly light (he holds a nearly full-time job). However, that's largely because he's already finished 99% of the prereq courses, so it's all "meaty stuff." I guess as a graduate you'd be in a similar position.

That said, though, I'd personally advise against it. Instead, shore up your portfolio on your own time:

• You'll almost 100% guaranteed need a good portfolio to land a job,


• It's of course bonus experience 'in the trenches,'


• The self-motivated work looks slightly more impressive than extra classes,


• You get to dictate your own schedule entirely,


• And of course it's a heck of a lot cheaper.

If you get fairly lucky, you can also throw in an entry-level position or internship, and you get work experience plus your own portfolio at the same time.

Thanks for the advice :) I'll start figuring out some projects I can do to build my portfolio.

I don't know anything about devry really

But I would say, I wouldn't go there if I had a bachelors from MIT. MIT is a huge name school - people are going to ask, why did you go to devry after MIT? And you don't want them asking that.

If you really want to shore up your education find some good master's program in software engineering and it will pay off much more in the long run than devry.

Otherwise, I would think building a portfolio and skills on your own would be good also.

DeVry is one of the most respected technology schools out there. Not as powerful as MIT, but at the same time up there with it.

MIT as in THE MIT? Shouldn't a degree from MI-F***ING-T get you an entry-level position? My vote is get a job or go for the Master's.

My understanding has always been that portfolios on your own time are for people with the skills but nothing saying "This (wo)man has skills". You've got a degree which says "dragonlady has skills". I didn't go to no MIT and I know several people in CSci who're doing quite nicely. If you can't find a job in the industry, portfolio should maybe be plan B. Plan A is get a job in the industry (Plan I is resurrect the dead).

Quote:

Original post by Way Walker MIT as in THE MIT? Shouldn't a degree from MI-F***ING-T get you an entry-level position? My vote is get a job or go for the Master's.

See, this is the reaction you want to invoke. You put MIT on your resume, and people will go "wow" - you don't want anything to interfere with that. Assuming your grades are ok you should be able to find an entry-level job and/or masters program easily (and a good possibility for both, though if it's reasonable to finish the master's first that would be ideal)

Ok, I see what you guys are saying. I guess my worry was that someone would hire me, expecting me to be a coding prodigy because of MIT, and then, since I'm obviously not even close to that level, I would end up being a disappointment to my employer. The Devry idea was more of a way to get my confidence and experience a boost.

As far as grades, mines are rather average (mostly C's), but not due to lack of trying; as I stated, I am much better at humanities, writing, that sort of thing, so my math and science classes were much more of a struggle for me (but hey, the important thing is I stuck with it and I'm graduating now :). So I've been advised to interview off of MIT's campus, so that I don't "pale" in comparison to other students. So that's probably another reason why I have very little confidence right now.

Honestly, do you guys think that I'll be alright as far as finding an entry level job? I talked to one person a few months ago who got an entry level C++ job, despite not having very much experience with C++; he said that since he had learned good software practices, the specific language wasn't that important, and he was able to pick it up rather quickly. I hope this is true for me too, but since I've never even had a job other than babysitting, I'm really nervous right now :(

While it might be taken differantly than intended it's the employers responsibility to make sure you have the skills they seek. Your responsibility is to make an accurate presentation of your skills. Chances are, from this thread, if you fail there it will be in underselling yourself.

You made it through a formal degree program so you are of value in the field. Programming is one small aspect of information systems for a major corporation. Perhaps 1 in 5 people within the computer industry are hard core technical individuals. Within most organizations programming is looked down upon since 4 out of 5 people would be left out otherwise.

Just as an example I've known very bad programmers that turned out to be very good team leads. When it came to clearing a path so the rest of the team could work they did very well. They didn't have to be able to write the program to understand what support the programmer needed. Programmers tend to like to write a program then move on and forget it. Generally it needs to actually be installed into production, executed and maintained. Generally it needs to actually serve a useful purpose so it's nice to find out what the users actually need rather than simply writing a bunch of programs that someone ought to have a use for. It's nice to have things done like your licenses renewed rather than have your server shutdown one day when they expire. There are lots of things other than writing code that are needed.