School Plans Change... Again

I guess those of you who know me already suspect it’s about time for another change of plans anyway… well, it is that time of year again, isn’t it?

I guess it occured to me when a co-worker of mine brought up a program he was enrolling in that would allow him to continue working towards his computer science degree in the evenings. Of course, I’ve seen plenty of programs like this, but I didn’t know there were any in Austin.

Not that this should mean too much to me — as you should know by now, I’m planning on moving to Boston in less than a year’s time. However, it got me thinking. See, I had always taken UT’s CS program as the example. Going by their transfer guidelines, I didn’t think there were any classes in the Austin area that I could take that would apply towards a degree.

However, the program this coworker sent me (I have the link around here somewhere, but it’s unimportant) involves taking the first couple of semesters classes at ACC and then transferring these to Southwest Texas. Of course, I don’t plan on going to SWT, but it did make me realize that a number of the classes at ACC might transfer to other schools. And since I’ve already been taking a handful of classes here and there at ACC I know that they can be of decent quality and definitely of low cost.

Moving forward, I happened to stumble on the computer science program at UMass Boston. I noticed that their curriculum matches up closely with the program at SWT. And, looking at their transfer guide, it looks like the ACC classes should transfer.

And so, I’m now signed up for Advanced C++ and Data Structures this fall. I plan on taking Computer Organization and Machine Language in the spring. I figure that I can finish a CS degree doing part time work in a couple of years. Not that the math degree would have taken me any longer, but this way I’m a little more certain of making good grades along the way (I have been doing this stuff for quite a while now, after all). Also, I planned on focusing on the computational areas of mathematics anyway. I can still do the math work as I find time and perhaps focus a graduate degree in a direction that combines both interests.