Competency-based BS CS program from a globally ranked university

[Merlin]

Greetings from Melbourne!

I am looking for a competency-based BS CS degree. My goal is to get entry into the MS CS program at University of Melbourne. They explicitly mentions that during application review they will look at the ranking of the institution granting the applicant’s bachelor degree on ARWU and Times Higher Education global ranking lists (if that institution is not Australian-based).

An alternative option for me would be doing a traditional bachelor at an Australian-based institution, but that will take 3 years which is too long for me (I want to optimize for time).

A little about my background: I don’t have any tertiary degree but have more than 5 years of experience working as a software engineer. This is the main reason I prefer a competency-based bachelor degree because I can utilize my existing knowledge to accelerate the program. I hope to earn a bachelor within one year.

So far the only university I found that satisfies the criteria and accepts international students is NAU. It is ranked in the two above-mentioned ranking lists, even though the rank is not very high (501 - 600). The program is not exactly BS CS, but a BS in Computer Information Technology:

https://nau.edu/online/bs-computer-infor...hnology-pl

If you know other BS CS (or IT-related) programs please let me know. Thank you!

If you're only looking at competency-based online degrees, I'm afraid you'll find that most of them are not going to be coming from highly ranked schools. At least not yet. You can complete all but two of the courses required for the TESU BACS using a competency-based approach, but I doubt that TESU is any better rated than NAU. I would recommend WGU, but since you're not in the US they aren't an option for you (and they are also not highly rated.)

If you need a highly-rated school, you'll probably need to look at more traditional programs.