Ms data science for 15k

[ifomonay]

@ ifomonay Yikes, you're having me worried now. I'm still going back and forth deciding between Eastern and UC Boulder. 
To put the difficulties you're having with Boulder in perspective, do you come from a STEM background or not? (I'm sorry to hear you had to drop the course.  )

Sorry, I missed this! Okay, so based on my experience, I think Eastern is better. Even though it looked like I trashed the program, there are some positives, which I think makes the learning experience good:
1. The administrative staff is excellent. If you have registration issues, etc, they will help quickly and not in a condescending way.
2. The courses do only scratch the surface and is too easy, but, if you have discipline you can get way more out of the courses. The GA's (Graduate TA's) they pick are industry experts. If you go through the optional or supplemental readings and ask questions, they will answer in the course discussion board. So, in short, easy A with little effort, but great opportunity to learn a lot if you can somehow do more in the 7 weeks.
3. There's a Discord which is very active, and fellow classmates are very supportive. You can't discuss hw problems, but you can ask lecture questions.
4. Also, to be fair, the program was never meant to be heavy on theory anyway and is meant to be a professional masters (despite being a Master of Science). It was intended to be for those without a quantitative background, and really geared to those who want practical skills that employers are looking for today. I left the program about 2 years ago, and a lot can change over 12 terms, so my experience may also be outdated.

About Boulder, I won't continue the program.
1. It seems to me that it's oriented towards students without bachelors degrees. It seems like they're saying, "since you didn't spend four years doing a BA/BS, we're gonna make you spend that time in this program". I don't want to do 90-units of work to get just 30 units. That's just my feeling though. Maybe others here who've done he MSDS program at Boulder can give a recommendation, but I won't.
2. Overall it feels lonelier. You feel like you're the only one in the course. You do get anonymous peer reviews, but it's just check mark boxes on whether you did the problem or not. There is a Slack, and most students are friendly, but there a lot of smart alecs there too. Like if you ask ,"I still don't know the difference between conditional probability and Bayes Theorem". There will always be someone who'll answer, "watch the lecture videos".
And yes I do have a STEM background. EE and CS (OMSCS). Previous degrees were challenging but taught/presented in interesting ways. The lectures at Boulder are so boring. Just presenting pages of formulas because they have to, and then a lot of problems. Many concepts to do the problems are not in the lectures, but are in the textbook.