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Thank you for responses! I've been away for a while, but at least I have GRE scores now: 168 q / 166 v /4.5 w I would like to aim for a top school in NYC / SF (bay area) / Austin Do I have a shot at the top schools? Also, what is the best way to find out more than the programs say on their websites? Do you think students troll these forums? Thanks again! default

Thank you and Victor for the feedback. Can you give a few examples of good career change programs? I noticed a number of programs mentioning prereqs (often times in the form of their own ugrad courses) - can I apply without having those prereqs?

Hello, this is my first post here. I'm looking for high level advice / reality check before I invest a lot of time into applying to top CS programs. I'm 28 years old, my background is in business, my undergrad was at a top specialty school (gpa 3.1) and later I got my MBA from a top 15 school (gpa 3.5), focusing mostly on finance and entrepreneurship. I have several years of work experience in management consulting and business analytics. I'm now looking to get an education in 'Big Data' or as close as possible with the goal of developing new algorithms and hopefully finding some people who are smarter than me to start a company together. No GRE yet, but my GMAT was 99th percentile and I feel confident that with a little prep I can get above 90th percentile in Q. My math background is mostly in business modeling and basic statistics. Had a few side projects where I wrote simple scripts, so not completely new to coding, I know just enough to have established bad practices . I guess my questions are: * Does it make sense for me to apply to a MS program? * Assuming a good GRE score do I have a shot at top schools, or will my low ugrad gpa kill me? * Should I look for a couple of classes (linear algebra, 101 cs classes) at community colleges in the area, or just watch online stuff? Thanks for bearing with my rant. I appreciate all advice. _default