Does Work Experience help offset a non-CS academic background?

[shrik450]

Hey guys,

Currently looking to apply to Masters' Programs in CS, and one common refrain I've seen in most requirements pages is that a background in CS is all but required for entry. I have a Bachelor's in a non-CS field from a well regarded college in India, but midway through my Bachelor's I pivoted towards software engineering. From a work perspective, I feel like I have a solid background: I had a great internship in college, moved to a startup right out and switched later on to an even bigger one. Working in software feels great to me and I'd like to take that further with an MS, but apart from work and one academic project in college I don't have any "academic" background as such. For example, most MSCS courses list undergrad courses in Data Structures on Computation Theory as perquisites, and while I haven't taken these courses, these are things I do work with daily. I'm not aiming for top-tier selective programs, but even most tier-2 or tier-3 programs have these as requirements. I'm further confused by some programs which are offered to those with non-CS backgrounds, such as MCIT at UPenn, which disqualify candidates for having significant experience programming, but the parallel MSE in CIS doesn't state that they consider work experience as relevant. In your experience, does work experience help in such an application?