help decide.. MS-Operations Research at GA Tech or MS-EMS at Columbia?

[coolharvard]

Hi guys.

I have received admissions offers from Georgia Tech (MS - Operations Research) and Columbia (MS - Engineering Management Systems, which is similar to OR). I don't know which one to choose. I am still waiting on the decisions from other schools, although I don't think the chances are that good, and I am 100% satisfied with GA Tech or Columbia. One thing to note: I am going to get the masters degree via distance learning while working.

Georgia Tech... No.1 in IE/OR but not as many IE/OR courses are offered online.

Columbia... Ivy League name but not ranked that far from GA Tech, and more IE/OR courses are offered online than GA Tech.

Please help me decide which one to accept ... !

 

[Eugene Krel]

You picked it for yourself with "One thing to note: I am going to get the masters degree via distance learning while working."

 

[coolharvard]

You picked it for yourself with "One thing to note: I am going to get the masters degree via distance learning while working."

Both Columbia and Georgia Tech have distance learning options for the degrees I am admitted....

Should I go for the name or the ranking?

 

[Eugene Krel]

I would go with the one that offers more courses, unless you are doing a degree for the purpose of having a degree and not really caring which classes got you there.

 

[financeguy]

I don't know what rankings there are for OR programs but GA Tech doesn't seem like it would be the right way to go. If you want to work as a quant in finance, there's no comparison in brand name. Further, most employers won't be familiar with OR program rankings anyway since they don't work in OR. (By the way, I am curious what rankings you're talking about.) Also Columbia's CVN distance learning lets you take a lot of courses online if you're going that route. But just so you know, doing the CVN thing is less prestigious than doing it in-person.

 

[coolharvard]

Why is doing CVN less prestigious than taking class in person on campus?

After all, you are taking the same classes and exams as on-campus students, and you can walk with other students at the graduation ceremony just like a regular student. The degree designation is the same on trancript, unless you are very honest to tell the employer that you are via distance learning (even if they know, you can just explain the coursework is the same, the degree designation is the same, and they'll understand that you are not getting Columbia degree "cheaply"...), and you can attend lectures in person if you happen to be in town at NYC. Also, the acceptance letter from Columbia says you are admitted as Masters Degree candidate at Industrial Engineering / Operations Research department, and NOT as Master Degree candidate at CVN. Oh by the way, the admissions standard is the same for on-campus student and distance learning applicants. The applications are sent to IEOR faculty to decide whether to admit the applicants. (same for GA Tech admissions standard)

Ok, you don't get the chance to make friends with other Columbia students, but I don't think that's disadvantage especially because I am from West Coast, and I don't plan to work in NYC in any near future. After all, you are there mainly to learn and pursue masters degree, not to make friends.... (Don't get me wrong. Networking and Making friends are good, but that's not top priority.)

The ranking I'm talking about is the department. The ISYE department at GA Tech, which OR belongs to, is No.1 ranked. The IEOR department at Columbia, which EMS beongs to, is No.12 ranked by USNews. But I've seen other smaller publications that do rank GA Tech as No.1 in OR.

On the other hand, I do have a question. Which one is better in terms of reputation and career... a MS degree in Operations Research or a MS degree in Engineering Management System?? I have a B.S. degree in Computer Science.

---------- Post added at 05:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:04 PM ----------

I would go with the one that offers more courses, unless you are doing a degree for the purpose of having a degree and not really caring which classes got you there.

I definitely care about what classes I'd be taking, which is why I am heavily leaning toward Columbia, since they put more courses available for distance students. But GA Tech's No.1 ranking in their department kind of makes me think about it more.

 

[Alexei]

I remember I read a posting on wall in Math department at Baruch College; It was an article from a Wall Street Journal discussing preference of Wall Street employers. 92/100 were preferring if an applicant had a real degree vs one done online...

 

[coolharvard]

I remember I read a posting on wall in Math department at Baruch College; It was an article from a Wall Street Journal discussing preference of Wall Street employers. 92/100 were preferring if an applicant had a real degree vs one done online...

Are you telling me a Columbia degree from someone taking classes via CVN is not "real"???

Tell me, how is the degree "not real"... ?

Sure, if everything else is equal, I'd also give the preference to someone who attends the class in person because of the possible more interaction with professors. But if you are comparing something else, like 3.5 GPA from a Columbia degree via distance and 3.0 GPA from a Columbia degree via in-person attendance, I am sure you'd give preference to the person with 3.5 GPA via CVN because the coursework is the same, regardless how the degree is obtained. Plus, why would you tell the employer how you obtain your degree... ?

 

[GoIllini]

Both Columbia and Georgia Tech have distance learning options for the degrees I am admitted....

Should I go for the name or the ranking?

What's the tuition and where do you want to work when you graduate?

If you want to work in NYC and your borrowing costs are relatively low, I'd lean towards Columbia.

If you want to work in the Southeast and your borrowing costs are higher, Ga Tech isn't a bad choice- especially if you want to stay in IE/OR. Georgia Tech's reputation in engineering circles generally beats most or all of the Ivy League. (CC: US News & World Reports) I haven't checked the tuition, but living expenses alone will probably be $10K/year cheaper in Georgia than NYC.

 

[coolharvard]

I am from West Coast, I am currently working as a computer engineer for a company in West Coast and I don't have immediate plan working in NYC or Southeast in the future. I probably will stick with computer-related career, but having a master degree in Engineering Management / OR can help me advance my career in managerial role.

 

[financeguy]

A few points to address:

1) I have no idea why it is less prestigious to do a CVN degree at Columbia rather than one in-person. It just is. In any case, in-person students are *not* allowed to take CVN courses for credit toward their masters, while CVN students I believe are permitted to take courses in-person. This means that CVN students do not compete with in-person students for grades (unless they choose to). Whether this should make it less prestigious is unclear, but that's the way it is. Also, yes, you miss the opportunity to make friends with students, but more importantly you miss developing any sort of relationship with faculty - and these schools have great professors. I think this a big part of being a graduate student that you are missing. Actually, they are the major source of the prestige/rankings of the programs.

2) A big reason to choose Columbia over a lot of schools is the fact that it's in NYC and you get much better and more convenient access to hiring firms; obviously, living in NYC makes it easier to schedule interviews. Obviously this means nothing to you.

3) The IEOR department at Columbia focuses a lot of its funding, research, and teaching on financial applications to OR and financial engineering. This is why it would come in #12 on an Industrial/Manufacturing engineering school ranking. It's good at industrial engineering in the classical sense, but it's way better at OR/FE - unfortunately US News does not rank that. If you're not going into finance at all, this again will not mean anything to you. What should concern you is that, like I said above, the faculty at these schools is what gives them these rankings in the first place, and by doing these courses over the internet you won't be interacting or developing relationships with them.

4) I don't think anyone is going to draw a big line in the sand between OR and EMS. You can market them as the same. But then again, if you're not in finance, I don't know your industry. If you're really that concerned, call up Columbia and see if they'll switch you into OR.

Why not look into programs closer to you? If you're going into finance, go to Columbia without a doubt. If you're not and you're staying in your current industry, then you would know better than us which is a better name for you. Why not ask your boss?

 

[coolharvard]

So in your mind, Columbia OR is better than GA Tech OR? And you'd pick Columbia over GA Tech for MSOR... And just like you, I have no idea why US News has no ranking OR, since it's also a popular field of study.

Also, regarding the debate of "prestige" of CVN... if you are not sure why getting Columbia degree via CVN is less prestigious than getting it in person, then why can you make such claim that you don't have explanation for? Of course, on campus students are not allowed to take classes via CVN, because they are already on campus, what's the point of taking class via distance learning when you are already there? Remember, both CVN and on-campus students take the same class from the same professor, view the same lecture taught by the same professor. And you are completely wrong about CVN students not competing with on-campus students, because CVN students view the same lectures as on campus students, and they are graded in the same group. No preferential treatement is given to CVN students. They are graded just as the same scale as on campus students. The only thing missing is the possible face-to-face interaction with professors, but then, unless you are going onto PhD to do in-depth research instead of going to industry directly after masters, I don't think that is top priority...

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I'm curious about this CVN thing. Are only courses that equipped with video recording ability offered to CVN students? And courses that not are only for campus students?
Do you watch the lectures in real-time or wait until the IT people upload the clips online?
Do you have any kind of online communication medium like forum to ask question/discuss with classmates, teacher?

 

[coolharvard]

I'm curious about this CVN thing. Are only courses that equipped with video recording ability offered to CVN students? And courses that not are only for campus students?
Do you watch the lectures in real-time or wait until the IT people upload the clips online?
Do you have any kind of online communication medium like forum to ask question/discuss with classmates, teacher?

To make this clear... CVN courses are the same as on-campus course. All CVN does is to record the lectures taught by the professor and put the video online for download. If you go watch the preview (free of charge) on CVN website, you can see it is actual lecture setting, and there are on-campus students and professor in the classroom. The students, which are on-campus students, that you see in the video are your classmates. Professors do NOT do extra special recording just for CVN students. It's just that there are camera people in the lecture hall to record the lectures. That said, I don't think lectures are in real-time, you have to wait until later that night for the videos to be uplaoded by CVN people. But the uploads are done in the same day, just in the different times of the day. Therefore, I completely disagree with the ignorant assertion that "on-campus students are not allowed to take CVN courses", because the courses are exactly the same, just that the mode of delivering is different. In essence, on-campus students are taking CVN courses, and CVN student are taking on-campus courses,... just the mode of viewing lectures are different. Oh by the way, CVN also puts the recitation led by TA online for CVN students too.

As far as communication, there are forums, phone calls available to ask questions / discuss with other students / professors, but I agree that the downside of this is that the face-to-face interaction is extremely limited. But for people who already have jobs and complete Columbia degree at the same time, I don't think this is top priority.

BTW, what's your opinion about GA Tech's MSOR and Columbia's MS-EMS?

 

[Stefan Zota]

Relax mate, no need to get so excited about debate online vs classroom.

I agree with some opinions from here. Communication with the professor, more importantly with peers is an issue with online classes.
However, a friend that Graduated from Columbia OR liked the idea of "re-running" the class. Coming late from work, maybe tired, you can easily have a 5 minutes attention gap. After that, depending on the professor, it may take a while till you catch the lecture thread.

PS: I would choose Columbia too and why not, try to transfer to OR ...

 

[coolharvard]

seems like majority thinks OR degree is better than EMS degree... but why is OR a more prestigious degree than EMS?

 

[Stefan Zota]

seems like majority thinks OR degree is better than EMS degree... but why is OR a more prestigious degree than EMS?

People are judging here only from finance perspective (not pure engineering)
Personally I haven't heard of EMS specialization. I can tell about Tibco's product Enterprise Messaging System (EMS)
Operations/Operational Research is pretty broad area. Some MBA programs even have such a direction. There is a possibly large set of jobs at the end, from business strategy to data analysis.

 

[GoIllini]

I am from West Coast, I am currently working as a computer engineer for a company in West Coast and I don't have immediate plan working in NYC or Southeast in the future. I probably will stick with computer-related career, but having a master degree in Engineering Management / OR can help me advance my career in managerial role.

I think Georgia Tech has a lot of advantages in that case.

If I had the choice between hiring two identical technology candidates from Georgia Tech and Columbia, all other things being equal (including the travel involved, so this is pretty hypothetical), I would lean towards the guy from Georgia Tech.

Columbia is an excellent school, but Georgia Tech is extremely strong in Comp. Sci. and engineering in general.

 

[financeguy]

I am a graduate of Columbia's MSOR program. I am not lying to you here. CVN students take CVN courses. I promise you. For example, I asked Jenny Mak for permission take the volatility smile course fall semester and she told me NO because it was listed as CVN and therefore not appropriate for me, a regular student. We are not in the same pool. We cannot take CVN courses for credit. They may be the same material, but the class does not include in-person students. In this case it's not even taught in the same semester. Please don't say my statements are ignorant. I know what I'm talking about. That said, it might be different at GA Tech - I don't know about that school.

BUT I think this is not a huge deal to you. The only big drawback is that you won't get to know any great professors.

And I don't think you understood my statement about Columbia MSOR being better than GA Tech. I said Columbia is DEFINITELY BETTER IF AND ONLY IF YOU WANT TO BE IN FINANCE. Otherwise, I don't know since finance is the only field I know. I never worked in classical operations research.

To make this clear... CVN courses are the same as on-campus course. All CVN does is to record the lectures taught by the professor and put the video online for download. If you go watch the preview (free of charge) on CVN website, you can see it is actual lecture setting, and there are on-campus students and professor in the classroom. The students, which are on-campus students, that you see in the video are your classmates. Professors do NOT do extra special recording just for CVN students. It's just that there are camera people in the lecture hall to record the lectures. That said, I don't think lectures are in real-time, you have to wait until later that night for the videos to be uplaoded by CVN people. But the uploads are done in the same day, just in the different times of the day. Therefore, I completely disagree with the ignorant assertion that "on-campus students are not allowed to take CVN courses", because the courses are exactly the same, just that the mode of delivering is different. In essence, on-campus students are taking CVN courses, and CVN student are taking on-campus courses,... just the mode of viewing lectures are different. Oh by the way, CVN also puts the recitation led by TA online for CVN students too.

As far as communication, there are forums, phone calls available to ask questions / discuss with other students / professors, but I agree that the downside of this is that the face-to-face interaction is extremely limited. But for people who already have jobs and complete Columbia degree at the same time, I don't think this is top priority.

BTW, what's your opinion about GA Tech's MSOR and Columbia's MS-EMS?

 

[coolharvard]

But since you are in IEOR dept yourself, can you let me know the reputation / prestige between OR and EMS within the dept and SEAS? Which one is generally considered harder field? Because I know you can take SEIO 4150 to count toward OR degree, but you can NOT take 4150 to count toward EMS degree ( meaning if you don't have stats background, you have to take 33 credits to graduate instead of the normal 30 credits).... ?

Also, I believe the reason why you are not allowed to take volatility smile class that semester is because CVN uses "pre-taped" lectures to give to distance learning students when the professor is not teaching in that semester (meaning the professor is not teaching that class in person in that semester, but CVN puts the pre-recorded lectures from prior semesters online to let distance learning students to take that class). Since you are on-campus students, you can not take the class that way, so you have to wait until another semester when the professor is teaching it in person. In another word, if the class you want to take is taught by the professor in person in that semester (i.e., not pre-taped), then you can take it just like any on-campus student and CVN student. You can not take CVN course for credit if the course is "pre-taped". I don't think why you seem to intend to make clear distinction between "CVN course" and "regular course", but in reality, they are both the same. It's just that Columbia requires on-campus students to actually sit in to listen to lectures in person, because they don't want on-campus students to just sit in the dorm to watch lectures and not interact with professor (which I already acknowledge is the only difference between distance learning and on-campus students). And NOT every single on-campus students interact with professors like you probably often do. In CVN students transcript, there is not going to be an asterisk for courses taken by CVN student. And the grading method is just as difficult for distance learning students as on-campus students. You can say on-campus students are not allowed to take class in CVN way, but I don't think you are right when you said you are not allowed to take CVN course......

And your statement about CVN courses do not include on-campus student is clearly wrong as well. You can go check out the preview lecture in CVN's website, who do you think the professor in the video is talking to? And who do you think the people sitting in the classroom are?