30 Days, 30 Hacks: Mastering Your US Master's Journey

Degree planning for a master's degree is similar to charting a roadmap for your academic journey, designed to guide you through the intricacies of your chosen program while ensuring you meet all its requirements. This structured plan is essential because it not only helps you make the most of your educational experience but also helps in organizing your semester which can be a crucial scenario.

At its core, degree planning entails a meticulous selection of courses, taking into account prerequisites, core requirements, and elective options, all while maintaining a balance between your academic interests and program mandates. As you delve into your coursework, the degree plan serves as a compass, indicating which classes to take each semester or quarter. It helps you maintain a manageable workload, ensuring you meet credit requirements while allowing room for any thesis or research project commitments if required.

Moreover, degree planning extends beyond the classroom. It encourages you to consider internships, assistantships, or networking opportunities that can enhance your practical skills and expand your professional network. Financial aspects, too, are part of this planning, as it necessitates an understanding of tuition costs, funding sources, and potential financial aid options.

Throughout your master's journey, the degree plan acts as a dynamic tool. It should be regularly reviewed and adjusted to accommodate unforeseen circumstances or evolving academic interests. Ultimately, this plan culminates in graduation, marking the successful completion of your master's program and the beginning of your career journey, well-prepared and confident in your academic accomplishments.

Process:

When you receive your I-20 and your decision to attend the institute is final, you’ll be prompted by the academic department to select courses for your upcoming semester. The process here is both similar and dissimilar to the course selection process in India. If you are at a University that allows you to choose courses in each of the semester in India, this process is not really different but if you are at a University where the courses for your semester/undergraduate is already selected/decided by the management then this process is going to be a bit different for you.

To understand how to prepare your degree plan, let’s go through the following few pointers:

1. When you are prompted to select courses for your first semester, please be advised to get onto it immediately, as delaying the selection process to the time, when you are attending the orientation, the popular courses would have already been taken by those who are already in process of their graduate degree. Let’s understand the timeline, when you are pursuing a graduate degree you are allowed to choose the courses before those who are a part of the cohort for the next semester, as a graduate student you have an advantage while those who are starting the course are at a disadvantage.
   

2. Your idea of a degree plan should be set because you have identified a university and a degree already so you are aware if the degree is going to be more artificial intelligence centric or more focused on general computer science courses like operating systems and algorithms. It is important to know before hand which courses will be offered under which degree because it saves you time.
   

3. Every time you are required to select the courses you’ll be given access to a portal that has the courses, credits, Professor, and cohort size listed along with some metadata like course number and department id. It is vital that you take a pen and paper and see which courses you feel you can easily understand and ace for the first semester. Once you start with the degree you should opt for more difficult courses like Machine Learning and Graph Theory. Please note that courses offered in spring and fall semesters could be different so reach out to your alumni for more information.
   

4. Your degree plan design should be based on the following questions:
   
   a. Total Credits Required to earn the degree?
   b. What is the credit for each course you are planning to take?
   c. Are you surpassing the credit requirement for the degree?
   d. What course load are you ready to take for each semester?
   e. Do you plan on appearing for interview in the 2nd semester for internship and the 3rd semester for full-time?
   f. Is it worth it to take heavy course load when the end goal is a job?
   g. Are you there to learn intricate topics in Computer Science?
   

5. Time for a secret: The incoming cohort is not aware that academic positions as I’ve pointed out in my newsletter, have more advantage than it looks in the eye, each graduate assistant is given an opportunity to select courses before the rest of the cohort. Essentially if you are employed in a position such as - grader, senior grader, TA, RA, GAT, GANT, you are given the privilege to select courses before others, this way you’ll always get to choose which courses to pursue while others will have to settle for courses which they probably do not wish to attend.
   

6. Another secret, most universities do have a special form called the “Force Request” form where you are allowed to force a request for a particular course that shows filled on the course selection portal. The earlier you fill the form the better are your chances in getting the course.

To give you an idea, I’ll share my decisions that I took to have a successful degree plan. (I’ll put it across as raw as possible)

Semester 1: Analysis of Algorithms (3 credits), Software Security (3 credits) and Parallel Computing (3 credits).

So, I wanted to get an internship in the very first semester of my Master’s degree, feel free to call me impatient, therefore I decided to take courses that would help with internship preparation, Leetcode, and make the semester easy going, so I ended up taking algorithms class, it turned out to be really helpful because it enabled my mind to think on the same tangent as when I sat down to do Leetcode. This actually helped me because I was able to secure an internship in the first month at Paycom as a Software Developer. I took Software Security because I had heard that the Professor was lenient and there was no final exam, and projects are always easy to do. I took Parallel Computing because a lot of people I got in contact with were taking this course and there was a lot of help available.

Semester 2: Software Engineering (3 credits), Machine Learning (3 credits), and Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing (3 credits)

My objective for the second semester was to prepare for my upcoming internship because I was inexperienced in the corporate world, and thought this course could really help me in my pursuit for a full-time conversion. It did end up helping me because the concepts were fresh and I could show the same to the Walmart Team and ended up getting a return offer. I had an internship in hand and knew I could try my passion therefore I took one heavy course - Machine Learning and it’s true what they say about your passion, I scored the highest in the class (not bragging) but I score a century in the exam. I had to take Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing because I wasn’t prepared for Operating Systems and these courses need to be completed as part of the breadth courses to get the degree so this was easy substitute, didn’t turn out to be because I got a “B” but it’s ok, I wouldn’t have aced Operating Systems either.

Semester 3: Data Analysis Cybersecurity (3 credits), Directed Studies (3 credits), and Computer Support and Collaborative Work (3 credits)

By this semester I had a successful internship and had already got a return offer therefore I decided to take things easy in terms of course load and work more towards soft skills development while working on a project close to my heart. Therefore I ended up taking Directed Studies - to give you a background you can choose to take directed studies once in your degree plan under a Professor from your department and pursue a project at your own pace. This helped me get a break from a high paced internship and hectic schedules and I could concentrate on things I wanted to do.

Semester 4: 2*Directed Studies (6 credits) and Computers and New Media (3 credits)

Basically you can take more than one directed studies if and when you’ve already completed your degree requirements, since I had already covered 30 credits as required under the degree through courses I could take additional courses that did not count towards my degree. Also because I wanted to continue my GAT position and these positions are only offered to full-time candidates which you’ll learn about in the orientation at your university.

This was my story and how I planned a successful degree plan, if you would want to know more about this or require help, please reach out to me through topmate. Special Newsletter subscriber discount - I’ll give you the session for free. 🤫

Topmate Link: https://topmate.io/manik_taneja3