Possibility of doing an MS in computer sc. or engg with a non-comp sc background?

[sysvirt]

I'm exploring the possibility of doing an MS in Comp Sc and engineering from a reputed engineering school in the US.I don't have a formal computer science academic background - I majored in metallurgical and materials engineering around 7 years back from IIT Kharagpur.However I had few courses pertaining to computing such as Introduction to computing,Data structures and program design and Computational materials engineering

Since graduation, I have been associated with software design and development ,and I carry close to 7 years of relevant industry experience across domains such as Virtualization,EAI,PLM and finance.

I intend to do a specialized MS program in either distributed systems or information networking.Lacking the requisite formal computer science background,I was wondering if it would be possible to go ahead with my career plan?If yes, how do I go about the bridging the gaps? Are there reputed schools in the US that offer MS programs to students with my kind of profile?

I'm anticipating some valuable pointers/suggestions from the experts here.

NB I had taken GMAT and had a score of 710 with 99%ile in the quantitative section. Do I still need to take the ordinary GRE?

[CalmLogic]

The problem is you want a reputed school However, a former poster, KayKay, was a non-CS student and she got admitted to Columbia after taking the GRECS (but her chances for admission were higher as she was female):

http://www.urch.com/forums/gre-compu...ckgrounds.html

A few CS departments have a formal policy where they will admit non-CS students who do well on the GRECS. These schools include UCF (University of Central Florida), Florida Institute of Technology (if I remember correctly), and Colorado State University. None of these schools rank in USNews for computer science, but other CS departments may have similar, unwritten policies if you ask them. Regarding reputable schools, you may to consider asking the CS department at Rutgers since they seem to value the GRECS more than most schools, and you may also want to ask USC since they are a safer option for many applicants, e.g. they don't require recommendation letters. (When I asked UCF about their GRECS policy, they agreed with me that a 50th percentile may be considered good enough to substitute for not having taken CS courses. However, even 50th percentile is hard to get for non-CS students.)

The tricky thing is that since you only have, at best, a partial CS background, it will be hard for you do to well on the GRECS exam, which is heavy on theory. So I would suggest taking a distance learning graduate course on algorithms, e.g. Analysis of Algorithms at UF, which costs $1800 ($600 a credit) for international and out-of-state students and covers most of the Cormen book on algorithms. This will both help you prepare for a significant portion of the GRECS and help boost your profile, and almost all MSCS programs in the US will accept at least 6 credits of such courses for transfer.

(If you decide you don't need a reputed school, UT Dallas, known as a safety school, doesn't require much in the way of prerequisites prior to admission except linear algebra and calculus, but they do state they require the standard CS prerequisite knowledge to be demonstrated while in the MS program.)

Do I still need to take the ordinary GRE?

I would think so, at least for most CS departments since they don't mention the GMAT as an acceptable substitute. Many MIS programs that are part of the business school actually prefer the GMAT, so that does bring up the issue of getting an MIS/IS degree instead.

The forum at Edulix.com has some interesting info on the benefits of an MIS degree. There is also a relatively new, non-traditional MS/PhD program at UC Santa Cruz that seems promising, and I think it is part of the CS department:

Technology and Information Management
TIM Graduate Degree Contact Info

Some info about the professors there, like Dr. Zhang:
http://www.urch.com/forums/computer-science-admissions/85858-ucsc-phd-computer-science.html#post556518 (In at UCSC (PhD in Computer Science))

Since you are interested in information networking, CMU, as you probably know, offers a very expensive INI degree, but I don't recommend it since the ROI of such CMU professional degrees is not good, as previously discussed at TestMagic.

[sysvirt]

Thanks a ton Calmlogic for all those pointers !!