
Ask HN: Open Courses vs. Master degrees value in the IT market - atmosx
Hello,<p>I am getting my degree in pharmacy soon. I’m seriously considering to pursue a “Master’s degree in CS” at the Greek Open University (EAP).  Costs 3.500 euro&#x2F;year but I noticed that their course material is exactly the same as the ‘coursera’ courses. For example “introduction to algorithms”, “design patterns”, “networking I and II” and “cryptography”.<p>Both are remote but coursera doesn&#x27;t have a <i>structured path</i>, which is something that I like, it’s free BUT does NOT hand you a valid degree. Just a verification that you successfully taken these classes and passed.<p>If I ever wanted to apply for a job in IT, do you think that a series of “Coursera” courses would be an acceptable skill-set? (Say I take math I&#x2F;II, algorithms I&#x2F;II, crypto and classes like design patterns).<p>ps. Googling I found this[1]. It’s Master’s degree in CS by Georgia + Udacity. If anyone got accepted, please share your experience. I don’t think I would be accepted, but I’d like to know the total cost per year, I was not able to calculate it on the fly. Thanks<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.omscs.gatech.edu&#x2F;program&#x2F;
======
gautambay
I don't know much about the situation in Europe, but between Oct-Dec'13, I
informally surveyed ~30 Silicon Valley tech employers (recruiters and hiring
managers) and asked them _exactly_ this question ("Will you hire someone who
doesn't have a CS degree but has taken the equivalent MOOCs?"). The research
was for my startup, which is in the space.

Here's a rough summary of the findings:

\-- Overall, in spite of there being a shortage of developers, there's a
general reluctance to hire people without a CS degree.

\-- In general, hiring managers were more open than HR / recruiters to the
idea of "self-taught" candidates.

\-- Startups much more open to hiring entry level folks without a CS degree
than large companies who generally have more choice (and bureaucracy).

\-- Among those who were open to hiring self-taught candidates, 100% said they
would like to see a strong portfolio of projects that the candidate has built.

\-- Greater willingness to hire for non software developer roles. e.g. I heard
multiple stories of people without CS degrees getting a foot in the door as QA
/ testers, and then rising through the ranks into engineering (e.g. at Zynga).

I believe the GaTech-Udacity degree costs ~$7k, BTW.

~~~
xiaoma
My experience has been very different. My only degree was a BA in Japanese.
When returning to the US after a long stint in Taiwan, I considered going for
a name brand masters degree but instead chose to do online study and Hack
Reactor. I don't think it's been a barrier at all.

Sure a lot of start-ups are flexible, but I was also invited to interview at
Apple, Amazon, Google, FB and other large companies before I chose to take the
start-up entrepreneur path instead. I don't think the degree ever came up,
except for during one interview with ZeroCater.

~~~
gautambay
Super interesting! Very curious about a few things:

\-- How did the large company recruiters find you, and what do you think made
them contact you (e.g. If through LinkedIn, what credentials / keywords did
you showcase there)?

\-- How much of the attention do you attribute to Hack Reactor (which is
selective, and hence has some of the signaling benefits of a name brand
university) vs. your own online study?

\-- Did you pursue any of these conversations? If so, how did they go?

I realize I'm asking a lot of questions, and am happy to take this offline if
you prefer. I just love learning more about alternate education.

~~~
xiaoma
That is a lot of questions! I'll do my best here, and please just check out
the links in my profile if this doesn't cover it.

Hack Reactor has a brand now, but I was in it over a year ago. When I
graduated it had no brand whatsoever. It was selective, but nobody had even
heard of it. Worse still, employers I did tell about it, tended to immediately
assume it was essentially the same as another coding school with barely half
the instruction hours and a far worse student teacher ratio. For the most
part, what I got from Hack Reactor was the hard skills.

I presented prototype of a robot fighting game at an Backbone.js meet-up, I
did a hackathon at fb and I went to a bunch of other meet-ups that focused on
actually coding things as opposed to mixers. I also had profiles on AngelList,
White Truffle and Stack Overflow, all of which linked to my Github account.

The vast majority of the inbound messages I get on LinkedIn are pretty much
just looking for me to work with exactly the same technologies or even just a
subset of the technologies I worked with at Groupon. I ignore them. But
sometimes, a company has noted the MOOCs and more often than not those
opportunities involve learning something new and are much more interesting to
me.

~~~
gautambay
Thanks for answering!

------
leonth
Greetings. I was exactly at the same position two years ago but decided to get
my license and work as a pharmacist instead.

I am not sure how invested you are against working as a pharmacist, but I
would humbly suggest that you at least do that for a while (perhaps 1 to 2
years). Being both an experienced healthcare professional and hacker/developer
enables very wide career opportunities. You will be the most tech-savvy
pharmacist in the department/company. You will be the most efficient in any
kind of data analysis (because your peers are having trouble learning to use
Excel Pivot Table while you are writing scripts that take the files as input
and perform 1000 Pivot Tables in a second). You will be tasked to be the go-to
person for anything remotely related to the million-dollar enterprise software
the pharmacy uses. You will get to be involved in the most technologically
advanced project the pharmacy is having (think automation, robots, electronic
medical records).

In the startup world, the professional status gives you instant, significant
positive reputation gap as compared to your usual competent-developer-without-
domain-knowledge kind. Not to mention the advantage of having extensive domain
knowledge should you manage to find an idea that somehow involves pharmacy.

After that, you can slowly think to get your CS degree (as I am thinking of
getting in the near future), or just do the Coursera courses along the way. As
you would have some experience working as a pharmacist already, this
credential (plus all the experience being involved in pharmacy IT projects)
would stay even after you get the CS credentials.

[PS: I'm in Singapore working in a public hospital here.]

~~~
atmosx
Hello Leonth!

It's a nice feeling knowing other people out there are facing the same
situation. Actually, I'm expected to work as a pharmacist at the family-owned
pharmacy and manage a small medical office (3-4 offices). I'm partner in the
pharmacy, owner of the medical office. The pharmacy work is extremely
demanding but my parents will work there, they just need help. The medical
office is 20-days old, so it's extremely easy to handle for now.

I'm planning to work at least for 2 years full time in these positions and see
how it goes from there. I'm already building small-scale applications (using
ruby) to solve problems that arise, setup a digital-signage system using RPis,
etc.

However, I'd like to get a better, more 'rounded' education at the same time
which would allow me to skip to IT, if I ever wanted too.

thanks for your comment! :-)

ps. Out of curiosity, what was your thesis about?

~~~
leonth
Nice to hear back from you. Seriously what are the odds of meeting another
pharmacist in HN? :)

Your situation seems to be very fortunate and I'm sure that heading to
pharmacy is something your parents are pushing for :) Since you're a partner
already, I believe that in the coming years of working in your pharmacy you
will be able to apply even more of the programming skills to help operations.

I think if one has a desirable portfolio of projects and good referral,
getting a job in IT should still be possible even without a relevant degree.
Keep also in mind that not all IT work needs programming on a daily basis
unless you are a real hardcore engineer. From what I see there is as much
opportunity in vendor support, project management, integration (need technical
chops but more on the ops/networking side as compared to programming), at
least in enterprise IT here. People already working in these sort of work can
very well be less proficient in programming as compared to you right now.

Aside - here not all students do thesis because of the limited number of
professors, but I did a shorter thesis-style project about finding gene
signatures that may give rise to resistance to imatinib (Glivec). Used a
modification of Support Vector Machines (SVM) and recursive feature
elimination. It was fun and took the life out from my old laptop because of
the heat from crunching the numbers :) Want to hear about your thesis as well
:)

~~~
atmosx
Yeah, what are the odds? :-)

Yeah my parents are eagerly waiting for me in the pharmacy, my sister too! But
anyway!

My thesis requires building a Proof of Concept sequence alignment program.
Should be able to compare sequences (proteins and DNA/RNA sequences) and also
give a sequence alignment score in order to test if say a bacteria has the
substrate to produce a specific protein.

I'm building it using the ruby Sinatra framework. It's more about
bioinformatics but my professor was very pleased to have a student that could
build even an elementary system like this because for BLAST was complicated!!!

I choose my thesis early though, otherwise I'd choose to build a system where
you put patient data and proposes medication/therapy (from drugs to lifestyle
changes).

------
peteretep
I'm a hiring manager: get the real degree, because the computers you will
interact with professionally will understand it.

The Immigration Control's computers will understand it, and you'll get extra
points for an advanced degree. Megacorp's HR systems will understand it, and
you'll get a different salary banding. When you decide to do an MBA, the
Admissions Department's computers will understand it, and rank you
accordingly.

As an aside, I carry a fair amount of personal bias after getting a CV from a
lady who claimed in the headline she'd studied at Harvard, MIT, and some other
big name I don't remember. When you dug in to it a little deeper, she had
watched a few iTunes U videos from each. Yeuch.

~~~
Pacabel
I've discussed this with several other hiring managers I know. We've all taken
at least one MOOC course, and while they may be useful for the learning
experience, we agreed that we couldn't trust the credentials.

One trend that we all noticed is for students, nearly always from developing
nations, to focus solely on the credentials and very little on the course
material itself.

Even before the courses were complete, with coursework submission deadlines
still looming, we'd see people post stuff like "I'm still waiting for my
certificate! When will I get it?" in the courses' discussion forums.

After the course had completed and the certificates were awarded, there would
inevitably be many more of these students asking why they haven't received
theirs, even after openly admitting to not doing most or even all of the
required coursework.

For these people, it was all about getting a PDF of a certificate containing
their names. Learning anything at all wasn't even a consideration.

While traditional academic institutions may have similar problems, it's never
to such an extreme as with MOOCs. At least students at any reputable
institution will have had to demonstrate at least some understanding of the
material being taught.

~~~
dannyking
Accredible has done a lot of work to try and address the concerns that hiring
managers have with online learning. The top 3 concerns we have identified are:

1\. How do I know if you really did the course? 2\. How do I know how
seriously you took the course? Did you just browse through it passively or did
you really do every assignment and maximize your learning? 3\. How do I know
if the course was high quality or of sufficient depth?

I believe the best way to address these concerns is to change the structure of
the credential itself to have evidence of learning embedded into it. We
(Accredible) have been working with some MOOC providers to create a portfolio
credential tailored for this kind of situation - currently in trials and going
well!

So, hopefully, once the credential formats update to match the learning
environment, this will become much less of an issue.

------
arghnoname
Generally speaking, at least in the USA, having an agree from a relatively
well regarded school counts for a lot more than listing some Coursera
certifications on your resume. This is especially true earlier in your career
when education is a bigger factor than experience.

Part of the reason for this is while you say they are 'exactly the same' I
think there is a lot of skepticism that this is true. With the university
system, most of us got our degrees and have a better sense of what that degree
means. If it is from a school of a certain caliber, we know the minimum
statement that makes. For Coursera, that's just not as clear unless you've
gone to the trouble of doing both. I believe a Coursera educated person can
(and perhaps maybe often even is due to self selection, who knows) be more
knowledgeable than a person educated more traditionally. I'd still see hiring
a Coursera person as a bigger risk because it is less of a known factor.

As an aside, in the US system those sound more like Master's courses than
undergraduate courses. This is part of the confusion on what Coursera should
count as. No one wants to look into the curriculum themselves, see how exams
were proctored, projects administered, etc. That's what accreditation bodies
and institutional reputation are for. Coursera hasn't replaced that (yet).

------
Robin_Message
If you do go down this route, make sure you produce a portfolio of completed
work. So you'd have a program or three that you've written for each course (or
similar) that demonstrates your knowledge and is on github and indexed and
explained well [1], and a big file folder you can take to interviews and say
"I know it's not a degree course, but it's the same content and here is all
the work I did to make sure I actually understood the material" (rather than
just watching the lectures and barely passing/cheating in the online exams.)

[1] Github links on resumes: it doesn't have to be perfect, but not much time
is spent reviewing resumes, so make sure your best projects are easy to
identify and explore.

~~~
dannyking
Absolutely - There are some great tools out there too for showcasing the work
done in online courses. Accredible (my startup) lets you build portfolio
credentials designed for showcasing knowledge from online courses. There's
also Pathbrite, GitHub, Dribble, etc. for less online-learning focused
portfolios.

------
draugadrotten
In my experience from several global companies over 15 years, you will be
accepted in IT if you have a Master's degree in another field, as long as you
have the real life skills. A Master's in Pharmacy should be enough. However,
don't confuse Coursera with real skills in IT. Reality is very different from
any university education. You need experience before you can tackle hard
problems. Make sure your first job is at a place with skilled senior
colleagues and you will soon realize that this this is the start of your real
education. Good luck in your career!

------
walesmd
Hey there! I actually work at Udacity and can (or will find the person that
can) answer any questions you may have. You specifically mentioned our MS
Computer Science program with Georgia Tech ([https://www.udacity.com/georgia-
tech](https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech)), also the FAQ
([https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech/faq](https://www.udacity.com/georgia-
tech/faq)). The price sits right around $6,600 I believe and the admissions
process is entirely handled by Georgia Tech. I don't believe you would meet
their prerequisites for students (must have a BS in Computer Science or a BS
in Science), but I very well may be wrong (I'm not on the GT team). I do know,
unfortunately, that regardless it would be awhile before you could start. We
just started our summer session a week or two ago.

The good news is - you're free to take any of the other courses we have
available (seriously it's all still free and I believe we're still planning to
get our Georgia Tech courses out there publicly as well)! If you're interested
in having the assistance of a coach/mentor while completing a course, along
with a validated certification and graded course project assignment (good for
the portfolio!) we also offer our Premium experience at the flat rate of
$150/mo.

Ok - done with the Udacity pitch; now my personal comments. I never finished
my degree and I've been a developer for over 16 years. Don't let some piece of
paper stop you or make you doubt yourself. In this industry, at least as a
developer, projects, projects, projects, projects - that's what really counts.

Before I joined Udacity I worked for Gov Contracting firms, I've with the NSA,
DIA, VA and the Air Force. Projects, projects, projects - that's how I was
offered those positions (and how the recruiters found me).

I say take a couple of online courses to gain the knowledge/skillset you think
you require, then come up with a fun project, something that excites you, and
build it!

~~~
thatthatis
Their page appears to say just a bachelors, not a bs in cs, not even a bs:

> Evidence of award of a 4-year bachelor's degree or its equivalent (prior to
> matriculation) from a recognized institution, demonstrated academic
> excellence and evidence of preparation in their chosen field sufficient to
> ensure successful graduate study

Am I missing something?

~~~
walesmd
Nice catch! I'm going to assume, since GT really does handle all of the
admissions stuff, that their page is the correct one. It does look like, on
our page, we are displaying GT's "preferred prereqs" but labeling them as
"required prereqs".

I've emailed the guy running that program and will post a reply if I'm told
there's a different reasoning behind it (and hopefully we'll get our page
updated too).

------
xiaoma
There are two distinctly different paths you can take. You can either maximize
your _credentials_ or you can maximize your _skills_. In some cases both paths
would lead you to grad school, albeit putting different levels of effort into
your school work. In other cases, the skills maximizing path won't lead you
through the traditional schooling process. This is especially true in the
arts, writing, sales, and certain types of engineering.

Taking the credentials path is safer at least up through age 40 or so. You're
less likely to end up struggling to get a good job, and you'll likely end up
with an above average salary.

Taking the skills path is very difficult at the beginning and you can expect
to be paid less than more credentialed peers earn for the same work. You'll
have a harder time getting your foot in the door. You'll have to have stronger
skills. The flip side is that your skills will be stronger in the long run. If
you can build a substantial body of work and get "so good they ignore you",
then you'll have or even create opportunities that are closed off to even the
candidates with the prettiest resumes.

What's your risk tolerance and how confident are you in your abilities?

~~~
atmosx
Risk tolerance big, I have other income waiting for me.

I'm confident about my UNIX skills, not so much about programming because I
was never involved in _big projects_. On the other hand, whatever I needed to
do... I did it. BUT given the programmers I see on SO and here, I really can't
say if I could excel at professional without trying, not because I don't
believe in myself (quite the opposite) but because I see extremely talented
people with striking resumes. What gives me hope though, is that .. HN/SO it's
a sort world-stage. You have Google engineers, consultants, encryption gurus
etc. commenting.

I'm more eager to pursue the _skills_ mastering. That's another dilemma I
have: Spend time studying for a university or writing code/attacking real-
world problems/contribute to an open source project, etc.

------
dwoot
Have you come across Scott Young's feat? [http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-
challenge/](http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/mit-challenge/)

I believe in the real world, you are best represented by a body of work and/or
the ability to demonstrate that you are capable of tackling the problems
associated with the job in which you are considering.

The world of information technologies is vast. There are computer scientists,
software engineers, data scientists, test engineers, and many more.

It'd be best if you could narrow down what it is that you're interested in
working on. I think a degree in computer science gives you a phenomenal
foundation for any of the above, but it doesn't make you immediately in
demand, particularly if you're missing a body of work.

I am a software engineer without a CS degree, but I've studied algorithms,
some design patterns, and some math relevant to my areas of expertise.

That's my two cents, but I'm sure other people have some useful ideas as well.
:)

~~~
tst
> I believe in the real world, you are best represented by a body of work
> and/or the ability to demonstrate that you are capable of tackling the
> problems associated with the job in which you are considering.

This is such a good advice! I remember reading Norvig's spellchecker[0] and
said to myself: "This code is so elegant and beautiful. I could never write
something like this."

I learned more about NLP, learned some Scheme, worked through Norvig's Design
of Computer Programs[1] and improved my Python a lot.

What have I learned? Firstly, people like Norvig have tons of experience and
are incredible clever. Also they have worked in the same (or similar) domain
for decades. Of course they know cool data structures and algorithms for NLP
problems. Back then I didn't realize this and thought that I was dumb. Today,
I'm less dumb and know that it takes time and experience. Build, learn, build,
learn, ...

[0]: [http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html](http://norvig.com/spell-
correct.html)

[1]:
[https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212)

~~~
waps
Experience is more about knowing a million little tricks than it is about
actual domain knowledge. Norvig's spelling corrector is an application of
inverting the problem.

Instead of attempting to correct a misspelling, he attempts to misspell a
word, then stores the misspelled word along with the original word. Then, to
correct a misspelling, you simply look it up in the hash table.

Incredibly powerful mathematical concept that inversion thing. And there's a
million of them.

Other "tricks":

* shuffling a deck of cards in O(1) (or shuffling anything at all)

* sorting in O(N) (with a limited keyset, and guaranteed no repetitions it's easy. Think about it).

* knowing the url to MIT's bit twiddling manual [1]

* know how to "rewrite" english (or any language) text. Really impressive. Also, mostly useless. It's called Markov Chains.

* understand how and why "every language compiles first to LISP, then to machine code" is true. Thinking about this yields no end of clever programming tricks

* make sure to have spent a few months in each style of programming. Imperative (doesn't tend to be a problem). Functional (NEVER change the value of a variable, ever, for any reason). Dynamic (write a calculator using eval, and go from there. Exploit it).

* having the experience that any style of configuration eventually ends up being a turing complete programming language, and so you should just import and use an existing language

* having experienced the power of query languages. Instead of having a few reports, implement an interpreter that allows you to query them. Then amaze everyone by having every new report they ask for done in 10 minutes.

* knowing the power of automated source translation tools, and how easy these things are to write IF you can munster the discipline of never touching generated code

All of these things will have people tell you it's impossible. And when they
see simple code that demonstrates things like this, it's cheating (e.g. O(N)
sorting is not fully general. That doesn't make it slower than O(N), and it's
still applicable to a lot of situations) ...

[1]
[http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html)

~~~
dteoh
> shuffling a deck of cards in O(1)

How? I'm aware of Knuth shuffle which is O(n) but I can't find anything about
constant time shuffling.

~~~
waps
You use the algebraic property that x _y mod n will generate a shuffle of Zn
if y and n are relatively prime (don 't share any divisors). So if you then
redefine "element a" to not refer to the index of the original array, but to
a_y mod n, and you've got your shuffle. You pick y randomly, and in order to
make y and n relatively prime, you simply change n to be a prime number.

None of this requires you to actually go through the list. You'd have to
modify this to support lists of non-prime lengths, but this is the basic idea
:

    
    
      import random
      lst = [1,2,3,4,5]
    
      class newlist:
          def __init__(self, lst):
              self.lst = lst # assuming lst has a prime length.
              self.y = 0
              while self.y % len(lst) == 0:
                  self.y = random.randint(1, 999999)
    
          def __getitem__(self, index):
              nidx = (index * self.y) % len(lst)
              return self.lst[nidx]
          
      # Start shuffling
      nl = newlist(lst)
      # End shuffling ... algorithm done.
    
      for i in range(len(lst)):
              print i, nl[i]

------
integricho
What about the edX X-Series[1] certificate for computer science? is it worth
something? I know it's not entirely free, but it's quite cheap compared to
anything else, and has a clearly defined structure, any thoughts?

[1] [https://www.edx.org/xseries](https://www.edx.org/xseries)

~~~
rz2k
The first two courses, which were formerly one, have great material and
require a solid effort from students. However, I am under the impression that
the schedule seems to have slipped a couple times for when later courses will
be offered, and the fee structure may have changed, and it is not a very fast
schedule to have to wait so long between courses.

While I trust that anything EdX offers would adhere to very high standards,
considering that it's even a little difficult to find x-series from the main
pages of EdX now, I wonder whether prospective students should wait around for
them to start if they have alternate options that are programs that are more
likely to occur and involve less potential downtime between courses.

~~~
dragonwriter
> However, I am under the impression that the schedule seems to have slipped a
> couple times for when later courses will be offered,

I don't think it has; I don't have the original dates written down, but I
remember them as originally all late 2014 through 2015, which is still where
they all fall, so I don't think there's been much change.

> and the fee structure may have changed,

I don't think the fee structure has as much changed as been defined.

------
eranation
I'm doing the Georgia Tech MSCS and can vouch for its rigor and quality. The
cost is indeed about $7000 [0]. It is much cheaper than the on campus version,
however the degree is exactly the same (no indication it is online). Their
graduate program in CS is ranked #9 in the US by US News and World Report [1]

You need an undergraduate degree with GPA 3.0 or above to get "conditionally"
accepted, no need of GRE or GMAT. to "really" get accepted you need to get B
or above in your first 2 core courses. (not impossible, but requires work)

They are very serious about this program and put a lot of effort (both GT and
Udacity) to make it happen, I really hope they succeed.

Bottom line, I personally think this is the most cost effective CS graduate
degree in the universe at the moment.

[0] - [http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2013/05/15/georgia-
tec...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2013/05/15/georgia-tech-udacity-
shock-higher-ed-with-7000-degree/)

[1] - [http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-
gradu...](http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-
schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings)

~~~
atmosx
Hello, it's 7k USD/year or for the entire course (2 years IIRC)?

UPDATE: It's 7k for 3 years. The price is amazing...

------
xkarga00
The Master degree at TEI of Crete is 3 semesters * 600 euro = 1800 euro in
total

[http://www.epp.teicrete.gr/msc/](http://www.epp.teicrete.gr/msc/)

~~~
atmosx
Thanks for the pointer, but is this remote? Because it doesn't say so.

EDIT: Unfortunately is not, requires actual presence which is not an option.

------
Htsthbjig
"If I ever wanted to apply for a job in IT, do you think that a series of
“Coursera” courses would be an acceptable skill-set?"

No, never, a course is not a skill set in IT.

Also, it seems to me you are Greek, I lived some time in Thessalonica, US, and
other places, I was born in Spain. Those places(Greece, Italy, Spain, even
Germany) have title-itis, but is different in other places in the world. In
the US they don't care what is your title if you can do something, most of IT
is in the US.

BUT, you can start a real project, using the "Coursera" courses to COMPLETE
it. Then you could basically work whenever you want in IT, given that you have
a real proof that you could use the knowledge.

Active learning is very different form passive learning. In the Universities
where I studied they forced you to do active learning via practices and so on.

------
raving-richard
Is it possible to get recognition of prior learning or something similar? If
so, you can do the free courses, and then go to the uni and say "I already
know that, and that, and that", etc. Then you don't pay for those courses. I
don't know if you can opt-out of the entire course structure like that, but it
might be worth looking into.

------
nomedeplume
Not exactly 100% relevant but I'll take work experience over a degree all day.

------
callesgg
I would never ever hire some one based on what school/program someone went to.
As long as the grades are ok don't really care about that either.

