

Ask HN: Free master's degree? - zackattack

My family has generously offered to pay for a master's degree, should I choose to go back to school. If you could get a degree in anything, what would it be? I am a self-taught programmer with a weak CS background, and one of my goals is to be an entrepreneur. My A.B. is in Psychology and in college I also took a lot of math electives (real analysis; abstract algebra; discrete math). I do not have a strong chemistry, biology, or physics background.
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Mz
If I had a free ride for school, I would finish my bachelor's in environmental
resource management, get a master's in urban planning and then get additional
(advanced) training in GIS. But that's _me_.

I concluded I wanted a bachelor's in environmental studies and a master's in
urban planning after having an eye-opening experience and realizing I wanted
to do something with the built environment. I then went through college
catalogues (which might be easier today, with the internet) and made a list of
majors that had something to do with the built environment (including civil
engineering and architecture). I eliminated civil engineering because it
required so much calculus (a class I dropped out of and never want to see
again) and I eliminated architecture because it would involve basically
starting from scratch when I already had a couple of years of college. I don't
recall what the other majors were, but I thoroughly looked at the requirements
for each before finally settling on urban planning (then life got in the way
and I have been sidetracked for some time and have no even finished my
bachelor's).

Perhaps a similar approach would help you pick a major?

Good luck with this.

