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    Come discuss with other HES students in a new forum who are at Harvard Extension School. Talk about life in and around Cambridge, Boston, classes, school, Harvard University, course reviews, and more. Interested in the best ways to travel to Harvard for your residency requirement? Check out the 'On and Around Campus' category for tips and advice. Want to join a book club with other Harvard Extension School students that read through the Harvard Classics? It's a Harvard education in and of itself. ExtensionStudentForum Forum categories include 'Job Postings & Job Seekers', 'Extension Confidential', 'Professional Graduate Certificates', 'HBX', 'ALB' and 'ALM' discussions. Extension Student Forum is brought to you by The Degree Tracker.

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    This forum is exclusively for Harvard University students. The sponsor for this forum is an exciting new web app, The Degree Tracker. Track and plan your Harvard Extension School ALM and ALB degrees or professional graduate certificate. Course ratings, instructor reviews, accomplishment badges, planning, tracking, and other tools to help guide students through their HES journey. TheDegreeTracker is proud to bring you this tool to use to track your degree at Harvard Extension School. If you are a student who has more courses than you can keep track of, and you would like to plan out your degree pathway carefully, then track and plan courses with the Degree Tracker to take control of your education. Including course reviews and course ratings, TheDegreeTracker has the potential to not only guide you through your degree, but to let you help other students who might be wondering about the HES courses that you've taken. The Degree Tracker is glad to provide the Harvard Extension School Student Forum (ESF) to help foster a nurturing environment. This forum for was born in 2015 to create better Harvard Extension School friendships, networking, and information to contribute to a better overall HES experience. Extension students formerly congregated at forums such as philfac and extensionstudent. This website has no affiliation with either the philfac or extensionstudent websites. It has been created and run by 100% completely different leadership. For the extension student who wants a bigger taste of what life with other Harvard Extension students is like, combining the Degree Tracker and the extension student forum can foster that sense of community that others have on campus. Another advantage of participating in an online community over the Harvard campus is that extension students can develop permanent relationships with other extension students that being on a physical campus might not necessarily allow, since online students are great at staying in touch online.

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    We'd be glad to hear your feedback. It's no piece of cake to graduate with your Bachelor of Liberal Arts or Master of Liberal Arts in a timely fashion, but your Bachelor's or Master's degree plan will only benefit from making use of the Degree Tracker and this exclusive forum for Harvard's marvelous students.

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    Professional Graduate Certificates

    Comments

    • jcaudilljcaudill Posts: 26
      I completed what is now the old Strategic Management certificate in August.  It was a great experience and well worth the investment.  For anybody considering the new one I honestly think the redesign will deliver a better mix of skills for a business professional.  I think it will also better fit those of you who are pursuing the ALM.  I was just here for a certificate for professional development and am not eligible for the ALM in Management since I already have an MBA, but have to say that even with a respected MBA the courses were an appropriate challenge I was able to learn a great deal beyond what I already knew.
    • EddEdd Posts: 59
      I picked up a certificate in Web Technologies, almost by accident, en route to my ALM in DIGM. At the time when I was enrolled in DGMD E-20, it wasn't one of the courses that counted toward the cert. I thought it should be, and wrote an email to my advisor to petition for inclusion. He agreed, it was added to the list of courses that fulfill the req, and I earned the certificate.
    • KleosKleos Posts: 57
      @jcaudill - I'm happy to hear the new Strategic Management cert has been adjusted positively. Also it is great to hear feedback on these courses in general from an MBA. I've always been curious what someone with some business background, either professionally or academically, thinks about the program. 
    • jcaudilljcaudill Posts: 26
      @Kleos - I'm glad the feedback was helpful.  My MBA was from a top 50/top 30 public institution depending on which program rankings you look at.  While it certainly wasn't an Ivy, it was a high quality, respected program and the HES courses were a definite benefit after those.  I've also had professional experience in IT and currently serve on several nonprofit boards and found the content applicable to real work as well.  A C-level exec in the Fortune 500 might have a different experience, but I feel like I came to it with a solid background and was still challenged to work hard and expand my thinking.
    • alinizamialinizami Posts: 1
      I am planning on starting the Data Science Certification from HES. Any reviews? Is the certification or even the Masters in Liberal Arts track, for that matter , worth the time and money. Do employers even consider HES as a valuable addition and treat it is an IVY league school  or is it considered as a night school only. Would be great if I can get feedback from people who have completed this and working in the corporate sector. What is the response from the Corporate sector? 
      Thanks.

    • CatsCats Posts: 16
      Hi Alinizami,

      The following post may interest you: Harvard Online Master’s Degree in Software Engineering

      Specifically, someone asked in the comments, "Can you comment more about the employment opportunities after obtaining the online masters degree? Do you find that this degree makes you a more competitive candidate?"

      ___
      Mark Shead August 20, 2011 at 4:50 pm

      I have run my own company for the past 5 years so it is hard to say exactly how much it would help in a job interview. I did apply for one job before I completed the program. The fact I was working on degree at Harvard certainly got some attention, but mainly as a starting point to talk about some of the interesting projects I had worked on. In that particular job they were very interested in my experience in integrating with webservices. In my XML class I had done a lot of work with Amazon’s API and that seemed to impress them. They did hire me even though I told them I was planning to move to Mexico in 6 months.

      As far as working as a consultant, most of my work comes from word of mouth. Rarely do I even pass out a resume. However some of my earlier clients were people I knew when I was in the middle fo the program and I know that quite a few of them have told others, “You need to hire Mark, he is really smart. He went to Harvard!” Although they sometimes get various details wrong. Some people thought I had an MBA from HBS. Others thought my degree from Harvard was in music composition. There have probably been other permutations of the truth passed on to different clients. Occasionally someone will ask about it, but the main advantage it gives me is that people start with the assumption that I’m reasonably smart. This gets me in the door to where I can either prove that assumption correct or incorrect.

      So as far as the ALM in IT degree helping you get a job: It will give you a very wide range of experience and a solid foundation. If you take that foundation and do interesting projects, create interesting code and generally make use of your education it becomes a door opening point of interest, but the real weight is on what you can do as proven by your past history.

      One very valuable thing the degree can do is give you self confidence in your skills. A lot of self taught software engineers have a nagging self doubt that they might really be a fake and that their success has come from just getting the right problems where they were able to succeed. The degree can really help you cover a broader range of skills, fill in any deficiencies, and give you the confidence to tackle larger more difficult projects.
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