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[OMSHub](https://www.omshub.org/) [Recents](https://www.omshub.org/recents) [Schedule](https://www.omshub.org/schedule) [About](https://www.omshub.org/about) Search courses... `⌘``K` Sign In [Home](https://www.omshub.org/) Recent Reviews Community Reviews # Recent Reviews The latest course reviews from the Georgia Tech OMS community [CS-6750: Human-Computer Interaction](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6750) Jan 5, 2026 FALL 2025 1/5/2026 Workload 6 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 4/5 Loved it Marked the workload at 6 hr/wk but that's on average. There were weeks I spent 10 hours, and weeks I spent less than 3. I took this as my first OMSCS course because I heard it was well-structured and a good 'medium' difficulty entry point for graduate level classes. I agree with that. There's a detailed course calendar and all lectures and homework assignments are available at the beginning of the semester. The expectations for students are clearly laid out and I was able to work a week ahead, which helped a lot when stuff in my personal life got busier. I learned a lot and found the subject material super interesting. There's a lot of reading, so if you're a slow reader you may want to budget more time. The group project is kind of a waste of time (it's just the exact same thing as the individual project, but in a group), but I found a good group early and we did the project without any issues. The way the course is structured, you have to learn everything, do homework, take 4 closed note quizzes, and do a solo project in the first 11 weeks of the class. This is the part of the course that took me 10 hrs/week. Then, the last 5 weeks of the course is only submitting check-ins for the group project and taking 1 (open note) test. Since I had a good group, it took me 3 hours a week max to do the work required for the group project. [CS-8803-O12: Systems Issues in Cloud Computing](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-8803-O12) Dec 18, 2025 FALL 2025 Verified 12/18/2025 Workload 25 hrs/week Difficulty 5/5 Hard Overall 5/5 Loved it The current name of the course is CS 6211: System Design for Cloud Computing #### TLDR A tough course where you learn a lot. The course is done in groups, but you might end up doing it solo if you're unlucky enough (see "People"). #### Calls There is one mandatory call each week with the professor ("synchronous meeting"), and one more grading call. The first one is always on Wednesday at 20:00 Atlanta time. The second one is individual: there is a spreadsheet with a table where you book a time that works best for you (put your team name in a cell with the corresponding time). There are some slots right after the synchronous meeting, and you will have "almost" one call per week if you manage to book them. The synchronous meeting length varies. I don't have stats, but usually they are shorter than an hour. They might be longer right before and right after the "project" weeks, when project details are discussed. #### Coursework There are four modules: SDN, NFV, SYS, APP. Each module is four weeks. There is a deadline each week: you have to constantly deliver. The first three weeks are for "workshops" (relatively small tasks to implement), and the fourth week is for the project. I would recommend you finish your workshops and start working on projects as soon as possible (ideally, two weeks before the project deadline, though this isn't always possible) since one week is not enough for the entire project. Workshops and projects are independent in some modules (SDN, NFV), they are highly connected to the project in SYS, and are somewhat connected in APP (it depends on your project). I haven't measured the workload. I took several weeks off to work on this course full-time (40h per week or more?), but at the time, I worked alone. If you work in a functional team, it will probably be around 25h. #### Modules For me, SYS and SDN were the most brutal. APP was near in terms of difficulty because I had trouble with Azure. NFV was the simplest. Don't underestimate the difficulty of any project. Even "simple" NFV was finished right before the deadline, and I started working on it early. SDN I would say that the first workshop (introduces mininet and osken) is most relevant to the project. The second one is about VLANs, the third one is about OFPGroupMod. I couldn't make the third project robust, not sure if it's possible at all without rewriting a lot of code. The project is a set of openflow controllers that can handle network loops. The simplest version lays routes based on latency, the most complex monitors available bandwidth, uses it for routes, and periodically updates them. NFV This module adds NFV to SDN. Workshops and the project should be straightforward if you are familiar with docker. You build a simple load balancing network where network functions are virtualized (in docker). SYS The workshops are strongly connected to the project. You set up an infrastructure and hello-world grpc service in workshop 1, then develop basic mapreduce in workshop 2 and 3, and add master fault-tolerance in the last week. APP You develop a proposal for your project in the first week, then you deploy several services in the cloud (not necessarily related to your project), and then implement the project. #### People It was hard to get up in the middle of the night to be on synchronous calls, but I believe that was one of the best things about this course (not every call, but on average). Unlike many other courses, you actually discuss solutions and hear unexpected approaches to the problems. The last call where students volunteered to showcase their projects was amazing: some projects felt like actual product MVPs. I often saw comments on reddit stating that you probably will end up with a great teammate there since this course has AOS as a prereq. I believe it's the case in general, but there are always exceptions. My teammate promised that he would do the next workshop/project multiple times, but didn't commit (in every sense). I gave up after several talks somewhere in the middle of the semester, asked to split, and finished the course alone. The course staff don't recommend taking this course alone, and now I totally understand why: I had to ask to reschedule part of my vacation for the time when I had to submit projects to work on them full-time and finish them. Thus, I recommend resolving conflicts and staying in a team if possible. Overall, - there are always exceptions, and some things are out of your control - it's possible to finish this course despite that Besides my team, I had only positive impressions from the people in the course. Students post and comment on Ed, and sometimes it's really helpful. TAs understand that the course is tough and might forgive some imperfections. You can ask for extensions, but there are limitations (you probably can't do that for every project). Thanks to the classmates for discussions, thanks to Bing, Branden, Chintan, Joseph, and Tyler for their work, and thanks to Professor Kishore for conducting the course so well. [CS-7650: Natural Language Processing](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-7650) Dec 18, 2025 FALL 2025 12/18/2025 Workload 8 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 2/5 Mixed Course content was fine at the start, but the administration of the course made it the worst course that I've taken in OMSCS. Hopefully it'll be improved in future semester, but the TAs are the least responsive that I've encountered so far. Weekly honorlock quiz is unnecessarily troublesome. It doesn't make sense that the set-up takes up more time compared to the actual quiz. There's also no good differentiator in the course. HW1-4 are relatively straightforward in jupyter notebook, but the testcases are quite lackluster. (The test points are not well designed and does not actually checks for things precisely, which result in reverse engineer to understand the exact question. Due to past experience, I was able to set up and use my GPU for execution, but I do not recall any resource or material by the course. The exams are also not well-designed as it picks specific terms or content from lectures, which resulted in the exam being a matter of who's able to search better. And exam prep being a matter of finding the course transcript instead of actually learning the content. HW5 was interesting, but the recitations aren't updated and well-made. I'm also not sure why there isn't an errata provided between terms, when the lecture videos and content are being reused. There's an obvious lack of effort from the instructional staff. Things like including errata alongside lecture videos. Accurate weekly announcements (Multiple times where dates were given wrongly), office hours, Ed responses. All these are lacking from this iteration of the course. The exam period was also moved earlier, before the finals week. (Typically, finals is held during the exam week.) The reason cited for this is that they needed more time for grading. And yet, the course abruptly changed the syllabus, stating that regrades are not allowed for the finals and homework 5. There's also a lack of transparency within the course. The professor discovered a calculation error with the grading after the grades were submitted. (It benefited people, but a mistake is still a mistake.) [CS-6460: Educational Technology](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6460) Dec 17, 2025 FALL 2025 Verified 12/17/2025 Workload 15 hrs/week Difficulty 3/5 Medium Overall 5/5 Loved it This was an excellent class! The class is extremely self-tailored. The amount of work the class takes is up to you, at least during the project phase. I'd highly encourage you to take this class if educational technology interests you in the slightest. I was lucky enough to have a great mentor, which shapes a lot of the experience, but I think you can still enjoy the class regardless. Dr. Joyner is very responsive in the discussion boards and feels much more accessible than I would have guessed going into the class. This class feels like one that anyone can get an A if they genuinely put in the work. The team running the course do a great job of providing ample opportunity to improve mistakes while not making the class a cakewalk either. [CSE-6040: Computing for Data Analysis: Methods and Tools](https://www.omshub.org/course/CSE-6040) Dec 16, 2025 FALL 2025 12/16/2025 Workload 8 hrs/week Difficulty 3/5 Medium Overall 5/5 Loved it Solid course, obviously you have to take it, but putting a review here for transparency - received an A with a 96% pre-curve and a 97.5% post curve after coming in with very limited and specific python knowledge. Did some of the edX pre-reqs, most of the codewars problems, but still ended up fine. Used some GPT when I got stuck but only asked it explicit questions and for comments to help me understand what was happening. Homework only weeks, the workload isn't that bad, but ramps up when prepping for exams. Homeworks: Overall Grade 99.9% Consistent schedule, able to work ahead a week, maybe two if you have a vacation coming up which is good, had significant variation in difficulty/time commitment, but part of that was definitely me just understanding some concepts earlier than others. Only missed one point on all homeworks because it was Sunday night, i couldn't get it to compile and just said screw it. Exams: Overall: Get easier after the first exam, no ability to get partial points can hurt, but they'll give more questions than points needed for an 100% (ex. 21 points possible, but only 16 needed for 100%) I usually just burned through the 1 point questions for some quick points, then hit what I thought was best. All were 4 hours of allotted time First exam - My Grade: 67% (Curved to an 80%), Avg: 52% (Curved to a 65%) Hardest exam by far, took me all the allotted time and still ended up with a 67%. Very conceptual focus which got me. Approached by doing some practice tests, consolidating homeworks, etc. Second Exam: Grade: 100%, Avg: 78.5% Really didn't change my approach, just did an extra practice test or two, shows how much more difficult the first exam was. This one was much more concepts in use and it was concepts I understood a lot more. Finished in 2-2.5 hours. Final Exam: Grade: 88%, Avg: 78.3% Kept the same approach, just did the math for what I needed to get an A beforehand, got another question I understood in case I did my math wrong, but finished in 2 hours. Again, much easier to focus on concepts in use. Really enjoyed how the questions in the latter two exams built on each other like how an individual would go through a project, first do this, then use that to do this, etc. Extra Credit: Grade: 100%, avg: 40% 3 Points of extra credit was nice, I put together something quick that I would have been happy with 2 points on, but since it was EC, everyone seemed to be easy on the grades, unlike 6501. Overall great class, definitely feel I have a better Python base, now just gotta figure out where to apply it. [CS-6250: Computer Networks](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6250) Dec 12, 2025 FALL 2025 12/12/2025 Workload 12 hrs/week Difficulty 3/5 Medium Overall 3/5 Liked it CS-6250 (Computer Networks) has some real strengths, especially the support system around it. The TAs are genuinely helpful and responsive—big shout-out to Erik, who is the reason I am commenting here—and that support makes a huge difference when you’re working through the tougher parts of the course. I also enjoyed the assignments overall; they’re interesting and give you hands-on exposure to key networking concepts in a way that feels practical. That said, the content delivery wasn’t great in my experience. A lot of the learning ends up falling on you to piece together from notes/videos/slides, and it can feel like you’re being tested on recall more than understanding—so if you’re not strong at memorization (or you don’t build your own study system), the course can be frustrating. It's rated as an easy course, but if you do it fairly and squarely, I don't think it's easy at all. Multiple people in my class couldn't get A, and some got Cs. [CS-6795: Introduction to Cognitive Science](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6795) Dec 12, 2025 FALL 2025 12/12/2025 Workload 7 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 5/5 Loved it CS-6795 (Introduction to Cognitive Science) ended up being one of the more interesting courses I’ve taken because the material connects to a ton of real-life domains (learning, memory, decision-making, education, and even product/design thinking). The readings are also flexible in a good way: you can do the minimum needed to complete the assignments, or you can go deeper and keep exploring without it feeling like busywork—there are a lot of genuinely engaging angles and perspectives. Finally, the course doesn’t rely on “gotcha” testing; there aren’t tricky exams, which makes it feel more focused on learning and applying ideas than on memorizing details under pressure. I was so happy with this course that I sent them a thank-you email after the course was over. [CS-6262: Network Security](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6262) Nov 24, 2025 FALL 2025 Verified 11/24/2025 Workload 1 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 4/5 Loved it I am in the minority of people that think Network Security is an easier class than IIS. There were two back to back projects in Network Security where ~20% of the total project grade was awarded for a single task that was considerably harder than the average difficulty of the project. There was a time during the second of these two projects when I thought that if this trend continued, I might not pass the class. I did both of the extra credit assignments (small project and a quiz) which gave me a 6% boost to my final grade (8% boost was possible). I will echo what other students have said and mention that it is unecessary to take IIS first before this class. They're almost unrelated. [CS-7641: Machine Learning](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-7641) Oct 18, 2025 FALL 2025 10/18/2025 Workload 50 hrs/week Difficulty 5/5 Hard Overall 1/5 Disliked The course is interesting. However, there are many challenges. The lectures are too long, filled with banters leaving the useful information limited to just a minute out of an average 10 minute long video. The reports are also huge. Part time students who have other priorities like work, family or a second course found it overwhelming. *** **This is a heads up and caution.** The primary medium of communication between students, with active participation of the instructors, is a Discord server and not slack. The admin of this server is a past student who is neither a TA nor currently enrolled but remains the most vocal individual, taking over the space. The same person has been allegedly bullying several students in unofficial groups which makes it difficult to participate for the current students. I decided to drop the course and work on getting a better understanding of the material so that it can be completed independently without much interaction with the student groups managed by this past student. It is unfair because we pay for the semester while they don't, but somehow remain in an authority which they shouldn't be. Usually, it is beneficial for past students to be involved in a course, however if the concerned student is a known bully and obnoxious, things get unnecessarily difficult. Unfortunately, not much can be done in such situations because despite the active involvement of TAs and instructors, there is no moderation on the discussions by the most vocal students(experts in the field or past students) that drown the actual course related discussions. It can get discouraging for newer students. *** The course is rigorous. Do not take it lightly. If you sail through, the experience can be amazing because it truly challenges you to be a better machine learning practitioner. [CS-6422: Database System Implementation](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6422) Sep 2, 2025 SPRING 2025 9/2/2025 Workload 10 hrs/week Difficulty 4/5 Hard Overall 5/5 Loved it This class is a good introduction to databases and how SQL in particular works and a good intro class to programming in C++ in general. Throughout the class we implemented a toy SQL database with evolving requirements in C++. I thought it was a great class to pair with something else. The contents have a lot of overlap with GIOS, so students who have already taken GIOS might find it a bit too easy, but for me I thought that it was just the right level of difficulty. The professor is engaged and responsive during the weekly office hour. More of a beginner's level class or a pairing class, but that's not a bad thing. [CS-7650: Natural Language Processing](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-7650) Aug 13, 2025 SUMMER 2025 8/13/2025 Workload 10 hrs/week Difficulty 4/5 Hard Overall 3/5 Liked it The Good: Prof. Reidl is very good in explaining, going over his lectures twice really has a high coefficient of knowledge retainment, you will be ready for Exam1. The Bad: Maybe it applies only for the Summer25 course, but the final exam was prone of TA"s subjectivity and required muscle memory. There were many students in Discord complaining that NLP being the last course, for them it was the hardest exam. The Ugly: Not unique to this course, but some lectures given by some "professors" or TA's are really embarrassing for any university. Their English is incomprehensible, never mind their pedagogy (for everyone who took this course knows I am talking about META videos.) Difficulty: The most confusing in evaluating this course is "the difficulty" assessment for this course. If one wants to understand what's going on in it, e.g. with transformers, it's very difficult, especially if you have no experience with pytorch. There is no way a student can learn pytorch and finish the assignments on the fly if not for the TA's and the professors making that "easy". So the professor has made it easy to write out the skeletons for us . People turn into AI for better understanding and as expected more than a few students got referred to OSI, even more were filtered as "cheaters" but they were not referred to OSI due to being hard to prove it. So, not sure where the "easy" part was in this course if things are fair and square. For the first time on this course, Exam-1 was on multi-option or single option questions. I personally did good (~97%) but I heard a lot of people bombed it. The final was one of the hardest tests I ever have taken in OMSCS, writing essays on some questions. Now, like everywhere else, essays bring a lot of subjectivity, a good portion of us thought the grading was lenient and some of us thought was very tough. There were a lot of students who couldn't get an A, but majority were not prepared for such workload considering this was supposed to be an easy course. [MGT-6203: Data Analytics in Business](https://www.omshub.org/course/MGT-6203) Aug 5, 2025 SUMMER 2025 8/5/2025 Workload 2 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 4/5 Loved it Fine class, no complaints, pretty easy, **highly recommended taking during summer** as they remove a later homework. Had a good module on regression coding, so would have been useful before 6414, but not necessary. Professor Xu's lectures are tough to understand but the decks are well built, mostly just took notes off the powerpoints, then they give you most of the code for the Homeworks in examples that do not perfectly match the homework. Grade being fully quiz based makes every question more impactful than it probably should be, so put the quizzes in word ahead of time, follow along and check your work. Overall, fine course for a requirement. [CS-6422: Database System Implementation](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6422) Aug 5, 2025 SUMMER 2025 8/5/2025 Workload 4 hrs/week Difficulty 1/5 Easy Overall 1/5 Disliked - This course felt like a beta course. It is not a graduate level course (I doubt if this can even be at undergrad level)! The content could have included other topics like Logging, Recovery, Transaction Management, Distributed and Cloud databases, Examples for the features described from modern databases but apparently another course is being prepared for these. If you are looking for a solid understanding of relational databases, just read the recommended book "Database System Concepts, 7th edition (<https://www.db-book.com/>) and may be go through Andy Pavlo’s youtube videos instead of taking this course. - As others said, too much time is given for C++ concepts in the lectures, thus depriving of chances to cover other database concepts. C++ must be made a pre-requisite instead. There is a programming assignment just to check C++ concepts, that could have been used for solidifying other database concepts instead. - TAs were mostly low key on Ed during the summer semester. They took many days to respond to student enquiries. I took a couple of courses before this, and TAs in this course are the least participating ones. Ed forum did not see much activity as the TAs and Professor didn’t respond to student queries within a few days in general (I would expect TAs to field most of the questions within a day or two). There was a time when all of them went completely silent for 4-5 days\! - Lecture slides contained many mistakes from the first run of the course and were not corrected in this run too. It seems like not enough attention or effort is spent to improve the online version of this course. If you are coming to this course expecting GIOS type of rigor and discipline, you’ll be disappointed\! - Exams and exercise sheets were not that challenging. Programming assignments don’t have much guidance via comments. However if you spend like 4-5 hrs per week, you can end up getting an A easily (assuming you have C++ knowledge). - This course’s curve is the most lenient (if you scored \>= 80% you get an A grade, otherwise a B) of all the courses. 90% of the students got A! If I knew this beforehand, I’d have studied even less for the exams and exercises and I would have spent more time in reading the book. [CSE-6242: Data and Visual Analytics](https://www.omshub.org/course/CSE-6242) Aug 4, 2025 SPRING 2024 8/4/2025 Workload 15 hrs/week Difficulty 3/5 Medium Overall 3/5 Liked it No exams and quizzes, which was nice. All project and homework focused. Quite a bit of busy work with the homework, the autograder that grades the homework can be very frustrating to work with, but it does let you make as many mistakes as you like before submitting the correct homework solution. The lectures are extremely surface level, and most of the specific implementation will come from your own research. The content is very broad overall, and you program in Python, JavaScript, SQL, and use tableau and cloud technologies. Good primer for everything, but also very overwhelming, even for an experienced software engineer. Project was graded reasonably fairly and was fun to work on in a group. Overall, the course is easy to get an A in, but requires a lot of work, and most of what you learned was broad surface level information. [CSE-6220: Intro to High-Performance Computing](https://www.omshub.org/course/CSE-6220) Aug 2, 2025 SUMMER 2025 8/2/2025 Workload 45 hrs/week Difficulty 5/5 Hard Overall 1/5 Disliked This course is meant for those who are specializing in High Performance Computing already. Most of the students are experts. I also faced bullying. Not worth it. I wish I had researched a bit before opting for this course, that too in the summer. The exams had questions that were consistently not properly defined. Even correct answers get deductions if they don't match the exact answer expected. The course went as far as introducing extra credit questions(which are supposed to be just free scoring) and deducted marks in that as well (for absolutely no reason. how can one even evaluate a free scoring question to deduct marks?). I would advice to not go for the extra credit questions and opt for the main questions. The grade follows a bell curve but it changes in every semester. It was 85% for an A while it was possibly less in earlier semesters as per some Google searches(80-83%). Another advice would be to focus on labs and try to gain as much score there as possible. A regrade request or something as simple as clarification over the grading rubric would face strong pushbacks, rude/mean/unprofessional remarks from TAs and it is simply not worth your mental health. The request could possibly only be entertained if there is an error in grading. For all other concerns, students are expected to remain satisfied with whatever points were given(like in the free scoring questions). That said, this one was a stressful experience. If one is already familiar with HPC, go for it, but better to take it during the Spring/Fall session and not summers. This course is tailor-made for the experts and those familiar with the concept. Do not expect labs or exams to be detailed. I wish I had just dropped it when I had the chance. There are no extensions to lab submissions, in my experience. So plan accordingly. [MGT-8803: Business Fundamentals for Analytics](https://www.omshub.org/course/MGT-8803) Jul 28, 2025 SUMMER 2025 7/28/2025 Workload 8 hrs/week Difficulty 4/5 Hard Overall 3/5 Liked it This module contains virtually no technical elements, raising significant questions about whether it should be a required course. That said, it's not nearly as bad as people claim. If a few key flaws were addressed, it could actually be quite a solid module. However, for students who have never encountered any business-related subjects before, this was likely a hellish experience. In summary, the biggest weakness of this module lies in its **Marketing** component. It's not that the content is poor—quite the opposite. The lectures are extremely enthusiastic and cover an enormous, wide-ranging set of topics in great depth. They are not rambling or incoherent, and there are no frustrating group assignments or peer evaluations. If you diligently absorb the material and produce the expected output, you can do well. So for those who are comfortable with memorization, the exam is quite fair. Below is a summary of the **Pros and Cons**. Since this is a required module with limited alternatives (only four summer subjects: Accounting, Finance, Supply Chain, and Marketing), I hope this serves as a useful set of tips to help you prepare. - All four subjects offer very thorough and enthusiastically delivered lessons. - **Accounting** in particular stands out. The professor does a brilliant job of organizing an expansive syllabus with a sharp focus on key points. Reviewing the lectures and practicing mock exercises is sufficient for success. - **Finance** focuses precisely on the essential fundamentals. It doesn’t go too deep, and like accounting, listening to lectures and doing practice problems is enough to aim for a high score. - **Supply Chain** was the most intellectually engaging topic for me. Although it’s the most challenging, the exam itself is well designed—not tricky for the sake of being tricky. It's difficult but rewards effort. The simulation component was especially interesting. Unfortunately, the main drawback of the entire module lies with the **Marketing** course. Again, it's not that the content is bad—on the contrary, the lectures are engaging. But the main problem is the sheer volume of material to memorize. If you combine the transcripts and live session content, it easily exceeds 200 pages. Many of the concepts are abstract and difficult to retain. Even after getting through the first three subjects, many students may reach their breaking point during this one. Personally, by the third live session, I felt overwhelmed and stopped taking notes altogether. I still managed to score around 80% and earned an overall A for the module, but compared to the other three courses, **Marketing is clearly overstuffed** in terms of content and cognitive load. As others have mentioned, if Marketing had been the first course of the module, some students might have dropped out right then. Contrary to claims that Marketing is easier to score well in, I disagree. Unless you’re particularly skilled at memorization or have prior exposure or strong interest in the field, **Accounting and Finance are more rewarding relative to the effort invested** and offer more tangible skills for your future career. Once again, I have nothing but respect for the professor’s passionate and dedicated teaching. However, I strongly hope that the course structure will be rebalanced going forward. The **live sessions overlapped significantly with the video lectures**, which made them feel somewhat redundant. In subjects like Accounting and Finance, the main lectures included problem-solving segments that required active engagement, which made them more compelling. I found this exercise-based format much more effective and would have preferred it to be the core approach across all subjects. In contrast, the **Marketing course—already overloaded with content—introduced even more additional information during the live sessions**, which completely exceeded my cognitive capacity. [CS-6300: Software Development Process](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-6300) Jul 22, 2025 SUMMER 2025 Verified 7/22/2025 Workload 4 hrs/week Difficulty 1/5 Easy Overall 3/5 Liked it SDP is what everyone says it is. It's an incredibly easy class that is unnecessary for anyone with a cs-background or work experience as a software engineer. Take SDP if you want an easy semester. This class would pair well with any other course or it can be taken in the summer, if you want a very easy summer. [CS-7632: Game AI](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-7632) Jun 4, 2025 SUMMER 2024 Verified 6/4/2025 Workload 7 hrs/week Difficulty 3/5 Medium Overall 4/5 Loved it Full review here: <https://the11d.wordpress.com/2025/06/04/my-thoughts-on-game-ai-omscs-review-7/> TLDR (courtesy of GPT): In my review of Georgia Tech's OMSCS Game AI course (CS 7632), I shared my positive experience taking it in Summer 2024. Coming in with a background in Java/Kotlin and Python but no prior experience with C\# or Unity, I found the Unity-based assignments both visually engaging and educational for understanding AI in games. The course had eight assignments and weekly quizzes, with a manageable weekly workload of around 7.3 hours. Some assignments, like Grid Lattice and Race Truck, were especially challenging due to their complexity and the need for precise tuning. I highlighted the importance of thoroughly understanding the provided boilerplate code and offered advice for future students. Overall, I found the course practical, rewarding, and a great fit for the Interactive Intelligence specialization. [CS-7641: Machine Learning](https://www.omshub.org/course/CS-7641) May 9, 2025 SPRING 2025 5/9/2025 Workload 40 hrs/week Difficulty 4/5 Hard Overall 2/5 Mixed Too much content for a single semester long course, some content doesn’t have relationship with each other at all. The lecture recordings aren’t really helpful. The office hours are helpful since the teaching staff make the assignment requirements ambiguous on purpose, which increases the course load. [PUBP-8823: Geopolitics of Cybersecurity](https://www.omshub.org/course/PUBP-8823) May 7, 2025 SPRING 2025 Verified 5/7/2025 Workload 5 hrs/week Difficulty 2/5 Easy Overall 5/5 Loved it Highly recommend this course if you can take it with Professor Lindsay and have an interest in the topic. This is the only OMSCS class I've taken so far where I was somewhat sad for it to end - minus the final project. I wanted the class to continue so we could learn more. It was an opportunity engage with the material, professor, and other students, without high stress or meaningless busywork. This environment was conducive to learning. Professor Lindsay and the TAs are engaged with students in weekly office hour chats pertaining to current events in geopolitics and cybersecurity. The class is the most interactive of any OMS course I've taken, and feels more like what I'd get out of an in-person class. Part of the assignments include ongoing 1-2 weeks of discussions with other students, and it's interesting to learn from one another if you have an interest in the course topic. The lectures are up to date, professional, and well put together. The assignments are effective at getting one to learn from the lectures, readings, and from other students. Deliverables were: \* 4 group projects including 2 shorter papers, one 15-minute presentation, and a final longer paper. You review the same 2 cybersecurity incidents, which your group chooses, for each of the project deliverables. You also get to see 15-minute presentations on all the other groups' projects, so you have the opportunity to learn about several different cybersecurity incidents outside those covered in lectures. \* 4 learning modules, each of which includes 1.5-2 hours of high quality video lectures, Perusall readings which are interesting, relevant, and well chosen, and answering 3 discussion questions along with commenting on other students' discussion answers Scroll to load more reviews OMSHub Community-driven course reviews for Georgia Tech's Online Master's programs. Helping students make informed decisions since 2022. 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The current name of the course is CS 6211: System Design for Cloud Computing #### TLDR A tough course where you learn a lot. The course is done in groups, but you might end up doing it solo if you're unlucky enough (see "People"). #### Calls There is one mandatory call each week with the professor ("synchronous meeting"), and one more grading call. The first one is always on Wednesday at 20:00 Atlanta time. The second one is individual: there is a spreadsheet with a table where you book a time that works best for you (put your team name in a cell with the corresponding time). There are some slots right after the synchronous meeting, and you will have "almost" one call per week if you manage to book them. The synchronous meeting length varies. I don't have stats, but usually they are shorter than an hour. They might be longer right before and right after the "project" weeks, when project details are discussed. #### Coursework There are four modules: SDN, NFV, SYS, APP. Each module is four weeks. There is a deadline each week: you have to constantly deliver. The first three weeks are for "workshops" (relatively small tasks to implement), and the fourth week is for the project. I would recommend you finish your workshops and start working on projects as soon as possible (ideally, two weeks before the project deadline, though this isn't always possible) since one week is not enough for the entire project. Workshops and projects are independent in some modules (SDN, NFV), they are highly connected to the project in SYS, and are somewhat connected in APP (it depends on your project). I haven't measured the workload. I took several weeks off to work on this course full-time (40h per week or more?), but at the time, I worked alone. If you work in a functional team, it will probably be around 25h. #### Modules For me, SYS and SDN were the most brutal. APP was near in terms of difficulty because I had trouble with Azure. NFV was the simplest. Don't underestimate the difficulty of any project. Even "simple" NFV was finished right before the deadline, and I started working on it early. SDN I would say that the first workshop (introduces mininet and osken) is most relevant to the project. The second one is about VLANs, the third one is about OFPGroupMod. I couldn't make the third project robust, not sure if it's possible at all without rewriting a lot of code. The project is a set of openflow controllers that can handle network loops. The simplest version lays routes based on latency, the most complex monitors available bandwidth, uses it for routes, and periodically updates them. NFV This module adds NFV to SDN. Workshops and the project should be straightforward if you are familiar with docker. You build a simple load balancing network where network functions are virtualized (in docker). SYS The workshops are strongly connected to the project. You set up an infrastructure and hello-world grpc service in workshop 1, then develop basic mapreduce in workshop 2 and 3, and add master fault-tolerance in the last week. APP You develop a proposal for your project in the first week, then you deploy several services in the cloud (not necessarily related to your project), and then implement the project. #### People It was hard to get up in the middle of the night to be on synchronous calls, but I believe that was one of the best things about this course (not every call, but on average). Unlike many other courses, you actually discuss solutions and hear unexpected approaches to the problems. The last call where students volunteered to showcase their projects was amazing: some projects felt like actual product MVPs. I often saw comments on reddit stating that you probably will end up with a great teammate there since this course has AOS as a prereq. I believe it's the case in general, but there are always exceptions. My teammate promised that he would do the next workshop/project multiple times, but didn't commit (in every sense). I gave up after several talks somewhere in the middle of the semester, asked to split, and finished the course alone. The course staff don't recommend taking this course alone, and now I totally understand why: I had to ask to reschedule part of my vacation for the time when I had to submit projects to work on them full-time and finish them. Thus, I recommend resolving conflicts and staying in a team if possible. Overall, - there are always exceptions, and some things are out of your control - it's possible to finish this course despite that Besides my team, I had only positive impressions from the people in the course. Students post and comment on Ed, and sometimes it's really helpful. TAs understand that the course is tough and might forgive some imperfections. You can ask for extensions, but there are limitations (you probably can't do that for every project). Thanks to the classmates for discussions, thanks to Bing, Branden, Chintan, Joseph, and Tyler for their work, and thanks to Professor Kishore for conducting the course so well.