Picture of a sign in front of Brandeis University with white text that says "Brandeis Online Information Session."
Thomas Screnci: So thank you again for joining us, for those who are here live, for those watching the recording, thank you for joining this session. This should take only about 15-20 min or so of your time. So thank you for joining. This presentation will be a general introduction to Brandeis Online and then break down the admissions, process my tips and recommendations and advice for the application processes, and then time for Q&A at the end. And if you're watching the recording, you can email us at any time for questions about this or anything you may see on our website.
Slide switches to show headshots of admissions reps Tom (tscrenci@brandeis.edu) and Jess (jessicaronan@brandeis.edu). General contact information is also listed below (online@brandeis.edu).
Tom Screnci speaks: So with that my name is Thomas Screnci or Tom. I'm the Associate Director of Admissions and Enrollment here at Brandeis Online. Along with Jess, we are the admissions team and address any admissions, questions, application, review anything related to program questions or things like that.
We have our general email addresses, our specific email addresses (tscrenci@brandeis.edu or jessicaronan@brandeis.edu) rather right there as well as our general online@brandeis.edu inbox email there. Jess and I both check that email address at the bottom. So either way, you contact us. You're reaching Jess and myself. And of course you can call us at any time, too.
Slide switches to say "Agenda." Bullet points say About Brandeis Online, Why Brandeis?, Admissions Info, and Next Steps/Q&A.
Thomas Screnci speaks: So the agenda is just introducing you to Brandeis Online. Why someone might choose Brandeis, the differentiators, you could say, and then jumping into all the admissions information so pretty straightforward agenda here for us today, and we'll just keep going jumping right in.
Slide switches to say "Brandeis Online overview."
Thomas Screnci: So Brandeis University. 1st off Brandeis University is in Waltham, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, a few miles west of the city. We have a physical campus which has been here since 1948. So we are a very much real physical campus which you can choose to visit if you're in the area, or you can solely engage with us online, that's totally fine.
We do offer in-person graduate programs and undergraduate programs, for that matter. But this program here, this office, branded as online, as you could guess from the name, is a hundred percent online programs.
All of our courses, all of our programs are asynchronous. So there's no set meeting times. Courses are active week to week classes in session. You could say for a week's time, and at any point in that week you can do the readings respond to questions, respond to discussion posts, and you just have a week's time to do it at your own pace.
Our degrees are almost all 10 courses, there's a few that are 13 courses. Our certificates are 4 courses, our certificates are stackable into the degrees, which I'll break down in a few minutes.
We do offer five 8-week sessions per year. So if you're working part time as little as one course at a time. You can complete a certificate in under a year's time, and you completed a Master's degree again. Mind you work at one course at a time in 2 years, so you can work as slowly or even quicker if you want to.
Admissions is on a rolling basis. So, as you complete applications. We send out decisions. There are no deadlines to wait for, to get admissions decisions like it can be common with undergraduate admissions offices.
If you wanted to try out our programs or try out online learning. You can take up to 2 courses without being enrolled in a certificate or degree program. You can just try out a course just to try it out, and you can have those courses apply to a future degree or certificate program. Or, of course, if you decide to go elsewhere, you could transfer the credits, of course, but you can take up to 2 courses without being a part of any specific program.
Slide switches to list statistics: 98% of our students are working full-time while in a program; 12:1 student-faculty ratio; Average salary increase of 25% by alum at time of graduation.
Tom Screnci speaks: We are definitely geared towards towards the working professional. With 98% of our students working full time. We have a lot of our students. Who are, you could say, mid career, who have been in the industry 10, 15, 20 years, or more. And we have definitely had a growing number of students who are, you know, 0 to one year of interest, who are fresh out of undergraduate bachelor's degree and looking to get that degree completed online while working at their 1st full time position.
Maybe looking for growth promotions, things like that which, as you can see here from our statistics, is very successful in terms of offering that kind of compensation, salary growth.
We keep our classes small. They're typically about 10 to 12 students. We cap them at around 20 students. Just so we can have nice discussion. You can engage with your classmates connect with your instructors. So having that small community feeling ability is something that's definitely very important to us. And you'll experience as a brand online student.
Slide switches to say "Overview of Programs." All master's degrees and master's certificates are listed below. Full list can be found at https://www.brandeis.edu/online/academics/masters-degrees/index.html and https://www.brandeis.edu/online/academics/certificates/index.html.
So this slide here is it breaking down all of our Master's degree and certificate programs. I will discuss the flow, how you can stack the certificate into a degree in a moment. But these are our different areas that you can study within. We have definitely expanded in the last year or so. I think we've doubled the number of certificates, and added, I think 1, 2, 3, master's degrees as well. So definitely a growing department with expanded options and opportunity for our students in a variety of industries.
You know, the prerequisites for a lot of these programs can be pretty minimal. So we try to make them as accessible as we can for those who are interested in our programs. And that's a little bit about our programs here, just trying to stretch out my time here, so I can give you plenty of time to look at the list here. You may already know what you want to study, but it's always good to have a nice idea of what our programs are here.
Slide switches to show three different colored bubbles, each representing Cheminformatics, Genomics, and Drug Informatics master's certificates. The three bubbles are connected to a larger bubble representing the MS in Bioinformatics.
Thomas Screnci: So, as I mentioned earlier, briefly, we do offer a stackability feature of our programs. This is for the certificates into the degree. So if you completed a master's certificate in one of our bioinformatics related programs, which is, I'm just using as an example here, that is, 4 courses or 12 credits.
The program is fully stackable or transferable into a master's degree, and you would just have, upon completion of the certificate 6 more courses to go. You would get them in the same swing. If your ultimate goal was a bioinformatics, masters of Science Degree, you could start with a certificate, let's say genomic certificate, and then get a bioinformatics degree as well. You get 2 certifications, 2 accomplishments in the same exact timeline. So it's an amazing opportunity for those who are looking to expand their resume, expand their opportunity and their competitiveness in this industry or their industry. I should say so. Wonderful opportunity.
This slide here just further showing further exemplifying the shared curriculums. Our programs do offer again, just using bioinformatics as an example. This shared curriculum is true for all of our programs that offer this stackability feature, as you'll see with these 3 certificates, the Rbif 100. The 1st course is the same of all 3 of these certificate programs. And then there is some carryover between the remaining 3 courses of these certificate programs. So there's definitely some similarities that make the programs kind of comparable, but also some differences based on what your specific goals or interests are that you may have in mind.
Slide switches to say "Why Brandeis Online?"
Thomas Screnci: So why Brandeis, there are definitely quite a few online opportunities out there for you as a student. Why might you choose Brandeis for one? The industry expertise is a great feature, great opportunity within Brandeis Online. All of our professors, all of our instructors work full time in their field and engage with us part time. So they're bringing amazing depth of knowledge, perspective, and relevancy to their topic. They're bringing a passion to teach because they are choosing to teach on the side. They're not full time lecturers. They're not partially engaged with their industry by going to, let's say conferences a few times a year, or doing a Sabbatical every so often. They're working deeply in their field throughout the week throughout the year, and bringing that knowledge, that relevant experience to their classroom each week.
This is just a list, an example list of our faculty. I'll just note some of the abbreviations at the end of these titles. We have examples of people in bioinformatics for Bio, Ppm is our project and program management. Dmd is our digital marketing and design. And then, lastly, there is one example here from our software engineering faculty who is the principal quality development engineer at Intersystem. So our departments have quite robust faculty. I cannot fit them all on one slide. This is just an example, and the the full time work of our faculty is consistent among all of our programs.
Every department, every program has professional advisory boards who advise our students, and by the curriculum and the department, and how it may grow. So they meet on a regular basis to decide how we can expand or improve our programs. They act as advisors and mentors to our current students. So they're bringing a wide variety and depth of knowledge to our program. Networking opportunities, industry insights for our students as well. So if you're looking to break in to an industry, change fields, or just in general grow our Advisory board. Your instructors are all wonderful opportunities. They are choosing to be a part of these advisory boards in addition to their full time work.
So they're bringing an interest or desire to help their peers grow their industry. So some may have companies that are hiring and look for you as a student, and some may just have connections that can help you with your growth. These Advisory Board members are wonderful opportunity for our students as are our current students who have somewhat similar backgrounds coming from similar industries.
As well as I mentioned, about 98% of our students work full time. So our students are bringing some great perspective depth of knowledge to the classroom. Many students have years and years of experience, so their perspective is invaluable in terms of your discussion in terms of how you will interpret information. So also a great opportunity is, of course, your classmates, and having smaller classes, enables you to have a better opportunity to connect with many of your classmates. Most classes, if not all, of our classes, have general social discussion boards and sections of the online platform. So you can just socialize and connect, really furthering the impact just you, as fellow students can have with each other.
Standard of excellence is always something to consider when looking into institutions looking at for-profit schools can be quite questionable in some regard. Brennis is a nonprofit institution is a private institution, but it's again, as I said before it was founded in 1948, a physical campus in Waltham, Massachusetts, with a great history of social justice, being a place where anyone could study welcoming anybody of any background to study on our campus. And with that, with our continued growth and our continued work in research and development, we have amazing rankings and awards, and of course, full accreditation for our program. So definitely a wonderful school, you can, of course, visit in person, use the online or in person resources if you happen to be in your campus.
So I think that standard of excellence is always an important thing when we're looking at our programs as to what is the school behind this? And Brandeis offers amazing prestige in that regard and amazing accreditation as well as standard excellence being quite high as well, so that's kind of you can say, what is your money going towards? What's your dollar worth in this in your program? And Brandeis definitely brings a lot of value in that regard. So something to consider. As you know, you're maybe considering, why would I apply to Brandeis?
The online approach is, of course, something to consider. You might be new or experienced in online learning. We've been doing it for quite some time now, over 2 decades. We are always reevaluating and assessing our online learning. In the past year we revamped and upgraded our online learning platform through moodle which you might be familiar with. So just making sure, the online learning platform makes sense is accessible. Every new student has an orientation to the course and orientation to online learning. So you're being shown how online learning works how to use the features, how to contact people access information. So if you have no familiarity with online learning, we will help you.
And we again keep our classes. Small classes are self-paced, materials could be recordings, readings of any type of method. The instructor is looking to provide. Classes will certainly have research projects as part of them, or a vast section of the course as well. So we are definitely keeping our approach fresh.
We are always evaluating our programs overall. In the last 12 months we completed 2 program evaluations, one for bioinformatics and one for our software engineering program. And we were just about to start one in our user center design program. So typically every 3 years or so, every program is fully evaluated to see how effective, how impactful is the curriculum and the goal are the goals really being? So, the online approach is something to, of course, note in your online research for your programs. And I think Branders does a great job in terms of that regard.
Flexibility, convenience, always important features. If you're working full time, or just, you know, attending school while doing other things. The programs are all asynchronous materials are posted Wednesday morning, and you have until the following Tuesday at midnight. So 7 days, one full week to do the work, and you can do the work at Saturday at midnight. You can do it 1st thing Wednesday morning. Whatever is convenient for you, so it makes the ability to set your own pace and be flexible as as available as possible. So that convenient flexibility is an important thing to note.
You, of course, absolutely can meet, you know, face to face over zoom with instructors, with advisor board members. You could have in person chat and discussions, or live, I should say, in person chats and discussions over zoom with classmates or anything like that. So you absolutely have the ability to get resources advisors tutoring through Brandeis University as a whole, if you need it. But you you can, of course, work independently at your own pace the entire time. If that's what you want to do that's completely fine as well. So that convenience and flexibility are definitely great things to note.
I mentioned this prior, but you can get the ability to test drive programs, trying out 2 courses without being a part of any certificate or degree program is quite available. If you go to our take a course web page. You'll see a 1st time registration form, and we can approve it, and you can start getting into your course right away. So it's a pretty quick process just to try out one course or 2 courses before having to enroll in a program. So that option lets you really, it'll give you flexibility in terms of how much commitment you have to start off with before moving forward.
Slide switches to say "Admissions Checklist."
So that wraps up the general introduction to Brandeis from here. I'm going to start talking about the admissions and enrollment processes for the master's degrees, and then the master's certificates. So this 1st section here is just for our master's degrees. The certificate is a separate process. The degree application checklist is very straightforward. There's no application fee or any standardized testing requirements. The Gmat or gre are not required.
We only require online application through our website, official transcripts from your previous institutions for your bachelor's degree. If you have a Master's degree. You can submit that information. We do not require transcripts for master's degrees nice to have, but not required of you.
We just require these official documents and items here. Application, of course, official transcripts from all previous schools a resume statement of goals, and at least one letter of recommendation. We also, looking for a copy of your resume a 500 word or more statement of goals, and then one or more letters of recommendation. We have 2 deadlines open right now fall one and fall 2. There are 5 sessions per year, as I mentioned, and you can jump into our programs at any of those 5 sessions. We just do not have all 5 sessions open for applications at all the same time.
So, starting with the statement of goals, you're really addressing the question, what's your? Why, why are you applying to Brandeis? Why do you want this program? Why do you want this growth? What is bringing you through this program? What you hope to get through the program. Is there any context you want us to know about in terms of your growth, your development? Did you have a rougher undergraduate experience. Did you change careers? Is this degree seemingly very unrelated to your current progress, your current career? And you want to explain that kind of shift. It is your platform to tell us whatever context you want to give us. It's just, you know, really addressing why you're applying to the program is, of course, the the main goal where you can talk about anything else that you see is related. This essay, it can be a 500 word statement. It can be, you know, 3, 4 pages long. If you want it to be. It's truly up to you. As long as it meets that 500 word minimum. You're being satisfactory, and it's always good to note that you should probably make sure you're spelling Brandeis correctly. We would never deny, because you misspelled the name, but it's always good to always good to proofread in general.
So the resume is also required. A copy of your resume is required. Unlike the traditional kind of belief of one page. Typically for a resume or CV. It is more than welcome to be 3-4 pages long and provide a lot of detail elaborating on your work experience the projects you've been on, any certificates or courses or professional development you've been through, is totally wonderful to have. So please do not get too bogged down. Don't concentrate too much on the format of your resume, but really concentrate on the content of it. How much detail does it provide to show your preparedness, your relevancy towards this field.
Official transcripts from every college or university you've attended again, related to just your bachelor's degree, that's all that's required. If you have other master's degrees, or other certificates or accomplishments you wanted to share, that's great. But just the bachelor's degree information is required. Most people submit them electronically to online@brandeis.edu, you can papermail them at the address in the middle of the screen as well. And if you happen to have unofficial copies of your transcript, we can make admissions decisions with them. We can review your application with them. However, once you're accepted, once you enroll in a class by the end of your 1st class we would require official copies. So do keep that in mind.
So virtually all of our programs only require one letter of recommendation. You are more than welcome to submit more. A current or former manager, supervisor boss of some sort is the ideal recommender. However, someone who's worked with you in a professional setting is totally fine. A colleague is totally fine. If you're on the younger side, and you only have maybe done research or internships projects in school. Someone who's overseen those are fine as well. But in general, someone who knows you in a professional setting in a research. Academic setting as well are are totally fine people to to write recommendations.
I strongly encourage people to add recommenders in the application that way. We can contact them directly. We can give them prompts to write the recommendation. If they do not write many letters, if they don't know what to say or how to format this stuff, we will give them prompts, so adding them in the application, as you see, a screenshot here on the right side is a very, very good move for you. If we need to come back to this section of the application you can, but it is the best move to add it in early, so we can contact them and make their lives and your life really a little bit easier.
Slide switches to say "Master's Certificate Enrollment."
Tom speaks: That is all the tips I have, and information for the Master's degree applications, very straightforward, always happy to help, but when it comes to the certificate it is much more of an abbreviated process. You fill our master's certificate application on our website and give us a resume, and that completes the certificate application.
If you decided to go from a certificate into a Master's degree, you would need to apply, fill out all the application materials for the degree we would waive the statement of goals, your chances of enrollment would be a little bit higher, because you've proven yourself through the courses you've done in the certificate program, but it is still required to apply for a degree. If you've completed a certificate so just an important note as well.
So certificate. Very straightforward. I mentioned the 1st time registration form. Again, if you're thinking of just a single course as well, and our upcoming session, called Fall one starts classes August 27th and has a deadline of July 29th next month.
And applications again, decisions are done typically within a week's time, and applications can be completed by people like you who might apply, in honestly a lot of times less than a week's tim.
Slide switches to say "Tuition." Cost per credit is $1220, Master's Certificate is $14,640 with $500 deposit.
As our one of our last slides I'll show the tuition cost. The certificate is just an example here of the the total cost that you might be paying for a certificate cost per credit. So most of our courses are 3 credits. So most courses being 3,660 US Dollars, you are not paying for a full program in advance. You are paying per course you are actively registered in.
So if you're taking one course now, you would just be billed for that one course, and if you plan to take 2 courses in the next session. You will not be billed until you actually register for them for the next session, so you can pay as you go. We offer payment plans. We offer financial aid in loans for people as well. So there are certainly options in terms of paying for your education, but it's an important thing to note that you're not paying for the full bill of the certificate or the degree all in advance. You're just paying as you go, really.
So in our student financial services team is a wonderful office to reach out to. If you have questions about eligibility, options, things like that for financial aid.
Slide switches to say "Next Step."
So almost done with our presentation here. Next steps is just to reach out to me online at Brandmassedu or give us a phone call. You can, of course, follow us on social media to keep up with maybe other presentations we have. We have program, specific chat with the chairs, as we call them, with the chair of each academic department, co-host sessions with me breaking down the curriculum, the marketplace, the industry of all of our different programs and departments. So that's on our website as well. You can, of course, see reminders of that on our social media, too.
And as a last slide to share my information (tscrenci@brandeis.edu) and Jess's information (jessicaronan@brandeis.edu) as well, so you can reach out to us at any time if you have any questions, and always happy to answer as many questions you possibly have. So if you're watching this recording, thank you for watching, I'm going to wrap up and close the session in a moment, and for those who are here. We'll open our Q&A. Section in a moment. But for those again watching the recording, thank you for joining us for this session, and hoping to hear from you soon.