No Undergrad, No Downside — How Matt Daiter Earned His CU Boulder MSEE On-line

When New Jersey native Matthew Daiter enrolled within the College of Colorado Boulder’s on-line MS in Electrical Engineering program, he already had practically a decade of real-world expertise behind him. No undergraduate diploma. No conventional educational trajectory. Only a “funky academic path,” a can-do perspective, and a profession spent constructing and breaking boundaries in {hardware} startups.

Now primarily based in Hong Kong, Matt’s story is something however standard—however an inspirational one to learn.

Skipping School, Becoming a member of the Workforce

“I didn’t go to undergrad for faculty,” Matt says. “I began working proper after highschool.” That call kicked off a whirlwind four-year journey: two startups, plenty of hands-on studying, and seemingly no actual want for a path again into schooling. Then, upon attempting to return to an undergrad program for a semester in his early-mid 20s, he shortly realized it wasn’t the fitting match.

“Most undergrad applications are inflexible, structured four-year experiences,” he explains. “I needed to see—is there a path that displays my previous expertise, with the power to begin going to high school once more, with out it being repeat materials or time churning?”

Enter: CU Boulder’s Efficiency-Based mostly Admissions

Matt discovered his reply in Boulder’s on-line MSEE, which gives performance-based admissions (PBA)—a system that lets learners show their readiness by means of preliminary coursework, not prior transcripts.

“It helps to have a program that lets you show your self to get in,” he says. “The pliability Boulder supplied—permitting you to skip by means of primarily based on efficiency or benefit—actually helped out.”

For somebody like Matt, who had already been consulting, contracting, and constructing actual merchandise, the standard gatekeeping of academia simply didn’t make sense. He wanted one thing constructed for doers.

Why Go Again to Faculty at All?

“You possibly can self-teach as much as a sure level,” Matt says. “However I used to be hitting boundaries. I needed to lean into product improvement and bodily product improvement—and I used to be capping out at what I may independently produce.”

Regardless of talking at conferences and advising startups, he discovered that not having a proper diploma held him again, particularly internationally. “Visa issues. Not being taken severely by the federal government. For those who solely have a highschool diploma, they anticipate you to supply at a sure (decrease) stage.”

Incomes his grasp’s was about gaining validity, increasing his choices, and at last diving into matters he’d been itching to discover, like microelectronics, sign programs, and energy programs—he semi-jokes, “the power to plug in any gadget to the wall and never blow a fuse.”

What On-line Studying Is Actually Like

Matt doesn’t sugarcoat his expertise: Boulder’s on-line program isn’t for everybody.

“This shouldn’t be for everybody,” he says. “If you wish to discover ways to swim, you possibly can both discover a pool, take on-line programs and educate your self. Or you possibly can pay to indicate up at a pool and have an teacher maintain your hand. Each are legitimate—however they’re completely different character sorts.” For Matt, Boulder’s on-line studying expertise was extra like the previous, having him actually preserve a deep curiosity and a self-starter mentality.

In being part of the primary cohort for this program, he recollects irritating moments—finals with incorrect solutions, the isolation of by no means bodily assembly classmates, and the occasional “Reddit-plus” chaos of dialogue boards and Slack threads. However the tradeoff was value it: whole flexibility.

“With Boulder, if you wish to speedrun, you possibly can. Attending to the tip of those course markers virtually felt like a sport.”

He accomplished the diploma between October 2019 and December 2020, and feels happy with lastly making the agency choice to leap again into education. “I wasn’t nice at taking break day to spherical myself out, and faculty was an excellent guise for this. Regardless that I wasn’t working, I nonetheless felt like I used to be progressing.”

Recommendation for Future Learners: Simply Begin

Matt’s greatest recommendation? Don’t look forward to the right time.

“Simply begin,” he says. “It’s approach tougher to let it bubble over and discover the fitting second to dip in. I keep in mind feeling that approach for 2 years earlier than really going again.”

“Optionality” was a lure, he provides: “Preserving a door open shuts different doorways down the highway. Simply make the decision and determine whether or not you wish to do that factor or not.”

Rewriting What Schooling Means

Now, with a proper grasp’s diploma in hand and years of startup expertise behind him, Matt is constant to do contract and advisory work for startups throughout the globe—and eyeing his subsequent transfer.

“I used to be so labored up over how you can conceptualize an schooling and what that was purported to imply,” he says. “However you simply have to leap in and begin swimming.”