UIUC MCS(-DS) vs GT OMSCS?

As you might know, I graduated from UIUC’s MCS-DS program in August 2020 and got a Spring 2021 admission to Georgia Tech’s OMSCS at the same time. I had to defer my starting date in OMSCS to Fall 2021 due to personal reasons, but I gathered some information and experienced a bit of GT’s OMSCS.

Today, just before I wrap up my work, someone who got admission from both MCS and OMSCS programs asked me my opinions and thoughts about both programs.

I wrote a few comments for him, and it gets longer and longer. It became long enough at some point and made me think, ‘maybe I need to post it somewhere for others who might get in the same situations like him.’
So here is my feedback about both programs. I made some changes based on what I gave him feedback.

Classes in the Program

If you are interested in data science or similar, MCS-DS will be better. It has various data science-related classes compared to OMSCS, although the quality of some courses in MCS-DS is questionable. (It’s the same in OMSCS, too, though)

If you want to focus on computer science itself, I believe OMSCS has plenty more classes than MCS. MCS(and MCS-DS) has some, too, but it’s more focused on cloud-related and/or stuff like Numerical Analysis. I am not saying Numerical Analysis is not essential here.

MCS has programming language & compiler stuff(CS 421), but I believe it uses Haskell for most of the programming language part. OMSCS compiler class…