[artmageddon]

Thanks! That's sort of what I was afraid of, but if this might be the route I have to go then it'll give me a better shot of getting into a program. By then I'll see how well the current crop of Georgia Tech students like the program and go from there. I'm doing a Machine-Learning class from Coursera / Stanford starting next week to give me a taste of things, too :)

[eitally]

This is essentially how it worked for me, too. I had a 2.92 overall GPA but showed them a 3.6 GPA in my major, and was provisionally admitted (based mostly on my letters of reference and work experience). It seems admissions and department heads have quite a bit of flexibility if you can convince them to apply it. :)