[Haskell-cafe] admission to graduate program in CS

[Johann Bach]

Hello list,
I am a programmer who just got laid off. I have been studying Haskell
and learning a lot about CS, *as a hobby*. I have a B.S. from Caltech
in engineering (didn't take many CS classes). Now that my options are
open, I'd like to think about graduate school in CS which is probably
the academic subject I love most in the world. But I didn't take many
CS classes in college, and my job was garden-variety programming,
mostly to someone else's design and process rules. My real CS
experience comes from my hobbies such as learning Haskell. But that
leaves me without a way to prove my ability, at least not by showing
recent schoolwork or having any recommendations from CS professors.

I hardly know anything about how graduate schools evaluate candidates.
So what I am wondering is, could I use a demonstration of my
self-study to demonstrate ability? I'm not sure what form that would
take, but I'm just trying to look at every angle right now.

Thanks,
Johann