My company is requiring continuous learning for all engineers. To the end they have established a fund where you can take college courses on their dime provided it doesnt detract from your work. Which means that if you can pass all of your courses they will pay for you to get your masters through MIT. (Conversely if I fail a course it comes out of my pocket).

Looking at some of the requirements to graduate with a master's of engineering im intrigued by the possibility but nervous and unsure of if it's actually possible for someone like me who didn't graduate from an Ivy League school.

My three biggest concerns are: the course load, my previous GPA, and the concept of a thesis.

Course load should be fairly obvious as to why it makes me nervous. If I fail because I am struggling to keep up with both work and studies it's a big bill to foot. The best I can come up with is to try and study ahead and the courses I plan to take online and study ahead to make sure I understand as much as possible before the first day.

As for my GPA. I put myself through my state college on my own with no student loans and while I did graduate I only graduated with a 2.65 GPA and ended up failing linear algebra once and I only barely passed statics. I'm worried that I may not be prepared or even able to take any higher level studies let alone courses from MIT.

Finally, the thesis. My experiences with higher level thesis and research is fairly limited but so far it just largely seems like needless research for its own sake. In senior seminar for example, out of 12 lectures we had to listen to, 10 were on calculations for materials on an atomic and subatomic level, one was on 3d printing explosives, and one was on the mathematics to predict how a piece of paper falls to the ground. And every other time I have been exposed to masters and doctoral level thesis all I can think of afterwards is "who lost money paying people to do this? It's completely unusable." And I've always been the kind of engineer who focuses on practical solutions, not theoretical solutions. So I cant even come up with a research topic for a thesis.