Getting into gradschool from a "real job" I'm interested in going to grad-school but I have been working at a "real job" as a software engineer for the past few years (since I graduated with a BS in Math in 2010).  What are the best ways to to break back into the academic world?  How can I spin my work experience in a positive way to departments?

Ideally I would be getting a phd to study Mathy CS, or CSy Math.
We see a number of students who apply to graduate school after an undergraduate degree in math/cs followed by some years spent working at a not-any-realler-than-faculty job. In short, what admissions committees would like to know is:


what have you been doing since then, and in what way does it influence your current interests and desire for grad school
have you continued working on projects on the side ? (not a problem if not, but good if yes)


In other words, I don't view work experience as a negative in CS. In fact it's a bit of a positive because the student then usually knows what they want to do and is a lot more focused about it. There's a lot more maturity as well.