<p>Agreed. UIUC is a VERY good school for just about everything, and being a state school it does put its focus on its engineering program, which is phenomenal.
If I didn’t qualify for financial aid, I would have applied to more state schools/lower tier schools in hopes of getting scholarships there to even out the differences in cost.
One of my friends who lives in NY is going to UCSD and is paying about how much I am for Wesleyan after financial aid. He gets no finaid and he’s out of state, and schools like UCSD are awesome.</p>
<p>RPI, CMU, and University of Rochester are all division three…</p>
<p>Division One was never a criterion, the OP just wanted some sports which all these schools have.
If the OP want’s div 1 sports, then they should consider the better big ten schools.
Penn State’s honors college is spectacular, and their sports are too as are the engineering/comp sci progs.</p>
<p>check his response - post #29.</p>
<p>UT Austin, awesome for computer science.</p>
<p>Oopsie 
I’ll stick with my #43 then :-)</p>
<p>
mommusic, could you give me an idea as to what SAT/GPA profiles yield a merit award at UIUC for CS? and how much are the awards? one time or for all 4 years?</p>
<p>Are the merit awards different for CS than for engineering?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>My S is considering applying there for CS or EE next year, OOS.</p>
<p>WS17–I have been trying to find the paperwork in my son’s room and it’s hopeless. What I remember from two years ago is this: Some scholarship from being accepted to the CHP (Campus Honors Program) of $3000, and another named scholarship from the Engineering school of $4000. Or maybe it was the other way around. Those are renewable for 4 years if you maintain a GPA of um, 3.3? The engineering one was specifically for OOS. He also got a one-time NM scholarship of $2500.</p>
<p>Tuition has gone up since then (as they have everywhere) but the good thing is Illinois keeps tuition for 4 years at the level it was when you were admitted. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the HS GPA or score requirements are for scholarships or even if there are specifics. My son was a pretty high scorer.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>OBTW, how does he like UIUC and the CS program? I read that there are a lot of grad student instructors at UIUC, and a lot of drinking culture in general. How true?</p>
<p>He LOVES it. Both years so far he has entered a project in the EOH (Engineering Open House) as well as other nifty projects & ECs. He’s in an acappella group and as a music minor there are many performance opportunities. As well as performances to see–either by music majors or events brought to the university.</p>
<p>There are professors teaching large lecture classes and grad students leading small discussions, same as anywhere else. He said the CS students tend to not go to the discussion groups, if not required.</p>
<p>There is an active fraternity/sorority life and yes, drinking, but the school is large enough you can ignore it and find other friends to hang out with. </p>
<p>Our friends recommended UIUC and sent two of their sons there for engineering. They raved about going to parents weekends & football games–the whole traditional college thing. Our family isn’t into that and our son has other things he traditionally does on Friday nights, but we are just as pleased with the college, so there is room for all types there. </p>
<p>The engineering/computing facilities there ARE amazing–that’s where they put the money apparently. I don’t think people go there for liberal arts so much, but for Eng/CS–definitely.</p>
<p>UIUC is the home of the [National</a> Center for Supercomputing Applications](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications]National”>National Center for Supercomputing Applications - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>RPI, Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>If you go to a private school you will find housing for undergrads and internet connections.</p>
<p>Scholarships based on merit are hard to find, unless you give up selectivity.</p>
<p>If you have a competitive student body you will have a high workload. The two go together. Of course, high workload is relative to what you think is “high”.</p>
<p>Undergraduate degree in CS is fine for entry-level jobs. However, a masters thesis/project will help you develop expertise in a particular area that may make you more of a star at work and/or get you hired into a more interesting position (think designing a major part of a system versus writing automated programs to test others’ code). I recommend a BS in Computer Science rather than a BA. Generally, has more in-depth coursework and carries more weight. This rules out the programs at a lot of small liberal arts colleges, unless you make up the coursework in your master’s degree. Swarthmore is the only highly ranked LAC I could find that offered a BS in CS, but don’t know how good the program is.</p>
<p>The tech companies in California hire from a variety of schools. The UC’s are well-known here. CalPoly, too. Names of private schools that are held in high esteem: MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Rice, Harvey Mudd. After that list, it depends on the interview. Actually, it depends on the interview even from that list, but the name helps get you in the door. When I was interviewing candidates, I looked for a good match. Did the candidate seem enthusiastic after hearing about the job description? Did the candidate seem to understand the work we were doing? Did the candidate have good people skills. Etc., etc.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to be in a large city then that rules out Rice (Houston) and MIT (Boston, unless you consider it to be in a suburb). Stanford and Harvey Mudd are both in suburbs. Carnegie Mellon is in a medium town. I went to Rice and I didn’t think being in Houston was too bad. Rice is pretty secluded from the city.</p>
<p>Stanford and Rice both have tennis. Stanford and MIT have soccer, Rice only has a soccer club.</p>
<p>Once you get past the top 5 schools then you might as well pick a school that you like, but I would stick with a place that offers a BS. One downside of majoring in a tech degree is that most of the small tech schools have a majority of men. Makes it difficult to date.</p>
<p>Thank you, ricegal, that’s some useful info. What are your thoughts on Cornell and Berkeley Universities as CS schools?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/phdsci/brief/com_brief.php[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/phdsci/brief/com_brief.php</a></p>
<ol>
<li> Carnegie Mellon University ¶ 5.0
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5.0
Stanford University (CA) 5.0
Berkeley is not very good for ugrad though so I’d not go there for that. I’d also check out Caltech.</li>
</ol>
<p>How is Berkeley not very good for undergrads? And caltech is ranked below Cornell. Why should I check it out?</p>
<p>impersonal and its programs are ranked highly on the Grad level but do not often trickle down. all these complaints can be found and highlighted on discussions like rice vs berkeley on the rice forums and in the berkeley forums too.</p>
<p>Why do you only want to see 4.0s? That’ll be like not as good as the 5.0s. You want like safeties or what? Penn State is a nice school that isnt’ too hard to get into.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank for the info.</p>
<p>
Shouldn’t I want safeties? I mean, I can most likely get into any of those highest schools, but for the heck of it - why not apply to a few safe options?</p>
<hr>
<p>Cornell seems like an great university, and it is 4.9, just .1 below the 5.0 ones. Does anyone have anything to say about Cornell specifically?</p>
<p>Good for engineering. Some things I’ve heard
- Bad location
- Bad social life
- Stressful and depressing at times with grade deflation
- Great food
- Very hard to graduate from with a good GPA, easiest to get into but hardest Ivy
- Not as good for Comp Sci as the rest that were listed, good overall engineering.
- ranked 8th on us news ugrad engineering</p>
<p>PSIONIC: To answer your questions about Berkeley and Cornell. I basically agree with futurewhartonman. I am not recommending Berkeley for my son who is planning to major in CS, mainly because of 4 reasons, which are not applicable to everyone: 1) too close to home, 2) housing sucks and is expensive, 3) my husband went there for grad school and was unimpressed with the level of attention he got from his advisor. (He was working for the guy and only saw him once a month.), 4) our local paper recently ran an article stating that the freshman chemistry prof only met 10% of his students. If my son decides to go there, I won’t stop him, but I’m not recommending it. Cornell has a good reputation out here so I should have added it to my original list.</p>
<p>In April, my son and I visited CMU, Bucknell, Lehigh, and Lafayette. He liked all of them except Lafayette (for some arbitrary reason). CMU seemed to me to have the most intense program, the most research opportunities, and the highest starting salaries. Bucknell and Lehigh are in small towns which is one of your criteria. Both schools have a lot of jocks. If you like sports you would like them both. I liked the town of Lewisburg better than the town of Bethlehem. I also thought the administration was more friendly at Bucknell. My son plans to apply to all three next year unless he decides to go ED somewhere. He doesn’t seem to have a preference right now.</p>