<p>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA
2 University of California–Berkeley Berkeley, CA
3 University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL
4 Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA
5 Stanford University Stanford, CA
6 Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA
7 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI
8 University of Texas–Austin Austin, TX
9 California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA
10 Cornell University Ithaca, NY </p>
<p>1 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, IN
2 Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA
3 California Polytechnic State University–San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA
Cooper Union New York, NY
5 Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA
San Jose State University San Jose, CA</p>
<p>you can throw out MIT, Stanford, Cooper Union and cal tech from the above list since they have absurdly low acceptance rates, for me at least. I’ll occasionally spend a buck or two on the lottery for entertainment, but will not spend a significant amount of time wondering about the machinations of those ping pong balls.</p>
<p>There is no better, only different. I did computer science and business at Rhodes and loved it. It was the right fit for me. It’s not the right fit for everyone. </p>
<p>Best is to find out what you like and don’t like about the different college environments and pick the one that matches your preferences most closely.</p>
<p>I think comp sci is fine at either a large university or a small technical/engineering college. I would avoid liberal arts (though it looks as if you already have) because it can be hard to get into classes and avoid the “bad” professors. I never thought in a million years that I would be interested in comp sci…and now I’m kinda stuck at a small ish liberal arts college lol.</p>
<p>I’ll agree that at a small college it can be hard to avoid a professor. That said, at the better liberal arts, you won’t find many “bad” professors to begin with. And it is far easier to get into classes at a place like Rhodes than at a place like Penn State or University of Memphis. I can tell you that from experience.</p>
<p>I would also like to know the pluses and minuses of studying comp sci at an LAC. Those starter colleges I listed were simply copied from USNR best colleges that do comp sci whose highest degree is a baccalaureate or masters. They seem smaller than the 1st group.</p>
<p>My hs jr son, for whom I am asking this question, said he kinda likes the smaller school (inasmuch as he has thought about it right now) - maybe even a liberal art school? - but one tends to hear more about the bigger schools for comp sci. So I am trying to tease out the differences between the two for this line of study.</p>
<p>lynx, you spoke in the past tense: are you done with your UG career? If so, wehat happened after studying compsci / biz at rhodes, work or grad school?</p>
<p>I’ll include this link here since it is related to the subject, but I have nt read it yet.</p>
<p>Computer engineering is very, very different from Computer Science.</p>
<p>I prefer larger universities. Mainly because course loads in a lot of smaller schools tend to be limited to one survey course per subfield of CS, which would have meant me taking survey courses of suicide-worthy topics to round off my degree. Of course, specialized engineering schools don’t have this weakness,</p>
<p>I graduated from Rhodes in 2000 and started working there (not in admissions, if it matters) in 2005. After I left Rhodes, I went to work as a software engineer at the Vanguard Group in their Charlotte office for a short time and then later in Valley Forge, PA. While up there I got a master’s from Penn State. At Vanguard I did everything from testing to systems analysis to design to programming to being the tech lead to project management and quality improvement. At Rhodes I’m a leader in the information services division and wear a lot of hats. I’m also working part-time on a doctorate at U of Memphis and should be done with that about this time next year.</p>
<p>BTW, Ray192 is completely right about the difference between computer engineering and computer science. CS is essentially a math discipline, but in practice there’s typically a fair bit of software engineering that works its way into the curriculum. At Rhodes I took calculus, discreet, prob/stat, etc. I also took data structures, algorithms, software engineering, networking, databases, etc. The CS curriculum there is very traditional. </p>
<p>If the idea of studying broadly equates for you to “survey courses of suicide-worthy topics”, then a liberal arts college might not be for you. I loved it. I was able to connect so many different perspectives on knowledge and learn so many approaches to understanding complexity. It has been hugely helpful to me in my career.</p>
<p>thanks, lynx, for the post grad detail - always beneficial to see something longitudinally, especially when we are <em>approaching</em> it. And thanks for giving more info on what CS is. I obviously was speaking too loosely and my son and I need to get clearer on what CS is and what computer engineering is.</p>
<p>So lynx, can I assume that the kind of work you described is the kind of work one might do with a CS degree?</p>
<p>Ray , or anyone else: So if CS is more math oriented, then what is computer engineering - designing logic boards and-or chips and using micro code, working with silicon or the latest materials? </p>
<p>Previously I poked around at UIUC’s website (itis our state flagship) and I seem to recall that they have a computer <em>something</em> (don’t know what they call it and I hesitate to characterize it now) degree in the college of engineering and a computer <em>something</em> degree in the college of LAS. I wonder if the former is computer engineering and the latter is CS? I wonder if all the Universities (in my list above, eg) typically make this distinction? Same question for the smaller schools I listed above, and for LACs, too.</p>
<p>Also, ray, can you clarify whatyou mean on those suicide courses? Does that mean courses that meant nothing to your computer degree, nor was interesting to you, but you had to do to satisfy some grad requirement, say, some humanities classes?</p>
<p>The first five years of my career were probably typical for a CS graduate. Most, in my experience, go into some sort of software development or web development position. The ones with superior communication skills will often find themselves as business systems analysts, the interface between technicians and their business clients. Testing and technical support are other areas where CS grads will land. </p>
<p>Computer engineering, as I understand it, is a bridge between CS and electronics engineering. </p>
<p>Most LACs do not have engineering disciplines for whatever reason. You are likely to find computer science at a LAC, less so computer engineering. That doesn’t mean a LAC is a bad choice for a computer engineering career, it just means that you’ll need to plan on getting an undergrad in math or cs or physics or similar and then a master’s in CE.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between studying broadly, and studying broadly by being forced into classes that you dislike. I’m a double major in CS and Economics. I also fill my schedule with cultural studies, history and philosophy courses, among others. Of course, this would never happen if my college didn’t really offer multiple courses in in game theory, decision theory, behavioral economics, military history, Asian mythology/warfare and philosophy of intelligence/existence/evolution. Though I suppose if your idea of studying broadly involve solely survey courses of subjects one has no interest in, my schedule must seem incredibly deficient. And in terms of CS courses, I don’t see why being forced to fill my schedule with courses like compilers, programming languages, information systems will broaden my horizon any more than, say, algorithmic game theory, machine learning, functional programming and game design (the latter stuff being subjects I am actually interested in). </p>
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<p>No, I meant having to take CS courses that one has no interest in (and these courses, unlike the humanities, take a crap load of time) for no reason other than running out of CS courses that actually interest you. I know for a fact that this would happen to me if I went, to say, UVA, so I’d imagine schools several times smaller would often have the same problem.</p>
<p>And Computer Engineering is described to me as half hardware programming, half hardware design. More poetic, I suppose, is that CS is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. CS involves creating idealized ways to solve problems thought some means of computation, and CE creates platforms that can actually implement those ideas.</p>
<p>I happened upon this thread which discusses the bigschool smallschool issue, and so I’ll throw it in here for ‘collegiality’. I read that another poster thought that this issue has been discussed to death, but I think it is a different question or angle when folding in compsci , or even engineering as a major.</p>