Cornell vs UVA (Debt vs No Debt)

cmsjmt
Sat, 09 May 2015 20:28:33 +0000

Has the OP made a decision? I’m going to be the dissenting voice here and put in a vote for Cornell given his interest in Comp. Sci, finance and intended career in Finance or SV.

UVA has more of a regional reputation, Cornell has a national/international reputation, especially in CS. Case in point, check out the following survey of top feeder schools to Silicon Valley companies:
http://qz.com/183958/what-facebook-twitter-google-and-apple-employees-have-in-common/

Cornell is one of the top 10 feeder schools to 3 of 4 top SV firms in the survey: Google, Facebook and Twitter. Apple hires mostly locally from San Jose State, Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Poly.

In addition, Cornell is also the #3 feeder school to Goldman Sachs. It’s the only school that has this coast-to-coast, cross industry national profile, surpassing even Harvard:
http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2015/01/07/the-top-feeder-schools-to-google-goldman-sachs-and-more/2/

UVA is not on any of these lists. That’s not to say of course, that you can’t still do very well and get a job in investment banking or Silicon Valley coming out of UVA, most large companies hire from everywhere. But when companies hire a lot of graduates from one school, it usually means they like the program from that particular school. There’s also large alumni support within the company to help get your foot in the door.

As far as the debt, the NYT or WSJ had an article a while back about SV employees who have no trouble paying off their student loans because of their high starting salaries. Many SV firms now even help their employees pay off student loans. The rule is you shouldn’t borrow more than what you will make first year out of college. With SV starting salaries now over $100k for CS majors, you’ll be able to pay off your debt in no time.