FSU honors or UF for computer science

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Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:58:36 +0000

I am a computer science major here at UF, so of course I am biased, but here a few points you should consider with this decision:

Curriculum - [CISE :: Academics : Undergraduate Students](http://cise.ufl.edu/academics/undergrad/) <– this is a listing of the degree programs offered. CSE and CSC are the 2 “computer science” majors (CSE being in the engineering college and CSC in college of liberal arts and sciences–main difference is the gen eds required). If you click on the one you’re interested, then download the counseling sheet pdf you can see all of the required classes for the major. While I obviously know a lot more about the UF classes than FSU, I can say that I have friends in the FSU program who have showed me their syllabi before, and I think that UF offers much more challenging class content. Also just a note, at UF we use primarily Java, and FSU uses C++.

Teaching - It is usually best to have professors who (at least somewhat) like teaching and will make the class an interesting and enjoyable experience. Unfortunately this is not always the case at UF, but I have a feeling the same is true at FSU. Double unfortunately is that UF is losing (arguably) the best undergraduate lecturer in CISE this year due to college mandated budget bs. I would say there are definitely still some good professors in CISE though.

Outside the classroom and job stuff - here at UF we have a top notch programming team, if that interests you. It’s very accessible and if you work hard with them you will get to travel to competitions and most definitely land some internship/job interviews. FSU has no notable programming team to speak of. During my time here our teams place very well in the acm southeast regional contest (one of our teams came in 2nd this year, and almost went to world finals) and I don’t even think FSU competes.
Also, here are a few big companies that recruit quite often on campus: Microsoft, Amason, Disney, Harris, Lockheed Martin

Hope this helps you with your decision.