Help me find some likely options?

BrownParent
Sun, 01 Jun 2014 08:53:13 +0000

The problem about UW is you really want the direct admit or there is only roughly a third chance to enter the major. Maybe better for you because there doesn’t seem to be a risk you will get low grades or wash out altogether. UIUC is more difficult to get into CS/Engineering than the college in general I believe but I haven’t looked at the stats if available. I think GT is a bit deceptive as it is self selecting and a lot of kids will have good CS ECs. I think Mudd and Rice might have to be thought of as reaches or ‘low reaches’ maybe.

You should have some good advising at your college, shouldn’t you? And track records available of where students from your school generally get in?

Those tippy top CS grad schools have good undergrad depts yes. But there are really a lot of top CS grad schools and there are a lot more undergrad schools. Some of the good grad schools may not have the best undergrad environment or access to those famous profs. They may have huge intro classes and brutal weeding etc. Other colleges that don’t have stratospheric grad depts may still have very good undergrad depts.

I think you can afford to think about the type of environment you’d like to be in although you can have several, but be aware. Large publics, smaller tech oriented schools (like RPI), mid size privates, small privates. And try to get to know how the department is run and what its philosopy and strengths are. In some, CS is in engineering, some it’s Arts&Sciences, some you have a choice. Which appeals? Some are more theoretical, some more practical, some a blend. Some you will get research experiences easily and others you may have to defer to grad students or the very tippy top students in the school. Find out about these things. And some colleges are in rural areas, some cities, does it matter? There is a kid posting yesterday that he is wanting to transfer out of Cornell because it is too isolated and too Greek for him. He really likes a city but he chose a remote college town. For others it would be ideal.

For instance, I know a bit about Brown, for example, because my daughter went there. It is in a mid sized city, but has a self contained campus and tight knit community of 6,000. CS is a small department with excellent offerings and has several tracks, CS, CS-math, CS-applied math, Computational Bio, CS-Econ. CE is in the engineering dept. Applied math is very strong there. Intro classes are larger, maybe 100 or 200 then it drops off sharply to small classes. All the professors in the highly ranked grad school also teach and research with undergrads-- everyone does both Research opportunities are widely available to undergrads. When they set up the dept, 35 years ago, one of the first CS undergrad depts, they knew Cornell was very theoretical and Carnegie Mellon was very experimental and they decided to blend that as their thing. The school has an open curriculum so you can decide your own general classes and electives and sample departments. You can get a MS in a 5 year program. Try to get to know these kind of things.

Cornell has CS in the 3,000 person engineering school and also in the 4,000 college of arts and sciences where you can take more liberal arts electives. They take the same core though. They say that job offers in the two areas are similar. The college is remote but in a college town. It has a theoretical bent.

Some publics are going to have intro classes of 300 to even 600 and upper division may be smaller but still large. Some privates will have very large intro classes too. Maybe it matter to you, maybe it doesn’t.

Some colleges work on the coop system and you will do internships that will expose you to different companies and prepare you will for jobs and pay you pretty well.

I’m out of steam, but I guess you get the idea haha.