Helping son decide on accepted CS programs--high Tier school [UCSD] or lower tier [ASU, UTD] honors?

Congratulations to your son on all of his acceptances! A few thoughts:

  1. Is there a particular area within CS that interests him? I’ve seen this ranking system that lets you select particular areas of interest, and since rankings appear important to him, this may be informative: https://drafty.cs.brown.edu/csopenrankings/

  2. Although your son has no known ideas about what his postgraduate plans will be, has he expressed any entrepreneurial interests? If so, would money saving money by attending a full ride school that could then be used for a start-up (or a house down payment, or whatever) be a factor in his decision-making?

Since it seems like visits to all other schools are possible, here are a few posts that talk more about life at UTD (1, 2). If it sounds appealing to your son, I would suggest having him investigate more and see about a quick trip to Dallas (which is a hub for multiple airlines).

When visiting campuses, I would also urge him to see about sitting in on a class or two and having conversations with current students as that can provide a more realistic view of college life than the marketing of admissions departments.

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