Computer Science is in the School of Engineering. IST is not considered Computer Science at Penn State Main Campus. IST is in the computer industry but it has other applications such as Cyber Security. Computer Science Engineering is ranked very high. It’s number 30 in the US, and the engineering overall is ranked above Harvard right now in US News and World Report. The good is that if your kid makes it through, the Degree from UP is very well known, and very well respected. The Ugly is that it is NO FREAKING JOKE. (meant to be funny)…seriously…they have very tough weed out courses. My kid took the same Calc courses in community college during high school and got all As. At PSU Main, he’s getting all 100’s on the quizzes but then lo and behold the tests come and he bombed one. The reason is that they INTENTIONALLY design all the first year engineering courses in such a way that if your kid does not attend tutoring or review sessions, they will not get a good grade. Many will not pass. Many are weeded out of Engineering by Thanksgiving Break, where they take Late Drops and change their major before even signing up for the next smester’s classes. Since your kid got in so early I will assume he is high stats and so was mine (mine’s SAT and grades and all were borderline Ivy material as far as statistics)…and even still it’s not easy. Add to that the fact that freshman get VERY sick at UP due to the extreme weather and closed environment and it’s very hard. On the east coast there are not many better engineering degrees than PSU UP…now on the west coast…I would say that COmputer Science from PSU UP is respected, and known. They will not even look at a branch campus but respect UP…however, the west coast companies do not recruit at PSU’s job and career fairs (for the most part) so your kid will be on their own if they want to make their way to Silicon Valley your kid would need to do Open Source projects on his own, in order to make a name for himself, then he would present the Degree from Penn State along with his Open Source projects in order to secure an Internship which could possibly help him eventually get a Silicon Valley job. On the east coast he can find jobs in Computer Science but they would likely be doing programming for a company that needs apps rather than a company whose entire job is apps (Google, FB, etc.) …Hope that helps. My point is, if your kid can make it through the gauntlet, it is a very well respected degree even so much so that people from Google know it exists, which is quite something for an east coast public college.