<p>Here's the issue: I was completely sure that I wanted to major in French, so I applied to all of these liberal arts colleges. Now I'm thinking that I want to major in computer science, and it's too late to apply to other schools. Out of these schools, which has the best program in computer science?</p>
<p>Middlebury
Smith
Vassar
Wellesley</p>
<p>Hmm... I would say... Smith.</p>
<p>Not sure why, but the others don't seem to strike me as being so.</p>
<p>Smith has the best, I'd say. They are the only women's college with an engineering program in-house, and they are very focused on science for their students.</p>
<p>Vassar has a good cognitive science major, I know, and that's somewhat related to computer science.</p>
<p>But this is a perfect lesson as to why you shouldn't apply to colleges based on major :D A very large number of college students change their majors from what they thought they were going to major in. In any event, all of those schools have computer science majors, and you'll likely get a great education at any of them. Choose based on your preferences, not on the major. The major will work itself out.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for your responses.</p>
<p>@ juillet: Everyone told me not to apply based on majors, but I figured I could disregard that since I was so sure of my major. I also still want to study French; I'm just getting an overdose because I'm taking three languages this year, so I'm less excited about languages. At any rate, I like the environment of a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>Read the college website computer science department pages for all the places you are accepted!!!</p>
<p>Study French and Computer Science. Write some decent language translation software.</p>
<p>Hard to beat that Wellesley lets you cross enroll at MIT.</p>
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Hard to beat that Wellesley lets you cross enroll at MIT.
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<p>This. And it seems to have a decent CS program in its own right.</p>
<p>I'd go with Wellesley or Smith.</p>
<p>Most schools have adequate computer science programs, you should look at the online course catalgs and see how deep the programs seem to be and what the research interests of the faculty are. As others here have pointed out Smith's engineering program and Wellesley's ties with MIT warrant closer looks. (I do wonder just how easy it is to get to MIT to take those classes - there's a bus, but I know it takes a half hour to get there in a car.) Checking out the site, I see you can also cross register for some classes at Olin which is much closer.</p>
<p>Wellesley, without a doubt, given cross-registration with MIT and Olin. It's very easy to get to MIT. I don't know about the arrangements with Olin, but assume they are somewhat similar: free regularly-scheduled bus.</p>
<p>You may well change your mind again, but unless you decide on something like "business administration" you'll find it at your list of schools.</p>
<p>Smith offers cross-registration at other colleges via the 5-college consortium. I'm sure someplace within those 5 colleges there are CS courses, if you look. If it is at U Mass, perhaps these may be somewhat easier than comparable courses at MIT or Olin. Whether that is bad , or good, to you may depend partly on whether you consider yourself an MIT caliber student in the first place. Some people might find that they go there & get their behinds kicked.</p>
<p>There is frequent bus service between the 5 campuses, as I understand it.</p>
<p>Smith and Wellesley benefit from consortiums, as others have stated. Vassar's CS is surprisingly strong among LACs (e.g. it has a dedicated course for bioinformatics, not your interested field I presume but still VERY rare among LACs). Midd has 4 profs (+1 on leave this year), also a good number since most LACs tend to have 2-3 with some math overlap.</p>
<p>Relax. I'm looking to double-major in English and CS, and my list is 90% LACs. English > CS for me, so I trust it will work out. (Incidentally, are you interested in linguistics? That is much rarer than CS in liberal arts colleges.)</p>
<p>Thank you all very much; this is making me feel a lot better about my choices!</p>