Please help, opinions needed. UIUC CS [$40k] vs Raikes School at UNL (CS + Business) [$5-10k]

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Schools: UIUC vs. Raikes
Intended major: Computer Science
Please do some research into Raikes before stating your opinion. They have impressive numbers such as 100% job placement rate soon after graduation and 90% of the cohort having 3+ internships.
Similarities:
Both offer strong CS programs, but with different emphases (pure CS vs. CS + Business).
Both have good job placement rates, though Raikes has a 100% job placement rate within three months.
Both have different levels of prestige and industry recognition.
UIUC
Pros:
Prestige: Ranked 5th in the world for CS, widely recognized, and I got into pure CS, so I would be able to take quite a few advanced CS courses.
Job Outlook: Strong pipeline to FAANG and quant dev; almost every company hires from UIUC.
Curriculum: I would have to take no gen eds, I would have a lot of free electives to study what I want
Campus Atmosphere: Engineering quad is amazing, the buildings are just absolutely stunning, and the campus is lively with lots of students walking around. When I visited, I saw a lot of collaboration and tutoring going on in the basement of the Siebel School of Computing

Cons:
Difficulty: Extremely hard classes; I’m not sure if I would survive.
Dorms: Very bad housing options—small rooms, public bathrooms, and mostly likely will end up in PAR/FAR freshman year .
Class Size: Huge class sizes initially, and support is limited in early years.
Cost: Expensive (40kish), but I will still be debt free. (Parent contribution is up to 55k per year)

Raikes School
Pros:
Job Outlook: 100% job placement rate within three months, $104K average salary.
Class Size: Small cohort (40ish students), more individual support from faculty, less cutthroat.
Dorms: Private bathrooms/showers shared only with a roomate (I likely already know who I will be rooming with if I attend), large rooms, and room/board scholarship.
Cost: atleast 4x cheaper than UIUC—only $5K-$10K per year.
Difficulty: Still challenging, but less stressful due to individual support.
The design studio is also something that is super interesting to me, basically during junior and senior year you form into a group with other Raikes Students and work with a company to solve an actual issue. Raikes faculty claims employers consider this 2 years of work experience (1 year as a junior, 1 year as a senior)
School 2 Cons:

Prestige: Well-known in Nebraska, but I am uncertain if it's recognized outside of the Midwest.
Curriculum: CS + Business, not as advanced in CS as UIUC, though it prepares well for jobs and could help if I ever decide to pivot into management.
Campus Atmosphere: I've been told that a lot of UNL students go home on the weekend, which can make the campus feel not very lively.
It is also around 5 hours away, which is not a super big deal but something that should be noted.

Tiebreaking considerations:
Does the smaller class size and individual support at Raikes outweigh the prestige and depth of UIUC’s CS program?
How much does prestige actually matter in job placement?

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Not all the freshman dorms have community bathrooms. ISR, which is very popular with Engineering students due to proximity to Engineering quad, has individual use bathrooms. I agree that the rooms are small at ISR. A few others like Wassaja have individual use or pods. Sophomore and above dorms like Bousfield have pods. You could also opt for privately owned certified housing like Illini Tower or Bromley (or Newman Center if you’re Catholic). Those have suites.

I don’t have any knowledge of Nebraska, but I just wanted to make sure you’re aware that the housing situation at UIUC isn’t as bad as you are making it seem.

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Which would you prefer to study?

What is your preferred post-graduation type of work?

Do costs differ or matter?

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Costs differ matter but only a little. Not a huge factor as I’d be debt free either way. I am primarily interested in the CS content, but my end goal is to get a high paying job in tech, so whichever one would help me best achieve that.

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If you prefer a more technical role, the UIUC CS major offers greater CS content and will be better preparation. You could use out-of-major course work to include some business or business-adjacent (e.g. economics, sociology) courses.

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Is the Raikes school a comp sci program, or a management information systems program like that offered at CMU? Based on their website it looks like they lean toward the latter. If that is the case the two programs are very different with different career tracks.

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“ As a student in the Raikes School, you will receive an innovative undergraduate education balanced in computer science and business while developing interpersonal skills in leadership, communication, and project management. Your experience is further enhanced by the Kauffman Center’s living and learning community within a supportive, collaborative environment.”

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I have no knowledge of either program, but I would still like to help you think through your options.

You want us to do this research for you?

This seems like a great question to ask them about directly.

Everything you say about Raikes sounds pretty darn good. In fact, it seems hard to pass up given the impressive cost savings. You are talking about $100k. Nothing to sneeze at. Will the savings be important to your family? EDIT: Do you mean 40k a year? Just checking.

Once you have had your first job, quite frankly, your job boost comes from you and your work experience. Not necessarily the name of your college.

Have you visited UNL? It’s a good sized college and enough people will live on campus to have a community feel. Similar percentages of students live on campus at both.

I honestly wouldn’t worry about dorms at either school. A dorm is a dorm. Upperclassmen typically get better housing, or you may move off campus after the first year anyway.

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Responding to your first question, I have done quite a bit of research myself, I just wanted to make sure people know what the Raikes program was before commenting, because it is relatively unknown. As for your points, yes I mean 40k a year, and my parents are willing to pay either, but the savings is of course nice. I have visited UNL both on weekdays and weekends, after talking to OOS UNL students they also agree that a lot of kids go home on the weekends and campus is not super populated, but that could also be a benefit.

You make a good point about the name of your college not mattering a lot after your first job.

The main draw to UIUC for me is the advanced cs classes I would be able to take, and the fact that high tier tech companies recruit heavily from UIUC, making it significantly easier to get a job from FAANG or a Quant job.
Thanks for your response.

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Curriculum | Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management | Nebraska lists a four course computer science / software engineering sequence, which is much less than what CS majors would take. There also does not seem to be any of the typical math found in CS major curricula. For comparison, the CS major at UNL is shown at Computer Science < University of Nebraska–Lincoln , and the CS major at UIUC is shown at Computer Science, BS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign .

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Why would you assume UIUC Classes are harder than Raikes ?

Ranking does not equate with rigor.

How important is the room / bathroom ? My son chose his low ranked university for that reason over a high ranked university. For him, it mattered most.

In the end, one is CS and one is a blend of different disciplines.

Which fits you best - curriculum, living wise and whatever else matters to you?

That’s your choice.

Seems to me - heads you win. Tails you win.

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Perhaps a general assumption that CS courses will be harder than business courses?

Another option, if the OP would prefer a more technical CS education at UNL’s lower cost would be to check into changing major to the regular CS major at UNL. There does not seem to be anything indicating doing that is difficult, but it is best to check by contacting directly to ask about it: Advising | School of Computing | Nebraska

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I took it as more it’s highly ranked and therefore….but that is not necessarily true.

There’s certainly enough differentiation here that OP should prefer one over the other - taking out intangibles like rank.

Rank doesn’t assure an outcome.

Study what and where you want on the merits …

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My comment was more about CS versus business, not UIUC CS versus UNL CS, since the UNL Raikes program is mostly business with some introductory level CS added.

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Just to add on to this, you still have to fulfill the CS requirements by the school. The Raikes School curriculum just replaces certain classes with their own faculty. So you will still have to take all the normal math, physics, etc classes.

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Congratulations on admittances from two great schools! In helping to compare the programs for yourself, I would strongly recommend you complete a 4-year plan for each, including the specific classes that are needed for the major and for distribution requirements. In doing that, you may find the answer much more obvious in terms of which curriculum you prefer, which may then help you decide which college you may prefer.

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I have no idea about Raikes but in a tough CS job market I would take the safer bet by going to UIUC CS especially if $$ is not an issue. I recommend you do a LinkedIn search at your target employers and see how many they recruited from Raikes and UIUC in 2024.

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Yep. That is what makes me think that the Raikes school is more like a MIS program than a CS program. That reads more like a business school where you learn some comp sci.

To really get an answer one would have to compare the curriculum of the two programs.

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I don’t know that it’s more like MIS - other schools have programs like these - but with engineering.

And the Raikes outcomes surpass MIS programs.

But agreed it’s not MIS.

I really think - throw the ranking aside here - what’s your best fit as an individual - and that’s what OP should choose.

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Fit is important. But it’s also important to note this :point_down:t3:

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