We are working with our son to try to develop a college short-list. He is currently a high school junior. He would like to study artificial intelligence with a possible minor in math or quantum engineering. He also has strong interests in computer science and robotics, so the AI would ideally be be geared towards that - he is definitely a tech enthusiast. He plans to get a Masters or PhD but I think it’s hard to predict based on what opportunities are presented.
It’s not clear to me what universities actually have degrees in AI. We’d prefer to keep him near or on the east coast so we are thinking Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Cornell, Georgia Tech, U. of Michigan, U of Illinois. We know the chances are tough at all of these though his stats are good. (SAT 1550 in single sitting in 10th grade and 4.3 GPA with extensive AP/Dual Enrollment). Would there be other strong AI schools people would recommend we look at? Ideally, we’d have a couple of safety schools too.
My S is just finishing his MS at Stanford specializing in AL/ML so we think you should check out Stanford CS. CMU actually offer a BSAI degree. I think the rest offer BSCS with specialization in AI in some cases.
There are probably few schools that offer a “BS in AI”. You should look for schools with strong CS programs, almost all of which will offer AI courses/concentrations.
My D has a similar profile (1580 only sitting, 4.00UW, 12AP, etc.), with an interest in CS, and she is looking at the schools you listed plus Stanford, Caltech, Washington (not StL), which are all in the west, plus local safeties. Other long-list programs that didn’t make the short list, in the eastern half of the country, were Maryland , Princeton, and Wisconsin.
All of these have strong complimentary math/engineering programs.
Thanks. I loved what I read about Stanford - he is very interested in Berkley, Stanford, Washington, etc. but we were thinking maybe those for a Masters. This is our oldest child and we are concerned he will never come home. I’m not sure how anyone gets selected for schools like Stanford (or the others for that matter). It seems like there is an endless supply of brilliant kids out there. He has a large development portfolio but no patents or anything like that.
Thanks I will add Maryland (this one surprises me) and Princeton to the list. Maryland is actually close to us, so he may not love that but if they have a good program, it’d probably be one of the more economical options.
Unlikely that you will find very many that offer degrees in AI, particularly bachelor’s degrees. AI is typically a subarea of CS. Assuming that the CS department offers AI courses (most do these days, but the number of courses and depth of coverage varies), CS majors can choose them as part of the upper level CS courses that they take for the major.
Best thing to do if he knows that he wants to do AI is to check the CS course offerings at each school to see what AI offerings there are, in addition to the usual baseline upper level CS course offerings (algorithms, theory of computation, operating systems, networks, databases, security and cryptography, compilers, software engineering, graphics, hardware design).
As the parent, do you know what you are willing to pay (without taking parent loans or limiting your savings for retirement or younger kids’ college funds)? Be sure to run the net price calculator on each college’s web site and compare the result to what you are willing to pay.
So sounds like a strong academic record. Should be competitive at many schools. Schools with the strongest AI/ML classes are also the hardest to get admission to. I don’t really know of a safety school that is also considered to have depth in those type classes. Others may know of some.
Note also the depth of AI course work may be found at the graduate level at research universities. It may be worth checking for any policy limitations on undergraduates taking graduate level courses at a university where the depth of AI course work is mostly found at the graduate level.
In addition to checking which universities have an AI class or two, you should check into which are doing extensive research in AI. That will present opportunities for undergraduate research and show that the professor teaching the class is doing work in the field. The UT Turing program coupled with some of the labs there could be a good combination. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ai-lab/
Does your high school use Naviance? My S has a similarly strong profile (4.0UW/high practice SAT) and is interested in CS/poli sci. Several schools mentioned upthread are already on his list but they are reaches for everyone.
I used Naviance to identify some high match/safety schools. In addition to our state flagship, students from our high school with my son’s profile do well in admissions to University of Washington (61%), Cal Poly (70%), and Berkeley (30%).
I have a kid at Penn (another reach, I know) so it’s on the list too. They seem to be doing interesting research at the joint SEAS/Wharton Penn Research in Machine Learning (PRIML) group.
Yes we have Naviance - that is part of my concern. It seems like kids with equal or better credentials don’t get into a lot of the schools on his list. Many of them have no recent admissions at all. Some schools seem to randomly accept a few students with lower scores but reject 30+ more with higher scores. It’s not clear why.
Financially we want a good value. Some schools have networks that I think pay very long term dividends. In any case we are not eager to pay 75k a year but he does have exceptional ability and I think deserves a solid program. We are looking at the the details of the degrees, there are just so many schools - I really have to believe (hope!) some parent has already done the research to get past the “obvious” ones to get to a list that is individually researchable. It’d be nice if there was a shared google sheets for parents of AI-interested students!
I don’t think there’s any college, other than CMU SCS, that offers a “specialized” AI degree. CMU SCS did it only a couple of years ago. It’s mostly a marketing ploy as the tweaks it made were relatively minor. Colleges with top CS programs all offer an AI track, either implicitly or explicitly. Their CS curriculum/requirements should list a set of courses in AI that a CS student could take as electives to meet the specialization requirement. Also take a look at their course listing to get a sense of the depth in AI that’s available to an advanced student (e.g. if the college offers specialized courses – not just conceptional introductions – in unsupervised learning and/or reinforcement learning).
It was not easy. The ‘lists’ out there seemed to simply reflect the size of a program. We went college by college and clicked through some of the labs that are usually linked off the CS homepage. We wanted to make sure there were multiple that held an interest. Similar to @1NJParent, we also checked the ‘depth’ of classes. We ruled out a couple of universities that listed a single upper division course in an area of interest.