@Chembiodad I wasn’t trying to be braggadocious, simply responding to your remark. How exactly can I exhibit humility in telling you my stats? I didn’t bring them up until I was asked. Btw, not necessarily aspiring to an Ivy but it is an option due to grades, test scores and football.
@Luska19, when in doubt chose humility, it will serve you well. Remember, an Ivy football program will demand more of your time than a top D3 LAC - something to consider.
@Chembiodad I’m very thankful and humble to be in this position. When I was told basically come back and worry about it when you’re in that situation then I responded. Yes many have indeed espoused the time commitment of an Ivy vs D3 and again it is a big consideration I won’t take lightly. Not that I would ever want to have to make the decision but at least with the Ivy schools you don’t have to maintain your sport as with D1. I’m simply trying to find the best CS school to fit me and didn’t have too much info on LAC’s. At this point I have many wonderful options and of course a highly regarded CS school with a football program I can thrive in is optimal but I have come to learn more about some D3 schools that I might not have considered previously. Finally I do realize that choosing which college for football is simply a 4 year choice while my choice for CS is a decision for a lifetime.
The person quoted by the OP is clueless (or a troll). D is studying CS and Philosophy at an East Coast LAC. She had multiple internship offers this summer in the CS field and chose the Google Engineering Practicum. MANY LAC students are in the program and while nothing is official yet, most have been told that they will be asked back next summer. I do not remember her mentioning meeting anyone from Colorado School of Mines (perhaps they are all in the Boulder office) or Texas A&M . . .
@Luska19, enjoy the journey and best wishes!
@Chembiodad Sincere thank you.
@PayingtheBills, good to here that Google understands the LAC proposition, and no I am not surprised. I have a DD headed to a highly selective East Coast LAC with interests in Neuroscience, Math and Comp Sci, so AI could be in her future.
“Close but not quite as cut and dry as you portray. The offer from graduating from a top CS school isn’t limited to just the big 4. I am and have been open minded about the possibility of a HMU or Amherst etc…but I am still curious about what separates the big 4 from all others including RU’s. Also I have stated I would be willing to attend a Stanford(no interest in Berkeley) or Duke even if it meant not playing football. I would have to make that decision when the time comes.”
I’d actually add Illinois, Michigan and possibly Harvard to you top-4, to make it a top 6 or 7. One of the things that differentiates them is being research focused, they come up with cutting edge technologies before, sometimes long before their peers. MIT and CMU have been doing AI since 1980 so 20-25 years ahead of most other universities. CMU did AI-chess long before IBM’s Watson. Similarly the roots of data science were worked on by Stanford-grads at Google and Yahoo. Now of course everyone is doing it, but they’re followers. But this is CS, if you went to say economics, you’d have other colleges being the thought leaders (Chicago, Princeton, Harvard e.g.).
Undergraduate program reputations ride on the coattails of graduate program and research reputations. I know people who have undergrad CS degrees from all four above-mentioned schools, and they do the same work as programmers from directional public universities, liberal arts colleges, and foreign schools I’ve never heard of. It’s impossible to tell where people went to school by what they do at work or the quality of their work. Most managers figure this out pretty quickly, so don’t focus on where potential employees went to school.
I’ve taken CS classes at Stanford, and the material covered wasn’t that different from what they’d teach at my undergrad school, the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I will say the classes at Stanford were better taught, and the students at Stanford were very engaged. At UAF, you’d always have a handful of people asleep in class, and too often the professors thought teaching consisted of droning on about derivations and proofs. Never saw anyone sleeping in class at Stanford, and the Stanford professors all had an infectious enthusiasm that affected the students. That helps when it comes to the learning experience. I’ve watched streamed undergrad CS courses from Berkeley, and thought they were similar to the CS classes you’d get at most big, state flagships.
The “Big 4” do have strong tie-ins to the business community. They all have venture capitalists and angel investors hanging around, so if you really want to start a company, those are the schools where you’d have the easiest time to make the connections you need. In fact, I think something like 40% of all venture capital money in the US is controlled by companies within a couple miles of the Stanford campus. That said, it’s a lot easier to start a company now than it used to be, so the business connections made aren’t going to be as important as they were, say, 15 years ago.
An older summary comparing CS offerings at various smaller schools including LACs. Check school web sites for more up to date information:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19190340/#Comment_19190340
Once again, do not make assumptions based on the BA or BS degree title. If it matters, consider the curricular requirements and options within each program.
You want to see at least one elective for every required course in a given year. So, if there are ten required courses (and those should be taught every year) there should be at least ten other courses covering a variety hot topics. It’s okay if electives change every couple of years; if you miss something sophomore year, it will probably be back by senior year. That’s my two cent’s.
@ucbalumnus I don’t think there are too many but in cases where it is offered there is sometimes a difference as to whether it is ABET credited or not:
@simba9
A prestigious start-up is one that has received funding from a prestigious source, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator. Most of these start-ups still fail, but working in them provides an opportunity to learn a lot and get some serious street cred in the tech world.
@ucbalumnus
I agree that they recruit more widely than top schools, but the top schools receive a disproportionate amount of successful applicants. (San Jose State does particularly well because it is right in Silicon Valley + has a decent computer science program, but UC Berkeley or Stanford students are significantly more likely to have success in getting in). Admittedly, the tech industry is more forgiving of people coming in from “lower ranked” schools than something like financial services.
Then again, you can’t name many LAC feeder schools to these companies for computer science/engineering positions, even proportionally speaking (besides Harvey Mudd).
@ucbalumnus wrote
Oh, for crying out loud. Let’s not get into the what is what isn’t a “feeder school” argument. That is a distraction and red herring. And, actually, Wesleyan has less than one-third the number of STEM majors as Harvey Mudd - so, yeah, proportionally speaking, they do pretty well.
@circuitrider Just to clarify, it wasn’t @ucbalumnus that wrote that it was @yikesyikesyikes .
Oops, my bad. My eyes landed on his screenname by mistake. :">
Wesleyan has too few Computer Science majors to make any claims like that.
Also, I just checked out their curriculum - what they cover in 4 years of CS coursework is largely covered in about the first 2-2.5 years of CS coursework at their state school academic peers. I am not talking about engineering or other requirements, I am just referring to CS coursework. Could Wesleyan be good for getting obtaining a software engineering job? Hard to say - maybe (the sample size is far too small to be certain, since they have few CS majors). Is Wesleyan good at providing a computer science education? It is hard to debate that would be the case with such a light CS curriculum.
THAT is the danger of majoring in CS at many/most liberal arts schools (with notable exceptions, such as Harvey Mudd).
What claim are you talking about?
@circuitrider
That they place well for software dev roles in top tech firms proportionally speaking when compared to a school like Harvey Mudd.