Re: #154
I did not write the quoted passage.
Wesleyan has a particularly limited CS department (in terms of course offerings – e.g. no upper level courses in operating systems, compilers, networks, security/cryptography, hardware); it would not be accurate to generalize all or most LACs as similar to it in this respect.
http://www.wesleyan.edu/mathcs/cs/regular_courses.html
There are 19 software engineers at Google from Wesleyan and only 14 from the University of Connecticut.
@circuitrider, I think you may be fighting a wave of myopic thinkers as yes Google and every other next generation company is looking for more than only those that have followed a prescriptive CS path.
I never mentioned the UConn as an academic peer of Wesleyan… it isn’t. State school academic peers would be schools like Berkeley and Michigan.
This thread specifically discusses the merits of a CS education in a LAC, and that is what I am addressing.
I agree - Harvey Mudd would be an exception. There might be other exceptions as well.
Fine. I’ll give you a mulligan on that one.*
Harvey Mudd graduates ~80 computer scientists a year. Wesleyan ~11. Most people don’t even consider HMC a traditional LAC in that it could not exist separately from Pomona and the other 5Cs. Nevertheless, with 19 software engineers at Google compared to HMC’s 104 - Wesleyan is still punching above its weight. As would Pomona, for that matter, with 26 Google software engineers.
With those stats, yes Wesleyan seems to be punching above its weight. However, like I said before - 11 graduates a year is far too small of a sample to be sure (just 2 extra Google hires in a year would shoot up its percentage of incoming Google software engineers). However, over several years the extrapolation is not too unreasonable, so I am willing to say that you may be right about Wesleyan’s ability to place (but they still lack a comprehensive CS education).
I think we can certainly agree, however, that for non-top ranked LACs, going to a state school for CS would be a better bet almost certainly.
Another factor not being discussed here is input students. Wesleyan’s admitted students are of a much higher caliber than UConn’s. If a student can get into Wesleyan, their other CS options will likely be considerably better than UConn. UConn isn’t really known for CS either, though it may still offer a more comprehensive curriculum.
If you used a school like RPI, which one could use as an example of a well-regarded school for CS in a similar region with a somewhat comparable admit rate/stats (though still not as good input students statistically speaking, mind you), RPI has 149 people at Google as software engineers. My LinkedIn searching also only found 16 software engineers at Google for Wesleyan, likely because of Ohio Wesleyan. The same search on UConn found 13, so seems to link with the above.
PS: fun fact - someone I went to high school with is one of the 16 from Wesleyan, and every single one is a 3rd connection or closer - small world.
Adjusting for size, RPI would have to have over 9 times more CS majors for the two schools to send equal proportions to Google. All considering that the Wesleyan student is still the better incoming student on average. I couldn’t find those numbers in a light search, but if someone wants to get the numbers we can plug those in to get some sort of percentage to compare them more apples to apples. I suspect it would probably be near that 9x.
Now, if you want to look at schools that have similar incoming students and more known research university CS departments, we end up using one of the big names in CS, and I’ll spare all the searching there.
All of this still focuses only on a single company still and will likely miss even more of the picture. Just pointing out that the above doesn’t really give meaningful information.
Edit: Missed the posts basically going in more or less the same route, so apologies for beating a recently dead horse here a bit.
@PengsPhils wrote
I understand that and we have that discussion all the time on CC, whether it is worth chasing a perfect database that is out of reach to the exclusion of an imperfect one that is.
Google makes a credible surrogate marker solely because the constant turnover produced by people leaving to create their own companies creates lots of openings. The same doesn’t seem to be true for IBM or Apple, or Microsoft, for example.
The Linkedin site seems to have a jittery platform in that no two people seem to arrive at exactly the same results consistently. In my own searches, the site supplies its own drop down box with a college’s name and location already listed. Wesleyan (with a location listed as “Hartford”) and Ohio Wesleyan (listed as being in “Columbus”) are easily disambiguated.
Here are a couple of articles I found interesting regarding LAC’s in regards to computer science:
Interesting perspective on the 2nd article about the students decisions.
If I understand you correctly, you’re referring to the number of required courses to fulfill a major at a typical LAC (like Wesleyan or Hamilton) and the required coursework required of the same major at a state-supported RU like Berkeley. one of the articles cited upstream by @Luska19 sheds some light on that:
https://www.eab.com/daily-briefing/2016/02/24/computer-science-a-surprising-gateway-to-the-liberal-arts
In other words, LACs - even the ones with open-curriculums - are loathe to prescribe major requirements that devour half a student’s curricular choices. If the student wants to do that with electives, it’s fine. But, the idea of 60 credit hours just to fulfill a major is something you’re more apt to find at Berkeley or Michigan.
@Luska19, funny how many in the general public have refereed to LAC’s as llberal arts colleges when they have always been liberal arts and sciences, and yes STEM is bigger than ever!
So now my question goes to those who have gone thru the process be it majoring in CS or playing football at a high level. Just how difficult can I expect it to be to major in CS and play football? I do realize the higher the level in football the more time is devoted to football. D3(with many LAC’s) would have less expectations on players and would be the “easiest” route but the player in me would of course like to compete at the highest level but not at the sacrifice of my grades if possible.
@MaineLonghorn Is there a reason this thread isn’t cycling back after posting?
OK, I think I fixed it.
@MaineLonghorn Thank you.
I was referring to required coursework directly related to CS for CS majors (for example, something like General Chemistry, which may be required, would not count).
I guess it depends on what your definition of a good CS education is. I think a grounding in the liberal arts is very valuable (both Michigan and Berkeley offer a CS major in both their engineering and liberal arts schools - their liberal arts school variants keep similar/same CS course requirements, but have different and more “well-rounded” distribution requirements than their engineering counterparts.). This is in stark contrast to the Weslyan CS curriculum. Their major is closer in depth to the Michigan CS minor than the Michigan CS major. That is a serious discrepancy.
But, you agree that a Michigan CS major imposes the necessity that ~46% of the credit hours required to graduate be applied to that one major, correct?
@circuitrider Yup - which is what allows the CS program to be comprehensive in the first place.
UCB L&S CS requires 43 credits in CS (some may be taken in EE or other technical electives), 4 credits in EE, and 12 credits in math, for 59 total. It is not unusually high, since other L&S majors typically require 48 to 60 total credits (although it is on the higher end of the range). But even the high end still leaves half of one’s course work for breadth and free electives.