My daughter was accepted by U Chicago and Georgia Tech Computer Science. We are out of state. Chicago is a better overall school, but Geogia Tech is better at CS. Still undecided. seeking help here
Please provide more info. What is the cost difference and are you comfortable with paying for either? Did she visit both? What does she think?
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Very different schools! What kind of experience is your daughter seeking?
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Also, you might want to change your username to protect your privacy. Here’s how.
Ok, is your daughter 100% sure she wants CS? Especially in current AI madness environment? GaTech is amazing Engineering school. If CS or Engineering, go to GaTech. If anything else, I would go for U of Chicago.
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I am at UChicago, looks like a good number of CS majors are having trouble getting jobs. Not sure how well Georgia Tech is doing.
The curriculum is also more theoretical I think, and can take time which could otherwise go towards building projects or studying Leetcode for interviews.
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Two things:
- Why do you say this - because US News says?
- You are going for a major - so the school rank isn’t relevant.
Can you afford both without loans? And which area do you like best?
If you need loans for one, I’d eliminate that one.
In the 2025 graduating year, Georgia Tech says 75.5% of people who wanted a job found one - so they had many not finding jobs. They don’t say when the last snapshot was.This # is only of people who want employment, not grad school. That’s based on 294 responses. They don’t give a knowledge rate but overall, the school is about 35%. The median CS salary was $123.5K.
Chicago doesn’t provide career data that I see - but you can ask about their CS grads - but they show a much higher outcome rate overall than Ga Tech.
This is budget first and then comfort - two kids could each choose two different ones - and both could be right.
Two excellent schools with very different vibes. Your D should go where she feels she will be happiest over the next four years. Trust her gut feeling. This is a case where two reasonable people could make two different choices.
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Most kids change majors. We know this from lots of research. I agree rankings are mostly hogwash, but availability of majors isn’t. Adding “I think” to these statements would go a long way to this is your opinion and not that things are facts.
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The entirety of this website, unless data is shown, is opinion.
So that should be assumed.
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People are posting facts and not opinions all the time…facts like things they heard admissions say on visits, data from CDS/IPEDs/many other sources, their kids’ experiences in admissions, the workings of financial aid, how athletic recruiting works, etc.
Most posters looking for advice don’t spend the time on CC that you do, so IMO it makes sense for experienced CC’ers to make sure others know when they are sharing an opinion and not a fact.
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Beginning College Students Who Change Their Majors Within 3 Years of Enrollment seems to say that about a third of bachelor’s students who ever declared a major changed major. But that was for a time period over a decade ago.
That page also notes that computer and information science majors were less likely than average to change major.
I actually did go down a rabbit hole trying to find good data when I originally posted and gave up and left vague - and there is no good ones - some peer review says 60%, some say 25%, some say 30% - regardless it is a fair bit!
And I couldn’t find any good about HOW much they changed major - like moving from computer engineering to electrical (which is a combined major in some places) is barely a move, but moving from engineering to English is huge.
I think the latter is rare, but some change is pretty common. I expect detailed stratification would be needed to show insights by “level” of schools and income, etc. And does it matter if a kid is pre-med and switches from environmental studies to anthropology at Princeton in any way? No, it is probably a matter of changing a form and their life course is changed not a bit. Changing from chemistry to engineering at a regional state university could delay graduation and may require huge processes and make a kid drop out, etc.
Also kids with 1100 SATs are likely more likely to “drop out” of hard majors than those with 1550s, etc. Tricky stuff.
That could be differences in what they counted as “changing major”. The link above does not count undeclared → any declared major. Any count that includes that will have a much higher percentage of students “changing major”.
Yes, that is another distinction.