UIUC vs CMU for undergraduate Computer Science

srparent15
Tue, 30 Mar 2021 19:32:25 +0000

I think you’re missing the boat here that in Austin the tech jobs are paying similarly to the jobs in Silicon and that Austin is outrageously expensive to live these days. You’re also a little low on the starting salaries as my son with no college degree was offered well over 90k for his first job 5 years ago.

From UIUC he has a friend that went to NY and his comp with bonus was about $200k. That included stock options which does have value. My friend’s son is going to work for Apple in Austin graduating in May from USC and making 6 figures. Not 60k! He was originally going somewhere else that had a great salary but they wound up doubling it. The days of signing bonuses are going away, but the 6 figure salaries are not.

Austin is becoming a huge Tech city and with no state sales tax, even more inviting to companies. Google, Apple, Dell, now Tesla are all there. UT just offered a new major in Information for the Fall for the first time modeled after Michigan’s undergrad program. They’ve currently had a successful graduate program in the School of Information but demand by these companies has propelled them to add an undergrad major as well.

But back to the quest at hand. One is going to get a great job from either school. CMU is also more theory based by the way. Forcing his parents to not buy a house so he can go to CMU is not worth it. Kids don’t go off campus to a “downtown” on a regular basis. College is for being in college and hanging around the college town etc, going to sports UIUC has a great bball team and probably will next year too. CMU has a stadium that looks like a high school stadium and it’s a tiny school. Pittsburgh is a great city, but again, other than the few credits they let you take at Pitt, you aren’t going to be going all over the city anyway.

“Also, money is far from everything. I learned that the hard way. Corporate jobs pay well, but most of them are like working in a human pressure cooker. That’s the trade-off with money. Personally, I work for my state government. I’ll probably never drive a BMW or own a fancy house, but there’s a good work-life balance.” So true. Quality of life is so important. Who cares what kind of car you drive?