UIUC, Wisconsin, Penn State or Purdue for Computer Science?

<p>I got into Wisconsin, Purdue and Penn State for Computer Science and each will cost me roughly $40,000 a year so between the three, cost won’t make a difference. I got into the University of Illinois’s College of Business and if I attend, I plan on transferring to the College of Engineering after my freshman year. I am instate for UIUC so tuition will be slightly cheaper at $33,000 a year. I plan on double majoring in Computer Science and Management/MIS so a school with a strong business background as well is preferred. </p>

<p>For computer science, here are the following rankings:</p>

<p>UIUC- 5th
Purdue- 11th
Wisconsin- 14th
Penn State- 25th</p>

<p>I’m torn between the four because each university has very respectable engineering programs as well as business programs. My only concern for UIUC is that my transfer request may be denied after my freshman year rendering me to transfer to a whole new university. </p>

<p>Sorry for the long post, any advice as to where I should go?</p>

<p>1) Chances are that you would have to do pretty well doing your first 2 years at Wisconsin, Purdue or Penn State just to REMAIN a CS major…so unless Illinois has an enrollment cap on CS transfers, your grades after your sophomore year will depend if are a CS junior and ANY of those schools…including the schools that you are already admitted to.</p>

<p>2) No need to double major with business. You would not get a CS managerial role unless you had some CS experience anyway. Just do a MBA or even M.Eng degree after a few years of experience. Maybe you can take some undergrad courses in Accounting, Finance and Management as electives and choose Macro/Micro Economics for your social science general education courses to give you some foundation and “extra” for your MBA applications.</p>

<p>UIUC CS is in the engineering division; changing into it is described here:
<a href=“https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=30803845[/url]”>https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=30803845&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Majoring in business or MBA is not necessary to go into a managerial role in CS, as plenty who started as individual contributors in CS jobs become managers.</p>

<p>Am I mistaken or are you seriously relying on computer engineering major rankings as an indication of which school has a better computer science program?</p>

<p>Do you not understand the difference between these two majors?</p>

<p>Those were general engineering rankings…</p>

<p>The rankings are close enough that if you want to consider possible differences in academic environment, courses, and curricula, you need to evaluate these items individually (e.g. by checking courses and curricula in the catalogs and syllabuses and comparing them).</p>

<p>For recruiting purposes, they are all likely to be on the shopping lists of companies that will travel to recruit new graduates and interns, though each will have some advantage with small local companies with limited or no travel budgets.</p>

<p>Based on my biased preconceptions, UIUC’s CS program deserves to be at the top of that list of schools, even though they’re all good.</p>

<p>That being said, if you’re not interested at least somewhat in cutting edge research topics, the choice would seem more (not entirely) arbitrary; and, if you are interested in cutting edge research topics, odds are that you have some general, vague ideas of what you might want to study or get involved in. Given that, it might make sense to check out research and/or extracurriculars and determine qualitative differences between these places, in terms of available coursework/programs, undergraduate research topics & availability, etc.</p>

<p>It really depends on what you want to get out of your education. If you just want to go to class, get A’s and B’s, graduate and get a good job, there are a lot of cheaper schools where you might have more fun (just about any state flagship with ABET and regional accreditation should work), and choosing based on research, rankings, professors, etc. probably isn’t the way to go.</p>

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<p>This is even worse.
Madison’s CS department isn’t even in the engineering school.</p>