For many CS majors in college, one course in software engineering is desirable and sufficient for them to learn the foundational knowledge and practice to be able to adapt to the software engineering methodology used in any organization that they may work in after graduation. There should not be a lot of need to “concentrate” on software engineering methods beyond that in college.
North Carolina State is a great school for engineering. Make sure the curriculum is what your son wants. Rankings are for bragging rights
I do think NC State has a good Comp Sci department, but can’t advise on the SE conundrum.
I live in Chapel Hill and just happened to come across this head scratcher of a ranking for UNC-CH. Apparently we are US News’ #83 pick for Engineering, regardless of the fact that the last time I checked (which was moments ago) we do not have an Engineering Dept or School.
UNC’s offerings: https://college.unc.edu/news-and-features/departments-curricula-centers-institutes/
NC State has a good engineering school, however!
Hmm. So is that the basis for the USN ranking? A single course? Even for USN, that seems pretty ridiculous.
As previously posted, the basis for USNews’ ranking is a survey they send to a bunch of peers that asks “how good is school X in subject Y, on a scale of 1 to 5?”.
Next to every ranking is a “Reputation Score”. That’s the average of the responses that are received. Those averages are sorted high to low.
Number of courses has no input into how USN computes the ranking.
Fwiw, I think that breaking down undergrad CS into 9 different sub rankings is rather pointless.
Departments and Curricula
…
Biomedical Engineering
https://college.unc.edu/news-and-features/departments-curricula-centers-institutes/#pane-0-1
Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering
https://bme.unc.edu/
“ At UNC-Chapel Hill, the Joint Department offers a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical and Health Sciences Engineering”
Have to agree here. For undergraduate CS, the main concern would be that the CS department offers upper level technical courses in the various subareas so that the student learns a good base in the various subareas that will be useful in career or further schooling. Even if one’s career or graduate school focus is in one particular subarea, knowledge of the others is useful.
In summary then, is the consensus out there that there is absolutely no good reason why anyone could ever think that NCSU has one of the best software engineering programs in the country? Or even that any of the schools on the USN list should be ranked as they are? No good reason whatsoever? In other words, if this was based on a survey, the people responding to the survey had no idea what they were talking about?
I am genuinely asking these questions because I am trying to figure out what we may have missed about NCSU with regard to the area of SE in particular. We already know it is a good engineering school with a good CS program. That’s why my D21 will apply.
While it’s nice to know that some may feel it’s silly for USN to rank subareas in CS, it doesn’t really address what I’m asking. If the answer is that the persons who responded to the USN surveys were nuts, that’s fine. If the answer is that their one course in SE must be so spectacular that those at peer institutions are in awe, that’s fine too. I’m just trying to figure out if there could possibly be any rational basis whatsoever for the opinions behind the rankings.
Why do you or your daughter care so much about the subarea ranking of software engineering in undergraduate CS?
^^So the best answer here is to answer a question with a question? Why should it matter why I am interested? How is that relevant? Is my question not a legitimate one?
@amsunshine . No one knows and yes the rankings are nuts…Hows that…LOL…
Email the source and see what they say but let us know. I understand your question. Are they at the same rank as like UIUC? I would doubt it. Are they an “overall” really good college for engineering…Yes!!
The USNWR page says that the undergraduate CS ranking is a purely a survey based ranking. You would have to ask each survey respondent what their reason for ranking was.
Ok then! I’m fine with assuming they are nuts!
@amsunshine . Its a great bragging point once your child decides to go there…LOL…
But I would take with the department and professors to make sure it offers the experience your child is looking for. Good Luck.
I actually do think it makes a lot of sense to choose a CS program based on the field within CS a student is interested in. Granted, not every applicant knows what area s/he wants to specialized in. CS is such a broad collection of different fields that there’s no such thing as a generalist in CS from a top CS program. The surveys US News rankings are based are the most problematic. I bet it doesn’t even know what the right questions to ask, let alone asking the right people.
I mean, I’m totally willing to accept these rankings are just a bunch of baloney. On the other hand, this kind of ranking makes you wonder – is there some super secret program at this school that makes it super special in this field and is access to this information only provided to a super select few as opposed to the general public? Or does the school have some super special program that just isn’t obvious from the school materials or the website because the information is buried somewhere that is difficult to find?
FWIW, I did send an email to USN inquiring about this.
I think the rankings are just the reputation of the department and the school as a whole.
(UNC is a great school and has a great med school and hence the Biomedical Engineering which is a joint program with State and I think Duke in the past, but they do not have an Engineering school. There are a lot of things I would rank UNC highly on, but Engineering does not spring to mind.)
Agreed. They apparently have some kind of “environmental engineering” department but it doesn’t look like a traditional engineering type of program.
I know NCS has some “paper” engineering that I haven’t seen in many places…just a fyi
Why wouldn’t there exist CS graduates (from “top CS programs” or otherwise) who are generalists? Indeed, even among those who favor some specialization as undergraduates commonly do take a selection of topics in their upper level CS courses. After all, every computer program interacts with the operating system (or is part of the operating system), many computer programs or systems deal with networks or data(bases), every computer program that interacts with potentially untrusted users or data has to be concerned about security, and every non-trivial computer program needs to use time and space efficiently.
Obviously, a prospective CS major interested in particular subareas needs to make sure that those subareas exist at the CS departments in question. But then any prospective CS major will want to see coverage of the various areas that cover the general foundational knowledge that they likely want to take, whether or not they also want to go deeper (perhaps with graduate-level courses) into some specialty.