True software engineering is not a subarea of CS it’s a subarea of Engineering and results in a degree in engineering. The difference being that an engineering degree is a professional designation and follows a specific pedagogical approach. While the core programming courses may be the same, the general degree structure will be very different for an accredited software engineering program. Software engineering degrees tend to be more flexible in terms of employment whereas CS, whether general or specialized, tends to be more rigid. Software engineers, like engineers in other disciplines, often end up in employment fields not directly related to engineering, like finance and consulting. It has a broader base of application.
Rankings don’t matter with computers, because the degree is ridiculously employable. Most CS graduates end-up in corporate IT jobs, and never look at a math problem their entire career. The best thing to do is ignore rankings and go for something affordable. After about 3 years of experience, employers don’t even ask where he went to school anyway.
Nobody should be using Stanford as a representation of a typical undergraduate CS program.
I think what does matter is the quality of education that a student receives because a graduates first job can be very important in starting a successful career trajectory. New grad resumes typically lead with school and degree conferred, so having a recognized program on the top line can only help. And while many CS grads may be employed in corporate IT ranks many others seek different routes. The goal for many is not to get a “job” but start a career.
There are only 35 ABET-accredited bachelor’s degree programs in software engineering in the US:
https://amspub.abet.org/aps/category-search?disciplines=66°reeLevels=B&countries=US
None appear to be at colleges that are high priority recruiting targets for finance and consulting (which have a reputation of being college-elitist when recruiting new college graduates).
Here is an example of how CS and SE compare at the same school:
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo offers both CS and SE majors, both ABET accredited. You can compare the curricula:
https://flowcharts.calpoly.edu/downloads/curric/20-21.Computer%20Science.pdf
https://flowcharts.calpoly.edu/downloads/curric/20-21.Software%20Engineering.pdf
Here is the comparison of CSC/CPE courses in each major:
Both CS SE
101 Computer Science 1
108 or 202 Data Structures
123 Intro to Computing
203 OO Prog & Design
225 Computer Organization
300 or PHIL 323 Prof Responsibilities
* 305 Indiv Software Des & Dev
307 or Intro SE
308+309 308+309 SE 1 + SE 2
CPE 315 * Computer Architecture
348 Discrete Structures
349 Algorithms
357 Systems Programming
* 365 Database
* 402 Software Requirements
* 405 Software Construction
* 406 Software Deployment Project
430 Programming Languages
431 * Compiler Construction
445 * Theory of Computation 1
453 * Operating Systems
* 484 User Interface
491+492 or (CS) Senior Project 1+2
497+498 * Research Project 1+2
Tech electives 5 or 6 4
<ul>
<li>= Not required, but can take as technical elective.
Note that most requirements for one major can be taken as technical electives in the other major.
Here is a recent class’ career survey, showing CS majors’ median pay at $107,000 and SE majors’ median pay at $105,000. https://calpoly.12twenty.com/ReportDashboards#/reportDashboards/1104
Big difference? Doesn’t seem that big…
Computer Science is supposed to be about the science of computing and developing software that tells computers to do something isn’t really science. However, most schools really don’t distinguish between the two, leading to confusion.
Thank you, this is kind of how I was thinking about how to distinguish the two areas as well. I was thinking the entrepreneurship track in the NCSU program may be a kind of variant of SE, within the CS major.
As I indicated the core courses are often common between the two programs. Where they differ is in general degree structure. Engineering usually requires a selection of business/economics & professional practice courses in addition to Chemistry and Physics to meet the requirements for accreditation through the various professional engineering organizations. While they might be able to be taken as electives in a CS program, they aren’t generally required. The degree structure for CS usually allows for a greater degree of elective freedom and the programs can often found in the faculties of sciences/math (though some schools do include them in their schools of engineering).
I am surprised to see however that there are so few accredited SE programs in the US. They are very common here in Canada. Graduates here quite often end up in finance, consulting, and project management in addition to the more common IT/software development roles.
Here are the commonalities and differences in non-CSC/CPE courses at CPSLO’s CS and SE majors:
Both CS SE
ENGL 149 Technical Writing
MATH 141 Calculus 1
MATH 142 Calculus 2
MATH 143 Calculus 3
* MATH 241 Calculus 4
MATH 206 or Linear Algebra 1
MATH 244 MATH 244 Linear Analysis 1
STAT 312 Statistics for Engineering
1 math elective 5 MATH courses to choose from
1 math elective 17 MATH/STAT courses to choose from
CHEM 124+125+126 or General Chemistry for Sci Eng
PHYS 141+132+133 General Physics (calculus based)
1 science elective 6 BIO/BOT/CHEM/MCRO/PHYS courses to choose from
IME 314 or Engineering Economics
IME 315 Financial Decision Making
** PSY 201 or 202 General Psychology
** PSY 350 or Personality
** COMS 217 Small Group Communication
<ul>
<li>MATH 241 can be chosen as the math elective by a CS major.
** These courses can be chosen for general education requirements by a CS major.
Note that the main difference is that SE requires one engineering economics or finance course and two psychology or communication courses (that a CS major could choose for GE requirements). Math requirements are similar, but CS has one fewer course and a wider range of choices for the math elective. Both require a chemistry or physics sequence; CS requires an additional science elective.
SE must mean something different in Canada versus the US. As you can see, the differences that you claim exist may not be as applicable to the few universities in the US that offer SE as well as CS. In the US, finance and consulting are unlikely to be targeting the 35 schools with SE majors, and project management is commonly a role that people with considerable individual contributor experience move into, versus something that a new graduate gets hired into.
At least not here in the US. There might be a few software engineering graduates hired by some IT consulting firms, software engineering students are generally hired by the IT department in financial firms, not by so-called “front office”. However, large banks and hedge funds do hire CS majors in certain disciplines (AI, data science, etc.) into their research and/or trading departments.
Overall rankings are behind a paywall, but the rankings for the individual specialties also provide the overall CS ranking, so you can reverse engineer most of the top 25
- MIT
- Stanford
- Carnegie Mellon
- UC - Berkeley
- Georgia Tech
- UIUC
- Cornell
- Princeton 5 . Caltech
- Washington
- UT - Austin
- Michigan
- Harvard
- Columbia 13 or 15. TBD (I'm guessing UCLA, given the correlation to graduate CS rankings)
- Penn
- UC - San Diego
- Wisconsin
- Maryland
- Purdue
- Rice 20-24. TBD 20-24. TBD 20-24. TBD
- Duke
- USC
- UC - Irvine ...
- Northeastern
- NC State
Candidates for 13, 20-24: Schools that are T25 in the most recent Graduate CS rankings but not listed here - UCLA (13), Yale (20), Mass-Amherst (20), Johns Hopkins (25), UNC-Chapel Hill (25)
Here are what the CS school rankings are (T20), and should be imo, based on the schools faculty and their volume of publications. http://csrankings.org/#/index?all
In reality, any school in the top 100, or even deeper, will give you a fine education, and a good job in CS. Maybe not Wallstreet recruited , but still any graduate in CS at a reputable college will make a heck of a living if they choose to work. In other words, go to the school you think you’ll enjoy being in not one where you think people will be impressed by your school’s US News supposed “prestige” ranking.
1 ► Carnegie Mellon University
2 ► Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3 ► Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
4 ► Stanford University
5 ► University of California - Berkeley
6 ► University of California - San Diego
7 ► University of Washington
8 ► University of Michigan
9 ► Cornell University
10 ► University of Maryland
11 ► Georgia Institute of Technology
12 ► University of Wisconsin - Madison
13 ► Columbia University
14 ► Northeastern University
15 ► University of California - Los Angeles
16 ► University of Pennsylvania
17 ► University of Texas at Austin
18 ► New York University
19 ► University of Massachusetts Amherst
20 ► Purdue University
I suspect that opinion varies, of course. If I’m looking for an undergraduate education, as the initial topic of this thread referred to, I’m not sure absolute number of published papers is a great indicator. It obviously favors larger institutions and those focused on research. I had several professors at the top ranked school on this list that were well-known researchers and lousy instructors.
I do have this in my list of rankings, along with USNews, QS World, THE, College Choice, Niche, and a couple of others. All have different inputs and I think it’s useful to look at all of them while understanding the inputs that determine the ratings.
As well as understanding the importance, or lack thereof, of ratings in general, based on what you are aiming to achieve.
Ratings are fun to look, and for those “fortunate” few 3-8 %ers accepted to a top 10 that made the T10 list at USN, they’re a whole lot of fun to look at, especially for parents.
Like I intimated above, it’s most important to choose the school where you believe you will enjoy you’re CS education the most. It boils down to perceived fit not ratings.
I applied to a lot of USN highly rated CS programs two years ago and was accepted to many of them. In fact, I’m not even attending the school that had the highest rated CS program of all the colleges I was accepted to because of fit. My school’s program fits me despite it being on the lower end of the CS ratings of my accepted schools. When combined with a minor in engineering entrepreneurship(the link that helped the fit for me), my education so far is phenomenal.
With respect to trying to determine if professors may or may not be good, whether they publish lots of CS research papers or not, I’ve already had a couple professors here that I thought were great while many others in the classes thought they were bad. It’s probably no coincidence that there seemed to be a high positive correlation between a student’s grades in the classes and their opinion of the professor teaching it. But how will anyone really know how good or bad a professor is unless they attend the class?
You cannot know for certain how good each instructor is for you, but if the college or department has surveys available, you can get some information about what previous students thought of each instructor and course. For example: https://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/coursesurveys
This ^^^^… Such a wise student. Glad your enjoying your educational experience. My son has the same minor and really enjoying it also. Good Luck to you.
Thanks, @Knowsstuff. You may not remember, but I do, that you sent me some fantastic suggestions 2 yrs ago in March for UMich and eating locations in Ann Arbor when I went to visit Michigan during Campus Day. My family and I used the very helpful link while we were there and it was perfect for our several day visit . Thank you, again!! What a fantastic school. I sometimes second guess my self for not choosing to go there…GO BLUE!
“It’s the one I used when applying to colleges a couple years ago. USN is a joke, imo.
http://csrankings.org/#/index?all”
These are pretty much the same as US News:
USN: MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Tech, Cornell, Princeton, Georgia Tech, UIUC, Washington
CSrankings - CMU, MIT, UIUC, Berkeley, Stanford, UCSD, UWash, Michigan, Cornell, Maryland
There are only two differences in the top -10, Princeton and Cal Tech in USN, if you those schools have joke CS programs, you’d be mistaken.
That’s very kind and why we’re here. I actually do remember you. Just grow where you are at and make the most of your time. Being involved on campus, clubs, groups, has given both my kids great opportunities and connections. Do that.