What are the best colleges for computer science?

sakky
Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:17:51 +0000

When did I say that picking GATech over Duke is like picking Harvard over UIUC? I think you either have me confused with somebody else, or you have misread one of my posts.

First off, I am not talking about those people who are absolutely 100% sure, ‘nothing but hell or high water will stop me from getting a CS phD’ kind of people. For these extremely rare people, sure, pick the very best CS undergraduate program you can get into. I have never disputed this.

What I am really asking is, how many people are really like this? How many people are absolutely, 100% sure they know exactly what they want to study the moment they walk into college? I remember back in the day, plenty of people who said they were sure ended up changing anyway, either because they found something more interesting to do, or they found out that it was a lot more work than they thought. You must admit that you would feel pretty damn foolish turning down Harvard for CMU because you were sure you want to do CS, only to find out that you no longer want to do CS.

Hence, what I am saying is that Harvard is a very good way of hedging your bets. What if you later find out that investment banking sounds more interesting than you thought it did? Or you find out that you might want to try medical school? Harvard is therefore the SAFER choice. From what I have seen, very few 18 year olds are sure they know exactly what they want to do with their lives, and even of those who think they’re sure, most of them end up changing their minds.

Furthermore, as I have pointed out, even if you go to Harvard and you want to go to CS, you can still cobble together a program that will be extremely competitive to get into CS graduate school. It’s not like by going to Harvard, you are consigning all hopes of ever getting into a top-ranked CS graduate program away. Far from it. Major in math, with a sidedish of CS. Plenty of people do just that and turn out to be brilliant CS academics. Look at all the Turing Award winners.