Theories on computability and complexity, for example.
In some cases, yes, colleges have purposely made changes, positively or negatively, that have impacted their quality. Mostly, there are changes to the ways to US Newsâ methodology, like social mobility and graduation rates vs. test scores and acceptance rates. When I see big movers, I like to know why theyâve changed so dramatically.
In my sonâs case, weâve encouraged him to apply to U of Florida because the dramatic increase has made us more aware of their quality. The same is true for Georgia but itâs a much more popular college from our Dallas area HS. Why is Georgia so much more popular than Florida? Maybe that will flip over time or maybe itâs due to campus beauty and Greek life. I encouraged S22 to look into FSU and so did we. His first reaction was that itâs too much of a party school, along the same lines as other large, Southeastern universities. When I looked into FSU, its engineering wasnât as robust as other offerings. They got a look due to rank.
I realize that the vast majority of kids donât look at rankings to make college choices. Many go âwhere my friends are going.â Many go where itâs free or least expensive. My ninth grade niece surprised me a couple weeks ago when she said she might go to the Navy before college because it helps you get priority for jobs. After the Navy sheâll go to community college and then commute to UT-Dallas or University of North Texas at Dallas. She has all As with a single public school teacher parent. If she got a 1500+ on the SAT, good luck to an oft-discussed NESCAC or even SMU 
in getting her to consider applying.
Changing majors within a college at Berkeley is pretty easy, similar to Michigan. They also donât declare till end of second year. Engineering would be the toughest to switch in, maybe their business major as well.
The UCs have a lot of flexibility in their curriculum - AP credit, classes at local community colleges etc. make it easy to fulfill a lot of the distribution requirements⊠Of course the UCs are not for everyone, many UCB grads I know wouldnât recommend going there.
âOne of the recent examples I noticed is in the CS curricula of some of the âtopâ CS schools.â
A lot of STEM programs also have changed their grading and curves. Typically you would have the class average at about a C, 2.5 or 2.7. Now thatâs probably a 3.3, so most kids are now getting Bs vs Cs. Replacing a theory class with a practical, hands-on class maybe actually may not be the worst thing in the world.
The CS theory courses tend to be the lowest workload of upper level CS courses (anything with programming projects tends to be a big time sink), but they may be intellectually difficult for those who do not handle advanced math that well.
UCB EECS and L&S CS do not specifically require CS 170 (both allow mostly free choice of upper level major courses, with no specific required courses), but that CS 170âs yearly enrollment approximates the number of EECS + L&S CS majors graduating each year, so students in both of these majors generally take it anyway.
MIT course 6-3 requires one upper level theory course, 6.045 or 6.046.
Stanford CS requires one upper level theory course, CS 161.
CMU CS requires one upper level theory course, 15-451.
Do the United States Naval Academy and a career as an officer in the United States Navy interest her?
1 Like
Iâm not sure how much College Scorecard (CS) can be used wrt the specificity of median salaries for each college, so I would assume that this would be primarily done through Payscale â actually I think itâs done exclusively through PS, with CS being verification.
I know that you @Data10 are a big fan of CS but their data if I remember correctly is pretty outdated, which includes a one-time snapshot who knows when, and other pretty much non-relevant data.
But thanks for ignoring the gist of my post nonetheless, and I would still forward it to @tsbna44 . But thanks, I guess, for replying.
College Scorecard has the important feature of showing recent post-graduation pay by major, since major is strongly related to post-graduation pay.
However, it is limited to graduates who received federal financial aid as students.
Absolutely, itâs limited to those who receive federal grants, and itâs more of an immediate presentation of salaries by major. This is where an average of $28,000/year salary for a recent Harvard History grad â if I remembered correctly â isnât conclusive [in] determining a 10-year salary, related to what I stated initially, because we know that this student will more than likely attend L-school or some other top-tier professional school. But by then, his/her salary will ascend markedly, but also by then, PS will have kicked this person out of their median-salary calculations for Harvard. This is why for some colleges the presentation of PS medians is extremely low, and if 20% of Forbes rankings is based on this, then theyâre not seeing the whole picture.
But, you canât have it both ways: Do undergraduate colleges deserve âcreditâ for getting their alumni into graduate school, or donât they?
1 Like
Yes, absolutely, and that was my point in my initial post #277. Of the colleges I know the most the UCs, UCLA is probably the most pre-professional of all them, which includes UCB, and has ~ 600 acceptances to med school/year â probably the most in the country, and you can add 200-300 to various other health programs, dental, pharm, nursing, optometry, and DO schools. The closest UC wrt med school appointments is UCB with ~ 370 or so. UCLA is also probably the top law-school feeder in the country. Let me correct what I stated because itâs actually not the school, but the graduates who earn their spots into grad school. And this is why UCLAâs âterminalâ baccalaureate degree holders lag even even some of the other UCs in median salary, with UCBâs being boosted by being in the highest COL region in the country, which was another point of my initial post.
It sounds like you really donât like CS. Forbes doesnât share your feelings. Forbes salary is not primarily/exclusively done through PS with CS only used for verification. Both sources are given equal weight. A quote is below:
Alumni Salary (20%)
We used two data points from the College Scorecard and two from PayScale. From the College Scorecard, we included salary figures from 6 and 10 years after enrollment. From PayScale, we included early and mid-career earnings, which span the 1-4 years and 10 years after graduation respectively. (Beyond 10 years there are too many confounding variables to link income to higher education.)
Neither the College Scorecard nor PayScale data sets are perfect: College Scorecard only tracks recipients of federal funding using IRS data, while PayScale data is self-reported. We weighed all four salary variables equally at 5% to account for each measureâs shortcomings.
I wouldnât say I am âa big fan of CSâ, but I do like how they list salary by major and are not self-reported. Itâs a useful tool when closely analyzed, but not useful when captured in isolation, with apparently no control for major or location, like Forbes does. CS lists their methodology, just like PS. You can look up which 2 years were included, sample size, whuich groups of students were included, additional stats beyond salary on that group, etc.
Yes, a few colleges still require them, but many more (e.g. Cornell) have removed such requirements.
College Scorecard includes 10-year out salary, and those 10-year out salaries were included in the Forbes calculation as stated above.
Regarding class rank/GPAs and Harvard Westlake admits to Williams, I believe the admissions team has data on prior admits, course rigor, even the same specific teacher recommendations from the prior years from the elite private and public high schools to compare candidates over several cycles, so the GPA/class rank data is largely irrelevant in any case.
In the right contexts as you stated, College Scorecard is really helpful, e.g., those students from poorer backgrounds who are looking for a college that will benefit them. But the explanation of methodology from Forbes regarding alumni salary would just be a form of equivocation; itâs not really saying anything. And you donât believe everything you read, do you?
College Scorecard includes 10-year out salary, and those 10-year out salaries were included in the Forbes calculation as stated above.
I donât think so. I didnât note a lot of salaries, but Yaleâs, Pomonaâs, WUSTLâs, and Columbiaâs medians as reported by Forbes seemed low compared to similar colleges. Additionally, UCLAâs was low compared to UCSBâs and UCSDâs. All the ones with low medians in the upper tier would most likely be more pre-professionally geared for undergrad.
If you compare CS salary to salaries reported to the college as whole through student surveys, youâll generally find they are similar when sample size is significant The bigger issue in my opinion is sample size is often not significant, particularly in smaller majors.
Are you suggesting that Forbes is lying about claiming to weight CS and Payscale equally in their methodology, and instead they exclusively use Payscale as you suggested earlier?
1 Like
Like any math (or other conceptually more difficult) course, CS theory courses can be made much more time consuming as well, depending on the homework problems assigned. Programing projects are always time consuming but generally easier.
1 Like
So youâre still badmouthing the UCs, huh? Btw, Chipâs going to be okay, heâs getting his roster back up to full levels, but maybe you have a shot at OSU this year, good luck.
Cornell CS requires CS 4820, Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms.
1 Like