My son was just accepted off the waitlist to Brown. He agonized about his choice between a full academic scholarship to the University of Maryland vs. Duke but ultimately chose Maryland and about $180k to $200k in cost savings. His decision was not only financial, but following second visits to each school, he felt (and I agreed) that computer science was a bigger deal at Maryland than Duke. So he was all set until today.
We visited Brown last summer for the info session and tour and loved the school and were very impressed with the students we met. We have read a lot of positive reviews of Brown computer science and we are considering a trip up before the deadline if a meeting with a department administrator or professor could be arranged. I’m posting this hoping to get replies from the Brown community on their thoughts of Brown’s computer science and any recommendations on what we can do in the next ten days to make the most informed decision we can for my son. I will add that he is strongly committed to a computer science major and it’s unlikely he would change.
It’s going to be tough to visit and talk to people in the next 10 days - it’s the last week of finals, and commencement is on the 23rd-25th. He should go ahead and email everyone he can find if this is actually something he wants to do.
In terms of CS, Brown’s an extremely good place to be. You can look at other posts in this form about Brown CS. What you guys should be looking at is whether it’s worth the extra money for him to get a degree in CS from Brown over Maryland.
That is a large amount of money, assuming that the cost is more like Duke and less like UMD. My dd is a Brown Cs grad who was accepted to UMD for a PhD program so I am a bit familiar with the CS reputation there. You don’t have to pay that for a degree and good career in CS in such a strong program as UMD (if you were the kid asking I’d likely say that is too hard on your parents to pay, but you are the parent so you know what you can sanely pay-I leave that to you, I don’t intend to push in this situation but just to inform.) However it won’t be the same type of experience. She went to another big state U for grad school and basically said that profs don’t really want to work with undergrads. At Brown all the profs work with undergrads. All 30 professors, for something like 70 or 80 undergrad majors and handful of MS and PhDs. Where UMD has 2,000 undergrads and almost 60 faculty (50 profs) and I am not sure how many graduate students. So the ratios are very different and the size of the class, the access to profs and research groups will reflect that.
I can list the many many research and project experiences she had, supervised independent studies, sponsored trips to conferences. The department is really tight, they have very effectively created an environment of peer learning and dd said that program is highly organized, efficient and effective. She worked on individual research, group research, with profs, with grad students as a pair. She did not do an internship, but they are available at name companies and often pay a lot and that is one way your son could contribute. Both Brown and UMD offer 5 year MS.
There is also the entire Brown experience to be considered. I have to go but will post again.
Thank you for both responses and I would appreciate additional insight BrownParent. Please post further or feel free to message me.