Addition Deletion to the List of colleges for Computer Science and Engineering

<p>Can someone provide inside to the strength and weakness of the program familiar with to make up our mind to the set of colleges to apply to for my Child's pursuit of Computer Science and Engineering major.</p>

<p>1st: HYPMSC
2nd: UCB, U. Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Brown
3rd: John Hopkins, Duke, Northwestern, U W at St. L.
4th: CMU, Rice, USC
5th: Georgia Tech, UCLA, UCSD
6th: UCSB, UCI, UCD</p>

<p>The choices in the Ist are reaches. Choice 2nd thru 5th comesup as good match at Princeton Review. Choices in 6th are to be safety.</p>

<p>What will be the basis to include any other safety or good match schools?
Child go to a tough college prep and maintain a GPA of 3.85/4.19 with the most rigorous curriculum with SATII's > 750 and SAT1 > 2200.</p>

<p>To me your list isn't right. HYP shouldn't be first because their engineering departments do not compare or match up with MIT, stanford, caltech, UCB, and CMU (which i believe should be 1st). Then the rest should be filled in accordingly, but i dont think HYP deserve to be first. Remember, just because their HYP doesnt mean they're the best in EVERY DEPARTMENT.</p>

<p>Don't forget engineering colleges like Olin, Harvey Mudd, Cooper Union, and Rose-Hulman. Olin's acceptance rate is under 10% this year from a more self-selecting pool than some of the big-name schools.</p>

<p>you're kid school be looking at it like this:</p>

<p>tier 1: CMU, MIT, Stanford, Cal-Tech, UCB, UIUC, UMich, Olin, Rose-Hulman, Harvey Mudd
tier 2: Georgia Tech, Cornell, JHU, Cooper, NW, Rice, Princeton
tier 3: Penn, Duke, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, UCSD
tier 4: Brown, UCSB, UCI, UCD</p>

<p>that's how i would categorize each school in terms of how strong their electrical engineering and computer science departments are. (some of the rankings towards the end are probably off b/c i never applied to those schools.)</p>

<p>what you have is categorized by difficultly of entry. as you can see, getting into a top EECS college like CMU or UIUC shouldn't be too hard for your child.</p>

<p>GWB is right on target with his rankings. Maybe your screen name sheds a little more insight into why you ranked HYPMSC first.</p>

<p>I went through the same process the OP is going through. In the end, I ended up picking schools from the top 2 tiers and making a combination of matches and reaches from them.</p>

<p>For me, my matches were CMU, UMich, & JHU. My reaches were UCB, NW, and CU. Now things are probably going to be easier for you b/c your son has better SAT scores than me. I managed to get waitlisted from CMU, in at JHU, and out at UCB. I'm still waiting on the rest.</p>

<p>Your son should seriously consider UIUC, UMich, and CMU as match/safety schools. They have top notch CS and ECE departments and have a variety of options in case your son decides CS/ECE is not right for him.</p>

<p>Oh and one more thing: Ivies are generally not that great for engineering. The best ivy engineering education is at Cornell (#8 behind Georgia Tech, CMU, UIUC, UMich). The next best is Princeton at #13. They have a pretty strong CS department. I think Princeton/Cornell should be the two ivies your son should be looking at. Quite frankly, the other ivies don't have excellent engineering departments.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the inputs I appreciate that.
But to clear one thing that my daughter is obsessed to go to Ivy but she is interested in Computer Science.
Since I'm aware that their Engineering departments are not that good, I wanted to know what colleges would be a good match for her.
I'm not familiar with UIUC, UMich, Olin, Rose-Hulman, Harvey Mudd. Are these colleges good at BS level or have good post graduate level too?</p>

<p>"But to clear one thing that my daughter is obsessed to go to Ivy..."</p>

<p>Likely story. :(</p>

<p>If you kid is obsessed with going to an ivy, she has a problem. However, I'm not going to address the problem, but answer your question.</p>

<p>High Matches: JHU, Cornell
Low Matches: UIUC, UMich, Georgia Tech</p>

<p>For the most part, all of the ivies are going to be reaches or high matches b/c the decisions they make are highly unpredictable. </p>

<p>What state are you from? </p>

<p>I would highly recommend that your daughter not seek after CS dept at Ivy League schools only. She should take a good look at MIT, Stanford, Cal-Tech, CMU, and UCB. They are all top notch schools that will offer her the best engineering opportunities. These schools will probably offer more than what any of the ivies can offer her in terms of education, research, and job placements.</p>

<p>Your kid has an advantage because she is a female. Female engineers are a minority and have a higher chance of getting into a school like MIT.</p>

<p>Schools you mentioned:
UIUC - It's a very good school for both undergraduate and graduate engineering. It's ranked #4 with Cal-Tech for overall engineering. It's location is a bit of a negative. It's kinda of in the middle of no where.
UMich - Out of all the schools that I speak of in this post, UMich is the most well rounded. Almost every dept is a top 15 dept...so your daughter has numerous options if she finds CS isn't right for her. The CoE is ranked #6 or so. It's located near Detroit in Ann Arbor.
Olin - Free education; From what I've heard, it's pretty darn good. It doesn't have a graduate program...so it's not often associated with MIT, Stanford, etc when ranked.
Rose-Hulman - Ranked #1 for engineering for schools that don't have a graduate program. It's pretty good, but it's in the middle of no where (Indiana).
Harvey Mudd - It's in Cali, but I hear it's a very good school. I believe it doesn't offer graduate studies. I don't know too much about Harvey Mudd b/c I'm a east coast dude.</p>

<p>Can some one let me know in the Ivies what should be the order of preference for the Computer Science.
i.e order
Columbia, cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, U. penn, Brown</p>

<p>Also can some one shed more light on theses colleges</p>

<p>I pretty much got the Idea for the following Univs.</p>

<p>1st: MIT, Stanford, Cal-Tech
2nd: UCB, CMU,
3rd: Georgia Tech, Duke, JHU
34th: UCSB, UCSD, UCI</p>

<p>The ivies: Cornell, Princeton, UPenn/Columbia, Harvard/Brown, Yale - in that order for CS...there may be slight disagreements in opinion</p>

<p>Cornell - Excellent engineering education overall. There have been stories about the vigor of Cornell engineering.
Princeton - Pretty good CS department..this should be your daughter's ivy reach
Columbia - The school is more known for Columbia College and not for the Fu Foundation. The students at Fu are pretty darn smart so I'm guessing that the engineering department isn't bad and is pretty good.
Penn - Penn has a good engineering department. It's known for BME though. Ranked about #20-#30 or so for engineering</p>

<p>I don't know much about the rest of ivies CS departments. Try posting in the engineering forum. I'm pretty sure they're not too bad.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that all the ivies will give you a great engineering education. It's just that certain schools will give your child an edge and provide more opportunities.</p>

<p>Thanks G W Bush. It was really helpfull.</p>

<p>"I'm not familiar with UIUC, UMich, Olin, Rose-Hulman, Harvey Mudd. Are these colleges good at BS level or have good post graduate level too?"</p>

<p>Franklin Olin, Rose-Hulman, and Harvey Mudd ONLY offer BS degrees. All the school does is undergrad... so 100% of courses are taught by PhDs...at least here at Mudd.</p>

<p>Definitely look at Mudd, Olin, Rose-Hulman, Caltech. All very small schools with excellent engineering reputations and all with very distinct personalities.</p>

<p>Son is presently agonizing between Mudd and MIT for next year, although Mudd has the lead right now. His preference-ordered application list was Olin, Mudd, MIT, Caltech, Cornell, Rose-Hulman, and WUSTL/Vanderbilt. Accepted at all but Olin and Caltech, and immediately narrowed his choices to Mudd and MIT once those packets arrived. </p>

<p>As others noted, being female can help a lot--and your D's stats seem decent enough to get get real consideration for admission at any of these schools.</p>

<p>What is she interested in regarding size of school, curriculum core (or not), location, atmosphere? There are going to be a number of schools that are fantastic academically for her; the fit with respect to other factors should be the deciding factor in narrowing her list. In our case, one quick visit to University of Illinois ruled out both it and Purdue just because of size. Great schools, but not the atmosphere he wanted. So too, Duke didn't feel right to him, while others absolutely love it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
What is she interested in regarding size of school, curriculum core (or not), location, atmosphere? There are going to be a number of schools that are fantastic academically for her; the fit with respect to other factors should be the deciding factor in narrowing her list.

[/quote]
Great points, my guess is largely lost on someone who has a user-name of ivy hope.</p>

<p>See as a parent I can only hope best for my daughter if she wants to go to Ivy then I'm full supportive of it. But I wanted to understand about other colleges too. Now at least I've come to know about colleges like Olin, Mudd etc. which I was not even aware of. Also I was not sure about Enginerring at Ivies so the questions in the first place.
At least now I know that Cornell and Princeton are better engineering options than other.</p>