Best CS education for an A- student

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
21

Thanks for the reply @xraymancs . When it gets to a decision point, I’ll probably take an informal survey of my fellow Googlers.

I could imagine some other reputation factors, just comparing Illinois Tech vs say RHIT:

  • Location. You graduate from Rose Hulman, there aren't many that can work locally, just because of the area. The graduates disperse. Many companies are likely to have someone that knows someone that worked with a Rose graduate. Whereas with Illinois Tech, Chicago can swallow up many of the graduates. So great reputation in Chicago (as attested to by my cousin who works there) - but less well known nationally. And a "regional" reputation is never as good as a national one.
  • The names. This might seem stupid, but Rose Hulman and Harvey Mudd are awesome names, very quirky and easy to remember. Whereas with you guys - how could you ever use IIT as an acronym?? At least as long as I can remember, when IIT means India Inst of Tech to top people in the field. (Side story - when I was at MIT, I walked past a football game. They were playing SMU - wow!!! Turns out it was Southern Massachussetts University.) Illinois Tech is a much better name than IIT - but it's still rather generic.
22

Yes, the name falls into the split personality category. Of course, it started out as Armour Institute of Technology but then in 1940, the current name came into being. The unfortunate thing about IIT is it is really, really hard to pronounce right and many times, ITT comes out. This is a major problem. All things considered, I will Illinois Tech better and the students do too.

I don’t think that the Illinois Tech reputation is purely local. We have plenty of alums working on the East and West coasts. The good think about Chicago though is that that lots of our graduates love it here and want to stay. This is easily accommodated.

23

Very helpful perspective on IIT - thanks @xraymancs

24

Hey, I was thinking about an objective way to measure (something) about a CS program. How many CS undergrads go into PhD programs, and what fraction attend “elite” PhD programs - which could be definited as MIT/Stanford/CMU/Berkeley, unless someone has a better grouping.

While my daughter may or may not want to do research / get a graduate degree, getting your students accepted into elite (or maybe any) PhD programs is a definite indicator of the quality of the work done by undergrads, and/or reputation of the school.

I believe @PurpleTitan has done some results-based research. I wonder if he’s looked into classifying the quantity / quality of PhD programs the undergrads attend? Not sure where I’d get the data, other than begging each admissions department to help me out…

25

This has rankings by total number and field, but obviously the total numbers are dominated by big state schools: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/

In any case, I wouldn’t use PhD numbers to judge a department, depending on what your goals are.

26

Wow, NSF has lots of interesting data, though it was a pain to make it spit it out. webcaspar is I guess their name for their tool.
http://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/TableBuilder#anchorCV-1

From it, I was able to find out, for CS PhD’s issued over the past 5 years, here are some counts of undergrad degree institutions:
U of MD College Park: 35
Purdue: 31
RPI: 25
UMass Amherst: 15
RIT: 14
WPI: 10
Illinois Tech: 8
Case Western: 6
RHIT: 4

Some big names not on my list:
Berkeley: 96
UMich: 42
MIT: 90
Stanford: 49
Harvey Mudd: 37
Olin: 5

(Obviously, I should normalize this somehow by # of CS undergrad or something.)

I think I could even make webcaspar limit the data to CS PhDs from a subset of elite institutious… TBD…

27

Not sure what number of graduates who eventually went on to get a PhD really tells you. For schools focused on the humanities or social sciences, graduates may go on because they can’t really work in the field without a PhD. What is available for a graduate in history-if the student wants to remain in the field. But those with a CS degree have many options that allow them to stay in the field. So I am not sure that the number getting PhDs necessarily means the same thing as it would for, say, English majors.

28

Well, not sure if I can filter by PhD institution, and not clear if it matters.

I added in a column of # of CS BS degrees. I used cappex, and I only took the one most specific computer science degree (if multiple were given). For most schools, it doesn’t matter, though RIT has many CS-like degrees that might naturally lead to a PhD? Not sure.

I calculated a fraction - though note the numerator is PhDs over 5 years, and the denom is CS BSs in 1 year.

Purdue: 31/88 = 35%
U of MD: 35/118 = 30%
RPI: 25/85 = 29%
Illinois Tech: 8/29 = 28%
UMass Amherst: 15/77 = 19%
RIT: 14/96 = 15%
WPI: 10/69 = 14%
Case: 6/44 = 14%
RHIT: 4/30 = 13%

Mudd: 37/32 = 116%
Berkeley: 96/114 = 85%
MIT: 90/174 = 52%
Stanford: 49/144 = 34%

29

Lol – Mudd.

30

Operation Catapult should give you an idea on Rose.

West Point is Rural, Annapolis is urban, but that seems the least useful way to distinguish between them.

Grad programs at a university aren’t great ways to measure undergrad programs, IMO and the opposite holds true as well.

All the schools you’ve listed are solid. If she comes back from camp and hates Rose, cross it off your list. If she comes back and feels the small campus and classes are just what she needs, then maybe don’t over think that either.

31

@50N40W - I’m not trying to evaluate undergrad programs by their grad programs. The numbers I’m presenting are the number of undergrad BS from a certain school that eventually get a CS PhD (at any school).

@lostaccount - I agree that these numbers aren’t comparable across degrees. But I’m not trying to compare across degrees - only across undergraduate institutions. In CS, yes, a top student might choose to take a job instead of grad school. But I think it’s fair to assume that in the vast majority of cases, a mediocre student will find a job, instead of getting a PhD. Or maybe get a grad degree in another field. I don’t think there are many (if any) “easy” CS PhDs.

So I’m arguing that “fraction of CS undergrads that eventually go on to get CS PhDs” (which is somewhat proportional to what I’ve computed) means at least something. My table puts RIT, WPI, Case, and RHIT in about the same mid-teens bucket, while RPI and Illinois Tech are twice as high. Among the big schools, Purdue and U of MD seem similar, but much higher than UMass Amherst.

Among the big schools, I think it’s reasonable - Purdue and U of MD probably have better reputations than UMass Amherst. It’s believable to me that RPI has a high rep compared to other mid-sized to smaller schools, though I didn’t expect to see Illinois Tech up there with RPI.

Of course, does it make sense to look at fraction or absolute number? Is it better to be at a school where on average 1 or 2 out of 30 students go on to get a PhD, or 3 out of 100?

Probably it just doesn’t mean that much no matter what, TBH.

32

Note: This post is more a train of thought than a definitive statement

I would also agree that PhD’s say very little about CS overall.

Most CS graduates are not even bothering to think of grad school - they want to get out into the industry - only a small fraction are worried about research / academia - those are probably even self-selecting to some degree with the pure academic types, for lack of a better sweeping generalization.

Focusing on such a small part of the program at each school doesn’t reflect much on the general CS experience. A school that has top research and research opportunities but absolutely disregards their undergraduate student body could easily excel by that metric. To be fair, I suspect those are few and far between.

This really is circling around a bigger topic in my eyes: the software industry has long struggled to separate the average developers from the great, and I think that CS schools outside of the big powerhouses can often suffer the same fate.

Overall, CS is more or less the same in content at most schools that have a decently developed department. The separators are very minor, and more importantly, even when you find a difference, deciding which you prefer is almost completly subjective or based on your goals.

Here’s what I’ve noticed (all from experience, not at all gospel):

There are 3 main types of CS department in terms of general philosophy that I’ve seen commonly:
Math and CS - mostly focused on theory usually
Engineering and CS - either simply in the engineering department for a lack of another, but sometimes it can mean a more hardware based focus
CS Department / College - varies a lot

Departments also have very different approaches in terms of introductory teaching. My school has a very specific philosophy on the matter, and it is one of the reasons I love the program.

There’s the generalized practical vs theoretical spectrum, which again is entirely dependent on your goals in terms of ranking.

Especially in the case of your daughter, if she sticks to the software engineering side, that stat carries even less weight IMO.

I don’t want to crunch the numbers at the moment, but if you’d like, I would suggest calculating the percentage of students that attended a Top 5/10 CS school for their PhD after undergrad at each school of those that pursued a PhD. While it still does focus on a small portion, it would hopefully reflect the overall teaching quality and culture with the projects and abilities of the students.

33

Not bragging on myself but I could guide a B-student starting at community college and transferring to a LOCAL 4-year university and have them job-ready when they graduate.

34

I just found this area of the forum tonight so I’m reading old threads.

@thshadow, I just thought I’d chime in, in case you’re still looking at CS programs.

I’m looking for my daughter, but these days I think she’ll end up majoring in Math. I’m still holding out hope, though.

Since my daughter isn’t planning to go to grad school, I look for a good number of practical courses when evaluating CS departments, but I think the most important thing of all is the teaching ability of the professors.

It’s very hard to determine teaching ability, but I think it’s really the most important thing, unless you have a kid who’s just really good at self-study. I’d rather have my kid at a less competitive school with great teachers than at a super prestigious school with teachers who have no interest in teaching.

I think the problem is that there’s no real correlation between competitiveness of the school and teaching ability. There are great teachers and terrible teachers at all schools. It’s easy to conclude that the teachers at LACS would be better since the focus is on undergraduate teaching, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the teaching ability at LACs is just as hit or miss as it is at universities.

I was discouraged at one point in a college, and all it took was one great teacher, who wrote one great book, to turn things around for me.

I had a lot of really disinterested professors - some who were a couple of years from retirement who just didn’t care any more. That can really kill your enthusiasm, especially if the material is hard. I’m not saying that age is always a factor. I had some terrible young guys and some amazing older guys.

Anyway, I guess for me it’s all about the quality of the teaching. I wish there were a great way to figure out how many truly great teachers there are at a school.

I think RateMyProfessors is somewhat useful. If a teacher consistently gets great reviews and it’s not for easy grading, I think that’s a pretty good indicator. I’m more skeptical of the negative reviews, because college kids love to blame their professors for their bad grades, There usually aren’t enough reviews to be useful, but once in a while you’ll get someone with 20 or 30 glowing reviews. Those I take seriously.

I’m curious how other people try to get a read on the quality of teaching at different schools. Does anyone use any other resources besides RateMyProfessors?

35

@WalknOnEggShells - I definitely agree with your sentiment.

In case it’s relevant, she spent 17 days at Rose Hulman, and absolutely loved it. Then she was 2 weeks at UMass Amherst - and absolutely hated it. RHIT might be her #1 choice now…

I’m also starting to think that Rose might be a perfect fit for her. Now what happens if she gets in to there - and RPI too?? Or - heaven forbid - WUSTL?? :slight_smile:

I definitely fight with myself - should I be pushing her for prestige or best fit? I’ve finally come around to best fit (on most days :slight_smile: ). The funny thing is, from going to these camps and talking to the other kids there, she is starting to care more about prestige!

36

@WalknOnEggShells

Frankly, the only way I’ve found is talking to other students. I know a lot about many of these schools actually thanks to talking to a bunch of them at an internship this summer.

We had Northeastern, BU, RPI, UMass Amherst, WPI, UT Austin, UConn, UMass Amherst, RIT, and more. From talking from them, they all average out in the end to be very similar more or less, but there are certainly some outliers on both sides. Of course, it’s a subjective measure. That said, I think hiring managers who have a large sample size in software would be some of the better resources on the matter.

Since it is subjective, I’ve abstracted out the specifics here. It holds true for other schools as well, I’m sure. Not all of them, but a lot of big names probably fall victim to this.

I’ve had the chance to talk to some, and they notice the outliers. Ironically, some big names are up there that people would be surprised by. Almost every manager I’ve talked to in city X says that School Y hires tend not to work out as well as other schools in the area. Despite the rank, if you know the teaching style there, it isn’t really surprising. Its incredible research focus has its drawbacks. If you’re at a high level and want to do groundbreaking things, it’s amazing. If you’re just picking up CS in college, or even just want to be a developer, I can name you 4+ better schools in the area alone.

37

That’s funny. I struggle with that too. No matter how much you yourself can think beyond prestige, you can’t control what hiring managers will think. That always pulls me back to caring a bit about prestige.

But having lived through a bad fit myself, I’m really hoping that I can help my daughter avoid that. She’s oblivious at this point though. I can barely get her to engage on the topic. She’s just entering her junior year though, so she has some time.

All the schools you’re looking at are great, so I wouldn’t even worry. It’s great that she doesn’t mind the schools with the big male/female splits. I’m sure that will help her chances at RPI and Rose-Hulman.

38

This is definitely true. My daughter will be entering college with very little to no CS experience, so I think she’d be intimidated at a big research university. The problem is that the course offerings can be limited at the LACs. I haven’t looked at any of the smaller to mid sized STEM universities like Rose-Hulman, RPI, WPI, or Case, but I would imagine that their course offerings in CS are more extensive than at the LACs.

39

I don’t think LAC’s are the answer most of the time because they tend to be so theory and math based. As I mentioned in my previous post a bit up on this thread, they often suffer from the Math and CS problems, and then are of course limited by their size.

I also don’t think all big research universities are bad for CS - you just have to somehow look into the specifics of the program. But in the end, I think your average research U is going to be better than an LAC for CS, ignoring fit for specific students.

40

@PengsPhils - have you disclosed what your school is? And/or can you talk about the specific philosophy for introductory teaching that you think is really good?