Mom of a rising high school junior here and just starting the college search.
My kid is a strong student and very interested in CS but he also wants to travel, learn lots of other things, get some hands on experience in the field. He also plays jazz saxophone which he might want to continue for fun (jury is out on this one as of now), and non-specifically “wants to work for NASA”.
No geographic preferences yet. What schools come to mind?Just looking to jump start the research process. Thanks for any thoughts- I have loved this forum!
What’s your home state? What instrument and style of music? Budget? Music as part of school or private lessons outside of school where they can still study, but don’t have academic pressures of tests, etc. associated with the music component?
Thanks for the qs- maybe I will edit the post!
West coast
Saxophone- Jazz
Music for fun I think (if at all)
I think most schools (not all, but most) will have extracurricular jazz performance, as well as some electives in music he might like. A lot of schools give credit for lessons and performance as well.
So I think he can probably choose schools based on CS, a relatively free curriculum to explore, location, size and “vibe.” Many state U’s will have good CS but he might have to apply specifically to that program in some cases.
I was going to suggest Brown and Amherst (neither has gen eds), and Tufts came to mind as well. Does he want to stay on the West Coast?
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Check out NASA’s Space Grant Consortium
See the 52 colleges and whether they have jazz, such as Iowa State University - easy app, also University of Arizona.
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I think he wants to get as far from here as he can!
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My son is headed to U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign in August as a CS + Music major. We are in California Bay Area, so while I worry about how cold it can get there, he seems really excited to experience a totally new environment. His primary interest is CS but he also likes jazz music. He plays the trumpet on his own mostly after 3 years of private lessons and high school band/ orchestra. UIUC is a huge school, so plenty of study abroad options, research opportunities and help with internship placements. I like that CS + Music accepts only about 10 - 15 students per year, so it’s a more intimate atmosphere when it comes to advising and faculty attention and a more close-knit same-major student community in a big school. PM me if you’re interested in more information or which other schools he also applied to. As a side note, UIUC is known for its multitude of CS + X programs, so look into the other “X” combinations as well. My son was also telling me UIUC is planning on four new Data Science + X majors, possibly available for next year’s applicants.
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Which state specifically. No one here will know who you are based on that. 
Washington
Again most schools will have extracurricular jazz and study abroad. I think he should make his choices based on cost, location, size, CS, space in curriculum for some exploration, and “vibe.”
CS (for a BS) is an intensive, sequential course of study with foundational courses leading to the next classes and so on. In a school with a lot of gen eds, he won’t have much space left in his schedule to explore interests academically. That’s why I mentioned Brown and Amherst.
Tufts has CS as well as engineering if that interests him, and a very active music department. I mentioned it because I personally know a jazz saxaphonist who went there to study physics and gigged, was very happy with it.
In our state UMass (both Amherst and Lowell) has a wonderful and competitive CS program as do many other state U’s, including UC’s.
Does he prefer large universities or smaller liberal arts colleges? Urban, rural, suburban? Weather? I would start with questions like that.
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Check out intern and career openings with NASA. Some interns are in high school and worked remotely. Others attend college near NASA centers in AL, VA, CA, MD, NM, etc. (See map and app process)
OP: when you say your kid is a strong student, do you mean “top of the class” strong? There have been some very reachy schools named on this thread and it’s not clear that they are realistic options for your son. What is his GPA? Does he have any test scores yet?
Also what is your budget? You need to figure our what you can afford and then run NPCs on the schools websites to see if they come in range for you. A lot of people just assume they will get financial aid but you really can’t make that assumption.
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Northeastern University is ranked number 12 on csrankings.com of all universities in the United States for computer science and has the best co op program within the nation for extended work experience. They are also generous for meeting demonstrated aid. I would look into applying to Northeastern for sure. 95% of all students participate in experimental learning and 50% of students have a job offer from a co op employer before graduation. They also have ties to NASA for machine learning, robotics, and AI so a Coop might be possible there leading to a job!
Unless he’s just not into it at all, U Dub is a no brainer, at least as one of his options.
If he wants to stay on the West Coast, Cal Poly is great for CS and SE. They have multiple jazz bands. They were rated the best collegiate big band at the UC Berkeley Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival. It’s a very competitive admit though.
CS is very competitive at all of the big name schools. The admission statistics for most schools under represent how difficult it is to get into Engineering and CS.
Building a list of tough admits like Illinois, Brown, Cal Poly, etc. is the easy part. The hard part is choosing safeties. For those, WUE schools fit the bill nicely.
Our son is an engineer from Oregon. He graduated from Cal Poly, but he almost chose Utah. Lots to like about The U. Your son will get WUE tuition exchange at a minimum. Our son got one year free followed by 3 instate. He’s an avid outdoorsman and has been a lifelong skier. We aren’t LDS. The influence is certainly there, but SLC is minority LDS. It’s a very progressive town with good restaurants and cultural things to do. They have a very well regarded jazz program and non-majors can audition for the ensembles.
His other safety (besides Oregon State) was Colorado State. It’s a beautiful campus in a great city. They also have a jazz program with ensembles open to non-majors.
Your son will learn about work environments as he moves through his schooling and gets to know people in the field. My son was SpaceX/NASA gung ho until his older friends started landing there. The feedback he got was that NASA was too slow and bureaucratic and SpaceX was an unrelenting grind. If he’s dead set on NASA, I agree with the suggestions to choose a school where he can work with a professor that has some NASA affiliation. It’s much easier to get your foot in the door with a referral.
As for CS Rankings, it’s methodology is really just a proxy for the size and volume of the graduate program. As a result it leaves out great schools that don’t offer PhDs, like Cal Poly and Harvey Mudd. They are totally undergraduate focused and missed if you’re not savvy to the ranking methodology.
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Those rankings cover a lot of areas within CS. I noticed U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign ranked # 2 between Carnegie Mellon and MIT.
It would seem NE has better CS than Tufts, for instance. Some will prefer Tufts for other reasons (if they want to be in Boston). The posts I found would support NE for the most part. Tufts is generally more selective, higher graduation rate, more go on to grad school and so on but NE looks good for computer science, has business, and has the COOP.
Compare Northeastern University vs. Tufts University (collegesimply.com)
Northeastern vs. Tufts, CS : collegecompare (reddit.com)
Northeastern vs Tufts please help!!! : NEU (reddit.com)
Compare Northeastern University vs Tufts University (collegedunia.com)
etc.
It’s only ranking publications. That may or may not have a correlation to the undergraduate experience at those institutions. It’s really only a proxy for department size.
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CMU not only has a world-class CS program but also has top-notch FA programs.
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I agree that it should definitely be one of his options since UW’s Allen School has a higher admit rate for Washington state high school students vs. OOS & Int’l. Data from 2020 Admissions on their website:
That works out to 31.5% admit rate for in-state, 2.35% for out-of-state and 2.6% for Int’l. Many OOS CS applicants (including us) did not realize that OOS admit rates last year was just 2% for OOS for CS direct admits, maybe even lower this year given the increase in apps (they will have 2021 data available in Nov.) That is even harder than being admitted to MIT/Stanford/Ivies. So it’s definitely a no-brainer for in-state students wanting to major in CS to apply to UW’s Allen School for their world re-nowned CS program to take advantage of the preferential admit rate for in-state applicants.
On their Allen School website, they talked about how they expanded the CS department a few years back to accommodate the sky-rocketing interest in CS, but specifically referred to the benefit accruing to in-state students. For next year, they are adding Computer Engineering as a direct-admit major to Allen School instead of School of Engineering.
Link to website:
https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/ugrad/admissions/direct
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