TL;DR (read next post for summary)
From my rather limited experience (having been given the opportunity to personally experience CS classes in both a State school and a Private school), I will have to say there is no CS program particularly “suited for women”.
As of my knowledge, all CS curriculum expect students to come to college knowing absolutely nothing about programming. It doesn’t matter if the student is a male or female. As far as the college cares, your first course in CS must be a course for learning programming (since students come from all different backgrounds -and yes, this includes students from even very known schools in CS-).
In other words:
it doesn’t matter if your daughter were to do a CS curriculum at a place like CalTech (known to be very rigorous academically), the required classes she would take in CalTech would still expect her peers (including her) to know absolutely nothing about programming.
Yes, having learnt programming in a young age helps (tremendously), but it is not a requirement to major in.
In addition, I would like to note that most students in CS really don’t know how to program or if they did, are able to do only the basics like if…then statements, etc.
Also, CS is not programming. CS prioritizes (at least in most fields) in finding efficient algorithms to a problem. It is often said that CS to programming is like astronomy to telescopes.
If your daughter has solid skills in mathematical logic, then she could actually have an advantage over those who programmed since 5th grade simply because CS by nature is more about logical steps than programming.
In addition, CS curriculums almost everywhere are pretty similar (maybe except a place like Carnegie Mellon in which the students seem to breathe CS even outside CS courses and CalTech in which students are forced to go through CS in addition to many theoretical sciences requirement which can be prettyyyy challenging)
You do not have to worry about your daughter and finding a “CS program for women”. A vast majority of students (even students in MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, etc.) don’t really know programming like your daughter and able to succeed in college. And if the college confidential people in this forum states otherwise, then I must say they are most likely giving a misguided answer as I have experienced 2 different types of schools (public flagship and a top private which is ranked in the top 5 in USNEWS) and have friends in many other schools (including Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Rutgers, etc.).
However, I will like to note that publics and privates have a different culture which could impact your daughter’s academics (as some people are more influenced by their peers than others).
In public (a top 10 public during my years there), I noted something that was rather disappointing. Let’s say 10 people had signed up for Introduction to Programming course. By the second project, about 4~6 of the students would drop out of the course. Now as of the remaining 4~6 students, 1~2 would constantly complain about how hard the classes were and keep constantly making it aware that pretty much everyone would fail the class and the grade distribution were unfair in that the A’s were given to those who knew programming (and the Bs to Fs to rest).
Doing this only stigmatized those who were having difficulty with CS to believe that “CS/engineering were the hardest things in the world in undergrad” and many took pride in that.
In private (a top 5 USNews university), I noted something very unique. If 10 people signed up for Introduction to Programming course, then 10 stayed. And no one ever complained and the atmosphere was CS was challenging but fun.
Now, you might now come to think that “oh, there it is! CS curriculum at different schools cater different types of people”. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But to my awareness, in the State school, there were many many students who wanted to major in CS but had no interest to put in the required effort for CS. Both schools provided top notch resources for students. However, it seemed that most students in public did not bother to get help since their peers didn’t (unfortunately, for many people, the indirect influence one gets from their peers are huge). In the private, many more did get help but the atmosphere was mostly different because of the students that the privates had enrolled. By filtering mostly students of great academics, a higher concentration of students seemed to enjoy learning and seemed to have almost no difficulty in learning introduction to programming.
In fact, quite ironically, in the State school I attended, the students made me believe that Engineering/Computer Science were the hardest majors in undergrad (which actually annoyed me as at the time, I was majoring in math and I can personally tell you majors like Math puts many more hours with its honors courses) and the students in those courses did not give much credits to liberal arts majors.
In the private school I now attend, some of that is quite different. First, the students in Engineering/CS do not believe that their courses are the hardest courses in the world for undergrad. In fact, they respect the liberal arts majors and some being extremely glad that they could avoid the many essays liberal arts majors have to face as engineering/CS.
The “weed” courses in engineering are honestly Calc 1, 2, 3, Physics 1, 2, Chem 1, 2. And quite frankly, many of the students in State schools were not prepared for any of those academically while in the private, pretty much everyone took the AP of those in high school and saw no difficulty.
), and the consortium is so tightly integrated that she may find it doesn’t feel like a women’s college in the same way as, say, Wellesley or Smith.