I live in NYC so traveling to Brown is definitely a lot cheaper and easier. I received a lot of aid from both schools, but UMich is a few thousands more expensive than Brown.
My main interest is computer science followed by statistics, but to be honest, I don’t 100% know what I want to be in the future. How does where I receive a degree in CS or Statistics affect my future career?
CS and Applied math are two of the stronger departments at Brown. They have very good placement from those departments. Brown is a great place to go if you don’t know what you want to do since they are so flexible and have no course requirements. This seems like an easy choice unless you love college football.
You will succeed and enjoy either school.
Michigan COE and UM in general are going to be very large compared to Brown, so I really think you first have to decide whether you would like a large school or a medium school for your college experience. Michigan COE is almost as big as Brown in total. That consideration may override all others. My child started out in Engineering at Brown and quickly decided to move over to a CS concentration. It has been an excellent experience; teaching assistant opportunities for undergrads abound and the CS group seems to be very cohesive and supportive. I don’t know about Stats, but as someone said, Applied Math is very strong at Brown, probably among the strongest departments in the Ivy League. My child has gotten several job offers and interned for Google last year. CS at Brown seems to be pretty well regarded in Silicon Valley and Seattle. Michigan clearly has a better reputation for engineering overall, but it is extremely large and its reputation is more based on the faculty and graduate programs. (It’s in an industrial and auto manufacturing state, so their best departments are in mechanical engineering fields. Competition for attention among undergrads and for jobs and internships is going to be fierce.
If you have visited Brown and it is a good fit for you, and it’s cheaper and easier to get to, and you want to major in CS where Brown has one of the best CS departments for undergrad teaching, it seems like an easy decision!
a continuation of
Lots of flawed reasoning and conclusions going on from Alexandre. I will clarify your post for @1W2HZ3 so that he/she doesn’t make a decision based on misrepresented facts.
1. I’ve said this again and again, but Brown’s graduating class size is extremely tiny compared to Michigan’s enormous size. So of course, Michigan has some bigger numbers. Not surprised there
2. Here you are making an unfair comparison of Michigan’s ENTIRE engineering employment numbers vs only Brown’s Computer Science department. This is apples to oranges. For example Apple hires MechE for Product Design and Reliability Engineer roles.
3. Your numbers don’t include Applied Math - Computer Science, Computer Science - Economics, Mathematics -Computer Science. Brown counts these separately outside of Computer Science. You can tell based on specific the Year/Title/Company combinations. For example, the 2015 Software Engineer@MongoDB in ‘Math-Computer Science’ is not included in the 2015 report for ‘Mathematics’ or ‘Computer Science’. This is true for other instances too.
4.
the Ann Arbor office has little relevance in this thread since OP is talking about their CS program. It’s not even worth mentioning. That’s like saying Briarwood Mall has an Apple Store which sells Macbooks Airs. Michigan CS grads don’t work at Briarwood Mall.
5.
This isn’t completely true. Cisco and Microsoft are considered 2nd tier compared to Apple and Google. The vast majority of top CS students and even seasoned Software Developers will choose Apple/Google over Microsoft and Cisco. Only the few will give up Apple/Google for Microsoft. The logic is quite simple. Microsoft uses .NET tech stack which is considered archaic, slow, and has limited compared to the many newer technologies. .NET is filled with bad practices and poor paradigms. Their codebases are bloated and today their many developers have barely learned the fundamentals of computer science due to that environment(except Bill Gates + Paul Allen of course). Microsoft’s stack was built on as Business primary and technology-secondary. The most innovative and agile companies use open source code (eg. Android which is owned by Google). The open-source/agile community developed their stack as technology-primary and business-secondary. Even though Apple is locked down, it is still a Unix environment. Plus the last 10 years, Apple has beat Microsoft in product design (although, i can’t say this is true for the last 3 months). Even though Microsoft’s code went public about 1 week ago, it could take a decade before the top 5% of software developers would reasonably and objectively consider Microsoft’s technology is better than Google or Apple.
Not sure why you mention Cisco, Intel though since the figures you include are mostly Michigan’s mechanical, chemical, electrical, computer engineering students, so most aren’t CS. Cisco and Intel are a hardware-first company and have less openings for software and CS students. Intel takes in quite a few CS interns/coops but they convert less significantly into full-time hires compared to electrical/computer/mechanical/chemical/engineering students. That would be a good argument if OP had an interest in hardware because Brown doesn’t really have those traditional engineering disciplines.
**6. **
Michigan puts up better numbers for Amazon, but Amazon is among the lesser desireable big tech companies. They have lowest standards for hiring compared to the rigors or Apple, Google, Twitter, Quora, etc…
Amazon has a toxic work environment and higher turnover rates compared to the rest. Amazon is 3rd tier.
**7. **
That fact that you include Oracle actually hurts your argument. You should’ve excluded them to make your numbers look stronger. When Oracle comes for campus recruiting, they aren’t looking for Devs, they instead only hire Tech Consultants who work as Dev contractors for other companies except they get paid less, travel more (its not a vacation, nor glamorous), their skill-growth and career trajectory is limited, and its more stressful (bureaucratically). People become Tech Consultants if they can’t get a real dev role.
**8. **
Brown’s placement in Google is obviously impressive, but 2015 was an outlier.
This is extremely dismissive to call their 2015 year an outlier. Outliers don’t work like that. You don’t get into Google by accident.
**9. **
But the numbers don’t really show that Michigan is a clear feeder into Google over Brown.
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10.!!!
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Worst of all. Your Michigan years are WRONG for EVERY ONE of them of them. In 2015 Michigan had 36 Googlers and 33 for Apple? No that’s for the Class of 2016, not class of 2015. This is clearly stated in the report.
You’ve been comparing Michigan’s Class of 2016 vs Brown Class of 2015,
and Michigan’s Class of 2015 vs Brown Class of 2014
and so on…
Michigan does better with Facebook and Apple, I will give you that.
Since I am a CSE alumni at Michigan, I can give OP a quick tour of my Engenius account and the other companies that actively, especially where he/she can see the plethora of events and opportunities for recruiting.