Hey guys … So I’ve been stuck in a limbo for like 2 months now, trying to decide if Brown is worth going to for a Masters degree in Computer Science … The only competitor is USC, which has also accepted me …
Over the past month or so I’ve talked to numerous people from different walks of life related to IT, and the reputation they have given me about Brown for its CS is a mixed bag. While there are several threads on the internet praising Brown for it’s CS (mainly this forum), a lot of people have also said to me that Brown is MAINLY known for its Social Sciences and Liberal Arts programs (e.g. Economics, etc.), and NOT for technical subjects such as Computer Science. USC on the other hand is at least widely known for its technical programs, through its Viterbi School of Engineering.
Yesterday I was talking to a USC graduate who currently works for Amazon, has recruited many people for Amazon and Google, and he has interviewed students from schools such as USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, etc. He flat out told me that Brown is NOT considered a mainstream Computer School, at all. When I told him that LinkedIn has recently rated Brown as #1 for Software Developers, he said any such rating “is a joke” as there are many other worthy contenders for the #1 spot.
So I guess I’m confused. Why do so few people appreciate Brown’s CS, while the general public considers the school more along the lines of Social Sciences, etc. ?
Please note that if I do so, I’ll be joining the Masters program at Brown, not the Undergraduate program.
Well, I don’t want to pick for you or convince you or anything. You have to pick where you are comfortable.
I guess there isn’t ‘rank’ for MS CS as far as I know ( well I saw one list 2015 with Brown 15 and USC 19 but I can’t find the source.) You know Brown overall is a top US uni. You know US News has the grad school positioned in top 20, as is USC.
Brown is a target school for many employers but they won’t get many students. You have to realize that until the recent rise in CS everywhere.they were only graduating 45 undergrads (sorry I don’t know the MS number but it would be small), not it is 70 or 80. So that is an entirely different scale than colleges with big school of engineering. Brown has had engineering but only recently made it a school of engineering. Compare to Cornell that has 3,000 undergrads in Engineering school. Brown has 6,000 total students for everything. At Brown CS grew out of the math dept and it was one of the earliest universities in the country to have a CS dept. This is a different scale from UCB, UCLA. But you don’t have the choice of that so it doesn’t matter that your friend recruits from there for your purposes. Amazon does hire Brown grads, they just don’t get many, it is entirely possible your friend didn’t run into any. His dismissal of Linkedin analysis is weak, because they are using methodology and they are especially strong data scientists, so there is sound logic behind it and he has no logic but merely lack of experience. There are many Brown grads at Google and Google has hired there for a long time, there just aren’t many Brown grads in total out there. If it makes you uncomfortable to be a rare commodity go to USC. I realize it is a lot of time and money on the line. I can’t really comment on international recruiting.
Are you from India? You could email Brown prof Shiram Krishnamurthi (but read his home page first, he wants something in the title or he won’t read it, I once read) he posts on Quora too and sometimes answers Brown CS questions.
As for your sister, yes Brown is an undergraduate focused uni without huge well known professional schools or engineering grad school that the general public knows schools by. So the reputation in humanities and social sciences is very strong and people focus on that. But anyone who actually knows, and that includes big technical grad schools, knows that Brown has across the board strong departments, like any Ivy, strong in STEM, incredible CS dept, one of the top departments in the country for applied math and neuroscience too. Why doesn’t your sister know that? Well she just doesn’t know because she is only taking a shallow interest.