<p>My son just finished his Freshmen year as a Computer Science major at Cornell Engineering with good GPA. It turned out that he has enough credits to become a Junior next year. So far he has completed 3 core Computer Science courses ( Object Oriented programming & Data Structures, Discrete Structures and Data Strucutres & Functional Programming). He had lots of AP credits from high school.</p>
<pre><code> So the questions: what are the downsides of early graduation in 6 to 7 semesters. Cornell doesn't have any official BS/MS in 4 year programs. Is it better for him to stay for 4 years and finish the advanced course work? He plans to work in the industry after graduation. What are all the options he has? He likes taking liberal arts courses, so he fills up the schedule with all the interesting courses from the various departments without worrying about double majors and minors. Please chime in your thoughts.
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<p>Perhaps he can try making up sample 6, 7, and 8 semester schedules and seeing if he can take all interesting courses in each number of semesters, or if he would run out of interesting courses to take. Is cost a significant factor here?</p>
<p>For industry computer software jobs, he should consider include CS courses in algorithms and complexity, operating systems, networks, databases, software engineering, and security and cryptography, as concepts from these courses are commonly used. Additional courses of interest or specialization can be taken as well.</p>
<p>I am in almost the exact same situation (Just finished freshman year, will be a junior at the end of this fall). If cost was a factor, I’d load up on hours and graduate in 3 years, but since I’m on a scholarship that pays a fixed amount per year in my case I’d actually go further in debt doing that. I’ve been taking the change to branch out into some extra math and language courses that relate to my CS interest of computational linguistics/ai, and may end up adding a second major.</p>
<p>Cost is not a significant factor. Mostly thinking about is there anyway to gain an edge about this. He will definitely not run out of courses to take, either in Computer Sciences or in other departments. He will automatically get a Math minor I think, looking at the number of math courses he has been taking.</p>
<p>I know you said the school doesn’t have an official BS/MS 5 year program (which in his case would only take 4 years), but there may still be that option. Looking at Cornell’s website, the M.Eng degrees are all 1-year programs, and they may be perfectly happy to admit your son to get his undergrad & MEng (or MS even) in the typical 4 years. </p>
<p>As far as I’m aware, the one main “benefit” to staying 4 years and not graduating a year early is that you have more summers for internships/co-ops, which really help with the job search. </p>
<p>Speaking of co-ops… has he considered doing one during a semester? (or semester + summer). He’d have a chance to take a semester off, make money, but still have a “traditional” 4 year experience if that’s what he wants.</p>
<p>(For what it’s worth, I’m doing a BS/MS program at my school, and am currently co-op’ing as well. My BS/MS will take 9 total semesters, and the co-op sets me up to still have a May graduation, which I personally like).</p>
<p>If cost is not a factor, staying the full 8 semesters of school and taking all of the interesting courses available (CS or otherwise) may be a good thing. The primary advantage of graduating with fewer semesters of school is saving money on school and getting into the workforce to earn money earlier.</p>
<p>There can be a “market timing” aspect in that a year difference in graduation date may mean graduating into a better or worse job market for the industry (recession graduates tend to have poorer pay and career progress over the next decade or so). But business and industry cycles are not necessarily easy to predict.</p>
<p>He will definitely enquire about the option of MS. Is there any advantage regarding the starting salary with MS? Is there any difference in the career trajectory of the between BS and MS. We can only hope the economy will atleast be marginally better in 2015.</p>
<p>The job market in CS was red hot in 1998-1999. But students who went in as freshmen to study CS at the time graduated into the depths of the industry downturn in 2002-2003.</p>
<p>Having a master’s degree is often a small advantage (perhaps larger for specific jobs that happen to match one’s master’s degree study focus subarea), but not generally that large (especially compared to an extra year of employment after a bachelor’s degree). But another poster here mentions that a master’s degree can be a useful check box in some types of government contracting.</p>
<p>A senior may want to apply to both jobs and graduate school, so that s/he keeps both options open. In case of an industry downturn resulting in no offers, going to a funded graduate program and getting a master’s degree is certainly a better choice than being unemployed for months or years after graduation (long term unemployment tends to cause employers to view the person as unemployable in the future).</p>
<p>So far, the plan is to do research/internships during summers, graduate and get a job. Applying to grad school as a backup option is appealing just in case. Also since he plans to anyway work after graduation, doing co-op for a semester is not appealing to him, as he is going to lose a semester of classes. Also I have observed what these kids do in college is more high level than the real world work. Am I wrong in that observation?</p>
<p>Also did the tech hiring suffer during 2008 to 2010? May be we are due for another official recession in 2013.</p>
<p>CS was among the least affected areas of employment in the 2008-2010 downturn (which was worst for graduates in subjects like civil engineering and architecture). But CS was among the worst affected in the 2000-2003 downturn.</p>
<p>Taking a co-op job semester delays graduation by a semester, but does not result in an additional semester’s worth of college costs (since the student is not attending school during that time).</p>
<p>Yes, college CS courses will teach a broad theoretical base, and should be accompanied in most cases by programming or design assignments or projects. One difference between CS courses and industry work is that industry work often involves longer term maintenance of old code (years or even decades old, as opposed to no more than a 14 weeks old). Industry work often has constraints of backward compatibility that are not really an issue in a CS course project built from scratch.</p>
<p>Have you two looked at the chain of prerequists? I have a family member that graduated with >150 credits. Many of them were freshman level humanities, some from AP’s, some on campus. His mother went on and on about how he started with Sophomore status. Didn’t save him a darn thing. It still took him 4 years to graduate. You still have to take X before you take Y before you take Z. Look at the prerec and make sure.</p>
<p>I would say that an MS is not going to be very helpful for career advancement as opposed to one year work experience, and generally MS’s are not funded (the only funded MS’s are where you are accepted into the PhD program but fail the qualifying exams and drop out with an MS).</p>
<p>I would say that the advantages of that extra year can be substantial. ne can build up more CS elective breadth, which is never a bad thing. And there are just so many interesting classes out there (outside of CS), that I really don’t see why there’s a rush. Humanities classes can be very useful insofar as engineers who have excellent communication skills are the ones who will advance up into management, and those who are average or bad at communication will see their career hit a plateau.
If your son is only interested in classes that advance his career, maybe take some business classes.</p>
<p>Then the ideal time to do co-op could be spring semester junior year or fall semester senior year when one has sufficient breadth and depth in CS. How common is the coop experience among the graduating students?</p>
<p>My son has lots of Science and Math credits from high school. At the end of the freshmen year he has credits for engineering distribution, engineering interest and all science & math requirements except for Linear Algebra and Probabilty. He can graduate in 3 years if he wants to.</p>
<p>He is kind of attempting to take classical liberal arts core curriculum. So far he is liking it even though reading and writing becomes a bit too much at times.</p>
<p>I would go for the MS. It’s a slight salary boost but will also be good if he applies for an MBA program down the road. He should see if he can get a spot with a prof and get a research position with stipend/tuition/etc. Cornell has plenty of funding.</p>
<p>Co-op is common at some schools, less so at others. It may depend on how pre-professional (as opposed to pre-PhD-program) oriented the students are. Check the school’s career center and leave of absence policy for more information.</p>
<p>Of course, that is often dependent on whether the student actually gets an interesting enough co-op job, or a summer job that both the student and employer are interested in extending into a co-op job.</p>
<p>I would like to repeat again that an MS is not really necessary. After one year of work experience, your average computer software developer’s salary is the same as if he/she had gotten a Masters.</p>
<p>The only way I would see a masters being worth it is if you get a BA/MS in 4 years (not 5).</p>
<p>I would also like to add that a well-rounded liberal arts education is really underrated, and your son should try and take classes outside of science/math/engineering that interest him. Maybe some business classes?</p>
<p>Starting salary is a bit different. I know two people from my school who are working for Amazon starting this summer. Both are software development engineers. One just finished his BS in computer science, and the other finished his MS in computer science.</p>
<p>Starting salaries are 90k and 110k, respectively.</p>
<p>Personally, I would take as many classes as possible. The opportunity to learn is so big, and you are not given that chance for long. Sure, you can learn on the job, but many topics you learn in college are not always applicable on a job. I would very much like to learn as much as I can.</p>