Building College List of Computer Science Schools

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hello, I'm a junior, and I live in California. I'm in search of colleges with the best computer science programs. However, there are factors that matter to me just as much as the strength of the computer science program.</p>

<p>Very important factors:
- the smaller the size of the general education or distribution requirements, the better (this is why Brown is so attractive to me)
- strong cs program
- good physical exercise facilities
- gender ratio - 3:1 male:female ratio doesn't sound particularly attractive - the closer to 1:1, the better (I know this eliminates a few good tech schools)
- affordability (OOS public schools that aren't good with financial aid aren't very attractive)
- research opportunities</p>

<p>Less important - but still nice to have - factors:
- prevalent (around the whole campus) wireless internet
- programs that allow undergraduates to assist with teaching of intro classes (ex. Stanford's CS198)
- good intramural sports system</p>

<p>Anyway, here's my current list of schools (in order of increasing selectivity) that I have put a lot of research into:</p>

<p>UCSB
UCD
UCSD
URochester
UCB
Rice
MIT
Brown
Princeton
Stanford</p>

<p>Any chance you could critique my list or recommend schools that I might like? Please just assume I am competitive for admissions to the top schools. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!</p>

2

<p>What about CMU, #1 in CS in the United States(better than MIT). USC, another very good CS school although not very small.</p>

3

<p>The thing that made my not quite too happy about CMU was the required 63 units in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. That’s 16-21 classes depending on if they are 3 or 4 unit classes.</p>

4

<p>If you’re interested in the Northeast; Rutgers, Penn State, and UMass have very strong CS programs, good exercise facilities, close to 1:1, and great research opportunities. OOS tuition is still pretty cheap compared to the tuition of private schools up here.</p>

<p>Thing is, NJ is pretty much broke, so don’t expect much money from RU. All of them are also huge.</p>

5

<p>MIT has a lot of general education requirements:
[MIT</a> Course Catalog: Undergraduate General Institute Requirements](<a href=“Welcome! < MIT”>Welcome! < MIT)</p>

<p>UCSD general education requirements vary based on which residential college you are in:
[UC</a> San Diego Six College System](<a href=“http://admissions.ucsd.edu/colleges/index.html]UC”>http://admissions.ucsd.edu/colleges/index.html)</p>

<p>Berkeley students may major in either EECS in the College of Engineering or CS in the College of Letters and Science. There are some differences in both major and breadth requirements.</p>

<p>For affordability, what kind of price limit are you looking at?</p>

6

<p>CMU uses a different system. Most classes are 9 or 12 units. So a requirement of 63 units would be 7 or fewer classes. SCS does require that you do a minor however.</p>

7

<p>Union College-NY
Lehigh-PA
Harvey Mudd-CA</p>

8

<p>The required minor at CMU for SCS can be in robotics, math or physics if you can’t stand the thought of doing something too far from comp sci. If you have 5’s on APs you can get out of most of the gen ed requirements. Outside his interests my son took three courses - Standard writing course, department required technical writing course, and a course in World History. He got out of every single other requirement. Everything else was comp sci, physics (his minor) or math. I think you’d be crazy not to apply to CMU if you are interested in computer science.</p>

<p>Isn’t UC Irvine pretty strong in comp sci?</p>

9

<p>ucbalumnus, yeah, I noticed that about MIT, the requirements mostly seem to be in the hard sciences and some engineering courses, which I don’t mind at all. Taking sciences classes is something I plan to do. Before I discovered how much I like computer science, I thought I wanted to be a physics major. It’s the humanities and social sciences that I’m not too keen on taking. Having been forced to take 4 years of English in high school and 4 years of a social science (usually history), I am very ready to no longer take those classes. I never really agreed with the fact that in CA, we have such heavy humanities and social science requirements, but much small mathematics and science requirements. Anyway, the HAAS requirement confuses me a bit. I think it means I have to take 8 classes, but I figured I could use those classes for cool subjects such as economics and psychology. Please correct me if I’m wrong because I find the HASS requirement a little hard to understand.</p>

<p>As far as affordability, I think my family’s income is middle class ($120,000-140,000 annually). However, my sister just finished college and my brother is in college, so we live in a small condo (partially because where I live is expensive). It’s my understanding that most OOS public schools - excluding maybe UNC Chapel Hill and UVA - won’t be very good for need-based aid. So, I figured my options are in-state public school, private schools where I will be able to qualify for merit aid (maybe URochester), or elite private schools that will be able to give me adequate need-based aid. My family and I haven’t filled out any forms (FAFSA) yet, but I’m trying to get them to do that with me as soon as possible.</p>

<p>JZMOM2, thanks for pointing that out to me. Now it makes much more sense. I’m now going to start seriously considering CMU.</p>

<p>SLUMOM, while I did already look into Harvey Mudd and thought it looked great until I found out about the HSA requirement that requires 11 classes in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts, I don’t know too much about Union College and Lehigh. How come you recommended them?</p>

<p>mathmom, thanks, I’m definitely going to start seriously considering CMU because you and JZMOM2 have convinced me.</p>

<p>UCI is pretty good at computer science. They have a fairly good connection with the gaming company, Blizzard. I’m still deciding whether or not I want to apply to UCI. The thing is, I live pretty close to the campus, and I would prefer a change in scenery.</p>

10

<p>You might check out Tufts. Their computer science department is right next to the school’s brand new state of the art gym. The school also is pretty split 50/50 along gender lines. And they attract some pretty notable firms (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc.).</p>

11

<p>University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
University of Michigan
Ohio State University</p>

<p>Since you live in California, all UC’s</p>

12

<p>MIT’s HASS requirement requires at least eight courses, including some in each of H, A, and SS, and at least one set of courses that go together.</p>

<p>MIT also requires at least two of the HASS courses to be communication-intensive, and at least two of your major courses to be communication-intensive.</p>

<p>Harvey Mudd also has significant H/SS requirements.</p>

<p>However, most colleges’ H/SS requirements do not require specific subjects like history, except for writing or communication requirements.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Big companies recruit widely, so it is no surprise that they are there.</p>

13

<p>For financial aid, you can put your family’s information in the net price calculators found on various schools’ web sites to get an idea of what they may offer.</p>

14

<p>I know you already got responses from other posters about CMU, but I just wanted to add some additional notes as a current CS sophomore there:</p>

<p>You’re required to take a freshman English class, 3 classes from specific categories, and 3 9-unit (9 units is a standard course) electives. You can get out of one of the categories with AP Economics or Government credit, another one of the categories with AP World History, and the last category with AP Art History. If you have any other humanities-related APs, those can be used for your electives (e.g. AP English or an AP language) Failing that…there are quite a few easy and interesting humanities electives you can pick up.</p>

<p>This page may be relevant: [SCS</a> Placement Policies](<a href=“http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/education/bscs/ap_policy.html]SCS”>http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/education/bscs/ap_policy.html)</p>

<p>So it’s totally doable over four years, especially with AP credit!</p>

<p>CMU’s CS gender ratio is very good (near 60/40, I believe, but unsure of current statistics; it was 33% female two years ago and got better the year after).</p>

<p>Research opportunities are fairly easy to find; people are eager to recruit undergrads and almost all of my friends who wanted to do research found an opportunity their freshman year. </p>

<p>Campus wifi is prevalent and quite fast.</p>

<p>It’s easy to TA a class in the CS department; many of my friends are doing this now, for the freshman/sophomore core classes, and it’s pretty rewarding. Just do well in the class and fill out a little survey/form thingy at the end of the semester indicating what classes you’d be interested in TAing for. Professors will usually ask if anyone is interested in joining the course staff.</p>

15

<p>Definitely check out Case Western.</p>

16

<p>Greekfire: thanks for the informative post! DS will be a freshman at SCS in the fall so the comment about the course units is just about the extent of my knowledge!</p>