<p>That’s reassuring, Proudpatriot. That personal attention is hard to beat!</p>
<p>I hate to be overly practical, but it would make sense to look at job placement stats. To me that is more critical than rank. When we did a campus tour, I was impressed with the placement center. For Engineering, I think about 1/3 did co-ops.</p>
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But what’ll be important to him as far as ‘support’ won’t just be how to schedule classes (which he s/b able to handle without someone holding his hand) but will be resources for him within his major. </p>
<p>CS is a difficult major requiring a lot of work and having resources to turn to for help is important. He’ll likely spend many hours writing programs in addition to his other work. These programs can be difficult to understand, difficult to write, and take many hours (sometimes 30-40 hours in a week).</p>
<p>I’d think a college with a larger CS department would have more resources available than a smaller one generally speaking. These resources are usually lab assistants, people a year or two ahead who already understand that material he’s taking well and can be consulted somewhat for the labs (i.e. programs he’ll need to write), TAs well versed in the subject, fellow students to work with, and professors.</p>
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That’s a good point. Seeing who recruits on campus and the job placement stats can be insightful.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen of my supervising managers and relatives who hire CS graduates, they’ll have no problem hiring Case Western’s CS graduates. Moreover, most CS folks…especially the more technical folks are focused more on the skillsets the CS grad brings to the table than pedigree…though I don’t think your S will have an issue on that front, either. </p>
<p>Only real issue I heard about Case Western is the campus culture/atmosphere can be gloomy for some students. Then again, that’s a YMMV and all the cases I knew of were from the '90s and early '00s so that may not be a critical issue. </p>
<p>Visit the campus to get a real feel for it and the students if you can.</p>
<p>As an aside, one of my best Professors taught CS and did his undergrad at Case Western. :)</p>
<p>Cobrat: The CWRU campus is really pretty and not depressing at all. University Circle is a really nice area. East Cleveland, which is nearby is pretty depressing but the campus is lovely.</p>
<p>I’m with colorado_mom.</p>
<p>As I am probably too analytical and too practical, one of the many factors that we try and evaluate is placement at the various schools (as my Dad says, “The proof is in the pudding.”).</p>
<p>Mommeleh, you may have already looked at the most recent First Destination Survey at CWRU, but page 14 shows that of the 26 CS graduates, 24 responded to the survey, with 7 going to grad school, 16 with jobs, and 1 doing “other”.</p>
<p>Page 17 shows that of the 15 who reported salaries, 6 were reporting salaries of over $75,000.</p>
<p>Also, on page 19, the companies that the CS students were going to work for included Google and two at Microsoft, as well as Oracle, Yelp, and two at Bloomberg. Some of the other companies shown might be real “hot stuff” in the Computer Science world, but I wouldn’t know that.</p>
<p>Page 24 shows where 6 of the 7 going to grad school will be attending and for what degree.</p>
<p>Looks like good results to me!</p>
<p>I hope this helps.</p>
<p><a href=“Post-Graduate Planning and Experiential Education | Case Western Reserve University”>http://students.case.edu/careers/explore/survey/doc/fds2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>coloradomom, your point about job placement is key. On the various college tours we have attended, schools would tout that they have had a students go to google, etc. And I would wonder if that meant that 1 or 2 of their past grads ended up there. Some of my concern has come from a conversation with one individual who felt that the Case CS ugs he had interviewed did not have the background he would have expected, and that his company would no longer be recruiting there. It is, admittedly, only one data point. But this person was definitely knowledgeable about CS, and his comments made me wary.</p>
<p>So, dadinator, THANK YOU for the link to that document. It is very, very helpful to see where a specific cohort of students ends up. I feel like I have more to grab hold of now. (And I am embarrassed that I did not dig deeper, myself.) You have provided quite a service.</p>
<p>Cobrat, your perspective from colleagues and relatives has helped, as well. </p>
<p>Proudpatriot, I just went on Princeton review and saw that Case was rated the ugliest campus. I really don’t get that. We visited and didn’t have that impression at all.</p>
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<p>There is good demand for CS graduates but there are different schools have different approaches to CS and different companies have different expectations. I’m speaking with a broad brush but there are some companies that want current skills so that their hires can hit the ground running. There are some companies that want more of a theory background so that they can understand concepts that may be more helpful for design, performance or architectural work. They are willing to train their employees for their environment - they mostly want the raw talent and theory background.</p>
<p>There’s a fairly famous article that kind-of describes the divergence but it does it in terms of the main teaching language:</p>
<p>[The</a> Perils of JavaSchools - Joel on Software](<a href=“http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html]The”>The Perils of JavaSchools – Joel on Software)</p>
<p>Added CWRU career survey to the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-3.html#post15316135[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-3.html#post15316135</a> thread.</p>
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<p>CWRU is small, so he may have had a small sample and gotten unlucky with the worst applicants (or those who were the worst fit for the jobs he was hiring for). The small size may also make it less attractive for non-local companies to visit and recruit at, compared to larger schools where a recruiting visit can get exposure to hundreds of CS students instead of tens of CS students.</p>
<p>Great article, BCEagle! And, while I didn’t understand all the pointers, ah , I mean points, I think I got the general idea. The problem my husband and i have had in trying to discern what actually matters here is that we have backgrounds in research science. and Computer science is very different in many respects with regard to training, employment, etc. A biologist or chemist is not going to get far without a PhD, but that is not the case at all for CS. So, for a biologist, the choice of ug school is not so critical- any decent place will prepare for grad school. But, for CS, the ug education will determine preparation for the job force. As we have no idea what area my son will ultimately want to pursue, it is hard to know how important the distinction of top 20 vs 60 in the rankings means. It may not matter at all.</p>
<p>Loved the ending of the article- so funny!</p>
<p>Good points, ucb. How important do you think it is to be recruited at one’s school? Does that confer a great advantage over submitting one’s resume cold?</p>
<p>(And thanks for pointing out that thread. i didn’t know it existed. I really have to get on the stick, here.)</p>
<p>The advantage of being at a recruited school is that you can apply to companies that you may not otherwise know even exist. Most people seem to think that CS majors’ jobs are all at a few GAFAM companies, and probably most of those at less heavily recruited schools send their resumes to the same GAFAM companies (which are probably drowning in resumes).</p>
<p>However, a student at a less heavily recruited school can look at job ads in locations with lots of companies (e.g. Silicon Valley) to find out what companies there are (even if new graduate jobs are not explicitly advertised in the usual job ad postings, the companies may be advertising them in college career centers). Of course, the student has to be willing to move to where such jobs are.</p>
<p>Googling GAFAM gives a ridiculously large number of hits on you tube in some other language. Hey, I just figured it out (mostly). Google, amazon, facebook, a?, microsoft. </p>
<p>Thanks for the info regarding recruiting. :)</p>
<p>I give. What’s the second a?</p>
<p>GAFAM:
Google
Apple
Facebook
Amazon
Microsoft</p>
<p>It actually came to me (Apple) as I was wading through DS’s room and almost stepped on his brand-new, exorbitantly priced, laptop:) But, thank you, Cleveland!</p>
<p>" How important do you think it is to be recruited at one’s school? Does that confer a great advantage over submitting one’s resume cold?" - I think it’s really helpful to have the help of a college placement center when finding the first job. </p>
<p>I have heard from other parents researching colleges that CS at Case is not as strong as some of the tippy top CS schools (like CMU). But CS in general has decent job prospects. If Case gives generous merit aid and seems a good fit for the student, then it may very well be the best bang for the buck.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that GAFAM may not be all that is cracked up to be if one really wants to write code for a living… I have worked closely with a couple of the letters mentioned and for every developer (that we don’t get to see) there are hundreds of drones that do testing, write the install package, documentation, and in general do the kind of work that one really does not associate with GAFAM.</p>
<p>They hire smart people, granted, and usually pay well, but there are lots of other companies outside this very short list that do worthwhile CS work, and the work environment may not be what some people want. A friend’s kid quit one of the A’s after only six months on the job… I’ve had several requests for interviews at the same A and I tend to decline for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>Yes, the point is, there are many more companies for a CS graduate to work at besides GAFAM. But it seems that every prospective CS major or parent of such on these forums think that GAFAM are the only place to work at after graduation.</p>
<p>Even odder is the idea that a college is somehow “special” because GAFAM recruit there, when GAFAM recruit widely because they they are large (meaning they have the resources to recruit widely and they need to recruit widely because they are looking for relatively large number of employees).</p>
<p>Yes, coloradomom, I can see where my son would certainly be the type of kid to benefit from recruiting on campus. Turbo, your comment about work environment is an importan consideration: I’m not sure my son has the personality type that would enjoy working at one of those monster companies. “Even odder is the idea that a college is somehow “special” because GAFAM recruit there” Yes, ucb. Very true.</p>
<p>I think that my husband and I have difficulty envisioning what it really means to have a career in CS. Working as a computer scientist for an insurance company vs a big software company vs a small lab doing biological research seem like very different worlds. What a strange profession it is that the content (or purpose) of the coding doesn’t seem so relevant. Or maybe i am wrong here. </p>
<p>It will ultimately be up to my son to decide. Hopefully, he can be honest enough with himself to know what is most important to him in terms of finding the best fit- within our financial constraints.</p>
<p>^^ Thinks of a CS degree as being a somewhat general degree that happens to be directly applicable to many areas. The degree gives the person a foundation in the principles and even practical aspects of the field. For example, I’ve hired new CS grads who don’t actually have any programming experience in some of the languages I’ll have them use initially but that’s fine because I know they have the proper foundation and experience to have the aptitude to learn the particular languages and environments I’ll have them work in.</p>
<p>And yes, one may go in quite a number of directions with it - lots of different industries and job duties and they’ll likely change over the course of the career.</p>