Your salary will mostly be determined by where you live and the cost of living. The two offers my son narrowed to were $30k apart. It seems like a no brainer, but the cash you’d have to save for a 20% down payment where he ended up would have bought a whole house outright in the area of the job he turned down.
Your rankings are very skewed. Clemson is a top 30 public school, top 75 nationally (public and private) and no where near 357 for computer science (around 75 for grad program). UNC is 50 and not a safety for you.
University of South Carolina has one of the top if not the top honors programs in the country.
Computer science is so employable that I don’t think you’ll have any better outcomes coming from UNC then you will from Clemson or South Carolina. Arguably you would from Georgia Tech and Purdue, but both are in a very different class.
Rankings are pretty irrelevant in a lot of areas but particularly in computer science. It might be worth you paying the $35 to get into the US news database and see where all of the schools lie for undergraduate computer science. It can be very different than the graduate ranking.
Maybe even less opportunity coming from UNC if somebody up the hiring chain is a Clemson grad or even a big football fan. Even if that doesn’t matter to you, you never know what all stuff factors into job decisions. I don’t say that to suggest that UNC wouldn’t be better or that your goals are off-base in any way but just to say life isn’t fair or linear or logical and, as others have pointed out, there’s going to be some unpredictability. Fine to look at rankings and prestige, etc. but they are not guarantees.
I don’t have a great breadth of experience but can tell you from a recent Class of 2021 grad out of Wake with a 4.42 and similar other stats that the competition is fierce and Clemson had way more people of high stats trying to get in this last year than they needed. And UNC is, I think, just about always a reach out of Wake. One thing you do have going for you there is your GPA puts you in the top 10% of your high school. Our experience has been that large Wake County high schools can have great variation in class rank at the same GPA point with some magnet schools putting a large number of high stat kids out of the top 10% which becomes a real issue for many schools (including UNC) focused greatly on % of admitted students in the top 5% or 10% of their class. While they may go further down the line given the clustering of top GPAs, they likely don’t go very far down.
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FAANG is not the only game in town. BTW, Amazon doesn’t care about your university. You have to work through their challenges after you apply and get an invite, according to my kid. My DS1 just graduated from a tech school (his safety) with a degree in CS. He has a job lined up with a bank and will be working alongside graduates of “prestigious” universities. Also a couple of his school buddies got hired there as well, so this is not some unicorn thing.
Aside-True Story - DS1 told me that during his internship at this company, one of the interns from H asked during orientation if he would be grouped with interns only from similarly “prestigious” universities. “Umm…no” was the response. So I think the sooner you lose this whole “prestige” notion and cast a wide net with an open mind, the better off you’ll be. Listen to the others here who have already told you this.
For CS, employers look for individual projects that you have worked on beyond classroom stuff. Even at the “prestige” universities, the competition will be fierce for FAANG opportunities.
I was a hiring manager at a FAANG company. My new team had graduates from UW, U of Maryland, North Eastern University, UMass Amherst. Don’t assume only grads from Ivy end up in FAANG. In fact, two grads from Ivy schools failed in the final round. This is the reality.
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Google doesn’t care either, ask my regional university graduate student who is a Google software engineer.
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I’m an NC parent. I think you have a pretty good chance at UNC and NC State, but not a guarantee. I would also add UNC-Charlotte and maybe the other ASU (App State) as safeties. I’m sure you can get in those. UNC-C, in particular, has a good CS program.
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The OP may be gone
Nah, I’m right here. I’m just looking through everything and trying to follow all the tips that everyone is giving me. I’ll post a follow-up comment in a few days with a complete college list.
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Regional university in California?
I’ve recently been asked to help out a couple recent grads of flagship universities. One had a 3.9 in business management and is in a job that doesn’t require a degree. The other accepted a job with a large HVAC supplier that starts in August but continues to explore opportunities.
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No, a regional university in Georgia. He graduated on a Sunday and Google flew him to California the next Thursday…he interviewed all Friday, was recommended to the hiring committee but utlimately was not offered the job. Took a local job that paid what Google was paying (in Atlanta which is a nice starting salary)…worked that job for a few years as Google continued to reach out but he couldnt take the time to go through the long and involved hiring process. He ignored them until C19 hit and he was working remote 100% of the time so he thought he’d give it a shot again, this time he was hired. Google really does not care where you got your degree, it’s can you do the job…and with Tech companies, sometimes the smaller schools are better than the bigger schools.
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Fabulous. If it’s not UGA, GT or Emory, I’m quite impressed.
So the point is that any of these (Purdue, NCSU, RIT, UNC, GT, VT) will accomplish a FAANG type offer? If all they care about is whether the prospective hire can do the job, (1) how does any prospective student learn the required material, (2) get an interview and (3) ace the interview?
IMO, as with any tech student from any school most of what they learn that Google and other FAANG companies want is learned outside of the classroom on their own. My son took the basic CS courses in college but he studied languages and skills outside of school at home, yes, in the basement. Half of what GT and other schools taught 5 years ago is being taught in high school today. Middle schoolers program from home and public school technical acadamies are directing children so they are well prepared to enter a university and take on more difficult classes. The regional college also beat Georgia Tech in the Cyber Security the last 2 years in a row and in fact I believe were #1 in the nation for the NSA’s Codebreaker Challenge. GT and other top names get FAANG to come to them - that’s the difference. If you can get them to find you, then the top schools lose their advantage.
My D goes to Purdue. Purdue and GT have the highest number of companies coming to campus to recruit in the country.
Purdue tells incoming freshmen to bring interview clothes with them from day 1 and to make an appointment at the career center during freshman orientation. They worked with D on not only polishing her resume, but developing an “elevator pitch” and practicing interview skills. The resources at the career center are excellent.
There is an app for the career fair (called IR) at Purdue where students can see what companies are coming, what majors they are looking for, and if they will consider hiring freshmen. The first IR is at the end of September. Freshman are told to go and practice talking to as many different companies as possible. There are a number of other job fairs throughout the year and students are encouraged to go to all the relevant ones to build their skills.
By the time kids are seniors, they have the interview skills and job experience to be successful.
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I sort of skipped the interviewing part but there is so much information on the internet about how to interview with Google and what to expect, if you research you’ll be prepared.
As BoilerMom mentioned regarding interviewing prep Auburn does the exact same thing as Purdue so I’m not sure that’s any different at any college of any size - even the regional colleges have prep and practice for interviewing…. But with Google, research online for best way to prepare for an interview at the different levels as you move through the process.
Hey everyone,
I finally created my college list, with thought and effort.
Please let me know if I need to change/add anything.
CS Major
Arizona State University - Tempe (Safety, around 35K tuition each year)
East Carolina University (Safety, in-state so pretty cheap)
University of South Carolina - Colombia (Safety, pretty cheap)
University of North Carolina - Charlotte (Safety, in-state so pretty cheap)
Elon University - (Safety)
Milwaukee School of Engineering (Safety)
Rochester Institute of Technology (Safety)
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (in-state so pretty cheap, Match)
North Carolina State University - (in-state so pretty cheap, Match)
Virginia Tech - (Match)
Purdue University - (High Match, maybe low reach)
Princeton University - (Reach)
Georgia Tech - (Reach)
Brown University - (Reach)
Carnegie Mellon - (Reach)
Harvard - (Reach)
UT Austin - (Reach)
Congrats. You have a lot of safeties. Do you have a favorite or are you chasing merit ? You could have two. The loons fine to me though. You’ll have some admits for sure. As long as you can be satisfied at any school on that list, it’s fine.
Did you check out WPI ?
That looks pretty good! However, it is a lot of schools so a lot of work + fees. You could probably eliminate milwaukee and one of your in-state safeties. Also, since you have so many options, as you’re applying, if you lose passion for one of your reaches or high matches, it might not be worth your time to apply.
Gotcha, Milwaukee SOE doesn’t have an application fee nor does it have essays. I can finish that application in a few minutes.
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Chasing merit. Not gonna be “satisfied” with any school, lol but they’re just backups. And thank you for your review, I appreciate it.
Yes, I did check WPI but I couldn’t find too much information about it and it seems too costly.