<p>The list is in order of most likely to go if accepted to least likely. Does my list and order make sense for my stats and desires? Feedback is appreciated.</p>
<p>Full pay is ok, yes. Size is actually one of the factors that matters the least to me but I would prefer medium, then large, then small. </p>
<p>Prestige matters too because it unfortunately plays a role when it comes to employment. That’s why MIT and Princeton are higher up than UT and UC Berkeley, even though the latter are warm and outstanding when it comes to CS. According to those criteria I think the list makes sense except for Duke because it isn’t really known for CS. It’s more of an exception because my mom went there and I really liked it when I visited. That being said, if I got in to Duke and Georgia Tech, for instance, I’m not totally sure which I would choose.</p>
<p>Does this make more sense or is the list still unclear?</p>
<p>Prestige plays little role in employment except on Wall Street. Employers want to know what YOU have done and can do. Life starts anew at graduation. Once you’ve a couple working years under your belt, people won’t even notice where you went undergrad. And grad schools care even less. Undergraduates need good grades, letters of rec, intern or research experience, and the software and systems skills that a particular employer is in need of. They are hiring a person for what the person can do for them. They’re not going to go around boasting that they hired a UC grad; they probably have a bunch of them already.</p>
<p>You are right that other factors matter much more than prestige but I would argue it is still a definite factor. Perhaps not as much if I were to work for a CS company because it would recognize that UT Austin is a great CS school. However, if I worked as a software engineer for a non-CS company then it is more likely they would hire a Princeton grad then a UT one. It’s just the unfortunate truth.</p>
<p>Duke has a top-notch CS program that is very highly regarded in Silicon Valley. Duke ranks in the top 10 on several lists of computer science ‘feeder schools’. Three Turing award winners are affiliated with Duke and Duke CS alums occupy executive positions at some of the world’s largest corporations including Apple (Eddy Cue) and Microsoft (Terry Myerson and Scott Guthrie). 5 Duke CS students were recently named KPCB engineering fellows and a current Duke CS student won first place at the Google Science Fair in 2012. Not too shabby if you ask me! </p>
<p>It was my understanding that coming from a prestigious university would get your resume to the top of the interview list. Do you two think this is just a misconception? Could you explain a bit further?</p>
<p>Depends on the industry. If you mean Wall Street or elite consulting companies, yes. If you mean small startups, much less so, especially after the first job. Indeed, the convenience factor for Silicon Valley computer companies heavily favors Stanford and Berkeley, along with such other nearby schools as UCSC and SJSU.</p>
<p>Anyway, what is your safety? Your list appears to be all reaches except for GT and UMD, neither of which is likely to be a 100% sure thing safety, or even a near-safety.</p>
<p>Not that there’s anything wrong with your list, but the “conventional wisdom” has the top CS schools (in no particular order) as Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley. So I’d think those last two would be higher on your list – especially Berkeley, which is in a warm weather locale. Princeton may be more prestigious than those two overall, but not in CS.</p>
<p>Other top CS schools are UIUC and Cornell, but perhaps you’ve excluded them because of weather considerations.</p>
<p>An important consideration is that most of these schools are matches to reaches, so you should add some that are more safeties.</p>
<p>Also, you don’t say what state you’re from – that will make a difference in cost and likelihood of getting in to some of these public schools.</p>
<p>And realize that your listed qualifications are good-very good, but for some of these schools, it generally takes some outstanding accomplishments to get accepted.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon isn’t higher on the list because I heard that the workload there in particular was incredibly high. I’m willing to work hard but I heard that it cripples any chance of a social life, which doesn’t sound too good. Also it’s a bit cold. I will probably revise the list to increase Berkeley’s standings because, from the feedback I’ve received here, apparently the prestige of Princeton, etc. doesn’t really amount to anything. However, I think I would go to UT instead of Berkeley because I absolutely loved UT when I visited. I’ve yet to visit Berkeley (hope to later in the summer) but it will take a lot to convince me to go because Austin was great.</p>
<p>And, yes, UIUC and Cornell were excluded due to weather.</p>
<p>I understand that most of these are matches/reaches but I think that I have adequate safeties and low matches. Does anybody know if I can post Naviance graphs here after I censor my name and school name? It says “confidential” but I believe that is to protect my identifiable information, not everybody else’s anonymous GPA/SAT. Can someone confirm that before I post?</p>
<p>After you’ve done this type of work for a few years, you notice that where people went to school has very little correlation with how productive they are. The engineers and programmers who review resumes know this, so they pay less attention to where you went to school and more attention to what skills you’ve got listed. Plus, there isn’t a huge amount of difference between what’s taught in an undergraduate CS program at Stanford vs. the same program at Kent State.</p>
<p>I do think that there’s some truth to the idea that if you went to a prestigious school, you’ll have a slightly better chance of getting an interview. But once you’re in the interview, it’s all about what you know and whether the people doing the interviewing feel you’ll fit into the team. </p>
<p>The main advantages in going to a school like Stanford or MIT would be because of connections you’ll make with others who are high achievers, and because there tend to be venture capitalists and angel investors hanging around looking for people with good ideas.</p>
<p>Yep, and when you rank schools by the number of bachelors CS majors they had who became venture capital funded startup founders, the list looks like this:</p>