Burlington is a really nice town- right on the lake- and for the adults, lots of breweries and cideries. And Ben and Jerries the factory is nearby.
UGA and GT are high reaches with those stats. GT extremely hard to get into even in state. RD acceptance rate at GT this year was 11 percent. Overall acceptance rate 18 percent. UGA easier but not by much. Still a high reach. In state acceptance rate for GT was around 30 percent. Many high stats kids waitlisted including mine and most of his friends (ACT 35/4.0 high rigor, competitive high school and strong essays).
Don’t count out the rest of the GA schools though. Many start at Ga State and transfer into Tech. Most have CS programs. KSU is well respected in engineering circles.
CS and related fields are very employable regardless of where you get your degree.
I believe the GTech in-state admit rate is about 40% (edit: whoops, I saw your more recent stats), but it is certainly much lower for CS and engineering (but that means it’s much higher for Arts! and Science! And Design!).
In state last year was mid 30s. Much higher for female in state applicants than male applicants (if I remember right male was 18 percent and female 40). Some of that may be due to different major choices. It is hard to grasp that kids at the very top of their high school are waitlisted for an in state flagship but it is true for high schools from non rural areas. This year is harder than usual. Complicating the matter is GT is quite a bit smaller than UGA and accepts many more OOS/international applicants (40 percent OOS). There are only around 2000 spots for GA residents.
Well, GTech does take in all vals and sals. But GA is a pretty big state (though GTech does have one of the largest CS student bodies in the country). Still, that’s only about 600 graduating CS majors per class. And CS is a hot major now. It’s very tough for even in-staters to get in to any of the top public CS programs that admit by major (CS at UIUC, EECS at Cal, CS at UCLA, CS at Texas, CS at GTech, etc.). And it’s even tougher for OOS and Internationals.
There are over 500 HSs in GA and over 100K kids graduating from GA HSs each year. If only 10% of the top 10% want to be CS majors (pretty much all of them would pick GTech over UGa for CS), that’s over 1000 kids and not enough spots for all of them. Especially when some of the spots will go to vals/sals, some of the 600 would be other majors changing to CS, and some would be coming in through (near) guaranteed transfer programs.
1 Like
I only mention UGA and GT above to be sure the OP wasn’t ignoring the great options in the home state. Those two aren’t auto-acceptances, but the value as an in-state is so outstanding that I hope they apply to at least one of them. As I’ve learned in this thread, there really are some great schools in the state. And the stats are, I think, better than the B- student described, and I’m sure they’ll find a good CS program if that is the goal.
Been an informative thread for me to follow.
You may find this site helpful:
It ranks CS schools based on their research/publications and you can select/deselect the areas you’re interested in. You can also see which professors are involved in the research.
Other options, as I re-visit this thread today, are Northeastern in Boston and Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO.
Northeastern has a low acceptance rate, but they also have an easy no-extra-essay application which drives up their number of applicants. They are generous with Financial Aid. It’s an interesting campus and interesting programs that they run to differentiate themselves in the red-hot higher-ed market in Boston. It’s a love-hate relationship with the campus though, so be sure to visit before you commit!
Colorado School of Mines is also an easy application with essays optional, and if you inquire about their “Golden Ticket”, you can also get an application fee waiver. They’re a first-rate STEM institution and their CS department, like many others, has great student outcomes and isn’t brutally selective like Carnegie Mellon or UIUC.
1 Like
This is one of least useful sites, especially for an undergraduate, and even more so for a B student. The ranking is based on the total number of research publication in CS conferences (not adjusted by the size of the school’s CS department) so it’s primarily a measure of the size of the school’s CS department. The only relevance that I can see for an undergrad is if s/he is advanced enough to do certain types of research in a particular field and the site may provide some information whether such research is possible in that school.
2 Likes
My point in suggesting the site is that it gives a list of schools with information related to the areas of faculty interest. I agree that the rankings, themselves, are somewhat useless. However, if a student is interested in a specific area, such as algorithms, they can see whether any faculty have published in that area and, if so, go to the school’s website to further investigate the programs. It just helps a little in terms of narrowing down which schools to investigate further.
It probably won’t have any LACs, though.
I’ll suggest LACs at the CTCL tier because
- Pretty much all LACs offer CS as a major these days.
- A lot of them at the CTCL tier would offer merit aid.
- They won’t be terribly difficult to enter as a CS major because they don’t attract too many CS majors.
- Yet some of them are very strong academically.
@ucbalumnus would point out that most LACs would have pretty limited CS offerings, and that is true, but you’d also get a lot more faculty attention, which could more than make up for it as, if you run out of CS classes, you could likely work on a project under faculty supervision.
A place like Hendrix would cost as much as an in-state public due to their tuition match, yet still has CS grads go work for Google.
Another alternative is to look at colleges that have a 3-2 relationship with WashU. Many have a 3-2 relationship with Columbia too (though these days, the transfer isn’t guaranteed) and with RPI and USC. And many of those LACs would offer CS majors themselves.
What about Wentworth?
Wentworth is an interesting institution and serves a market need in the hyper-competitive higher-ed market in Boston. Some may disagree, but I can’t really see why a good student in Georgia would actively seek admission to WIT. If looking far from home for CS around Boston, consider BU, BCU, Northeastern, WPI, Brandeis, UMass Amherst all before Wentworth. Just my opinion.
And to the OP . . . UMass Amherst is certainly worth a look. Competitive program in CS to be sure, but still not cutthroat single-digit acceptance rates.
The options you list are all good ones…but pricey.
I agree Wentworth is a niche sort of program, but it’s worth a look see.
SUNY Oswego provides funding to out-of-state students to match in-state tuition. It has an excellent CS program and many students on the spectrum find it a very welcoming school. I teach there in another division, but can vouch for CS and Oswego overall.
4 Likes