<p>How is computer science at emory university? Is it well reputed?</p>
<p>No, it’s not reputable at all. Unless you are going to get lots of financial aid going to Emory, you’re most likely better off going to schools like Georgia Tech if you want to major in Computer Science. That said, I have a few friends who major in CS here, and it’s not terrible. Plus, if you end up not wanting to pursue CS in the end, you will have a lot of options to what else you want to go for.</p>
<p>Emory does offer a PhD in Computer Science, so we could certainly be worse in computer science. The undergraduate major isn’t very large, however, and many classes are offered once a year. It’s not a bad program, but it’s not tech or MIT. Unless you’re planning on becoming a computer science professor or whatever, I don’t know that it really matters that much how “prestigious” the department is. We also have a four-year BS/MS in computer science if you come in well prepared, plan well, and perform well in classes.</p>
<p>Emory is a terrible choice for computer science. If you are in state go with georgia tech. If not then go somewhere else</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with all these opinion. Emory has a fantastic CS department! Yes, GT has a stronger program, but it is a TECHNICAL school while Emory is a Liberal Arts school. I would say it is the perfect choice for someone who is interested in computer science AND another topic (like Political Science like me). </p>
<p>The largest weakness of Emory’s department is its size. The professors are all fantastic, but it is only 10 professors large vs GT’s 60ish… so the number of courses is limited. Emory offers way more courses then you will ever have the opportunity to take and if you cannot find a course at EMory you can take it at GT through the ARCHE program. There are also 5 year BS/MS programs which are interesting to look into.</p>
<p>Senior CS major here at Emory. Our department is linked with the Math department which is fairly well-known (REUs, Ken Ono, Agichtein, Raman Parimala) contrary to what many pre-professionals think. Emory offers a 4-year MS in CS and Math, as well as well as 4-year BS’s and MS’s in joint CS/Math. Many professors here are from Tech, and many students opt to do research at Tech. I know many people here that got very prestigious jobs from Emory CS. Although there aren’t as many professors, the smaller department caters to those that are brilliant. Overall, Emory is not a bad choice for CS if you want the the smaller class sizes (no more than 30 kids in my CS classes) or want to double major.</p>
<p>I agree with the first part of your post. Upper level math here is great (and lower level is terrible).</p>
<p>However, if you want to do CS (and don’t care much for a liberal arts education), then you should be going to Tech or Carnegie Mellon. I am curious on what jobs you know people got. I’m sure there are some great ones, but I’d wager Tech still does way, way better. </p>
<p>If anyone picks Emory for CS, it should be because of supplemental factors (PreMed, want a Liberal Arts education, financial aid, etc). </p>
<p>Why is anyone caring about what pre-professionals think when it comes to departments that are physical, computational, or quantitative at all (even chemistry)? They aren’t really involved with those departments. Again, back to my favorite anecdote: Computational Neuroscience class offered in biology dept, only 1 person signs up. Pre-professional opinions on the quality of the dept should be ignored unless they are majoring, minoring, or have taken beyond the number of required courses for their path within that discipline. I don’t think it was the pre-profs. commenting on it. If anything, the only comments they could offer is that it’s too hard lol. It’s like a pre-med taking a large introductory history class for a GER/easy A and then saying “this class is easy” or “this professor sucks” therefore, “I hate the history department at Emory”, as if they ever cared!</p>
<p>Also, being a liberal arts or non-Technical school is never an excuse. Princeton, Chicago, and Harvard are amazing at mathematics and physics and they are all more “liberal arts leaning” and Chicago does not even have an engineering school. Chemistry at Emory is as good as Duke’s and better than Vanderbilt’s (undergrad and grad I think this is true and rankings support it for grad.) and we’re the one without the engineering school. </p>
<p>I completely agree, if you’re purely interested in CS job placement, Tech is obviously the choice. I just think it’s silly to completely write-off our CS department as terrible. However, one example of how Tech and Emory interact is that the Math/CS Department registers us for CS career fairs at Tech, because of the wealth of job opportunities there. Tons of recruiters really do flock to Tech when it comes to CS, but they are also impressed when they see qualified Emory students at the events.</p>
<p>I have friends with jobs at Boeing, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Dropbox, and a Comp Sci friend (no business degree) who is working at Bain & Company.</p>
<p>Pre-professionals often do end up taking a lot of CS courses here, so their opinion does get considered by underclassmen, whether or not it should be. </p>
<p>And yeah, Emory has no excuse. We really should ramp up the department. I don’t really understand why we’re ignoring such an important degree when we have students that are actually very talented.</p>
<p>I completely agree with every word of that post. </p>
<p>Except I don’t know pre professionals who go past the second CS course. </p>
<p>I would recommend the Python course over CS 170/171. I heard it’s a pretty well-taught, intensive 2 credit hour course. </p>
<p>Yes, python is great. Try to work up to CS 323–something I didn’t do but regretted later.</p>
<p>I came across this thread and thought I’d share my perspective. I’m an Emory graduate from Class of A Long Long Time Ago. I have a BS in Math and Computer Science. I’ve had a good career with no problems finding work in the tech sector. I’ve worked with a range of companies from large Fortune 500 companies, to Silicon Valley companies, to small start ups, and everything in between. I currently have my own tech consulting company.</p>
<p>To address the original question, back in the day, the CS degree provided a good but basic foundation for the industry. If you are interested in something specific, Emory does not (did not) provide a lot of depth. What stands out from others is the “Emory University” part. When you put those two pieces together, it speaks volumes.</p>
<p>Well, now that this topic has been revived:</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at Emory. When it came time to register for second semester classes (a week or two ago) ALL ‘Intro to Computer Science’ sections were filled when he logged on at his assigned time for his first (of two) course registration sessions. Put another way, he had no chance to sign up for this course.</p>
<p>I think it’s disgraceful that a freshman cannot sign up for such a basic course.</p>
<p>It is disgraceful. This situation happens all of the time at Emory. The administration is incompetent and it’s the students who suffer. However, my advice is that you or your son should bring up this issue with a professor in the computer science department and not anyone in the administration. That is almost always the better way to go about things at Emory. First of all, most people working in the administration don’t return phone calls or email. Second, if you tell the the truth about any situation at Emory being disgraceful, they’ll get defensive and find a way to retaliate against your son.</p>
<p>@baseballfan86 </p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I think that he’ll first pursue this through his adviser. If he doesn’t get any help there I’ll recommend that he goes to the Computer Science Dept.</p>
<p>I’ll post the follow up here when this gets sorted out.</p>
<p>That sounds good. He should try emailing some professors in the computer science department if his adviser doesn’t help. Someone should be willing to help him if he shows initiative and proves that he isn’t waiting until the last minute. </p>
<p>The administration at any university hardly ever has control over the behavior of a department. If a department chooses to not be responsive to students shut out of classes (maybe because, in the case of CS and Math, they want to keep most classes very small compared to the natural and physical sciences), then that is the result. They certainly aren’t going to care whether it is a freshman or not because I don’t think the course is typically loaded with freshmen, so they probably feel that the person can wait. Also, math/cs just generally makes it difficult to overload into courses. Depts like chemistry tend to more readily make maneuvers because the order in which students take the course work matters much more. But then the consequence of that is that, in an attempt to accommodate everyone, you lower the quality of the course by having some sections run by temporaries and even a grad. student. If I was the department, I would honestly make the first semester such that not as many students return second semester…it you know what I mean. Either by implementing and enforcing minimum grade cut-offs for the second semester, or by making the course more challenging so that students more carefully consider advancing through the courses as opposed to proceeding in a more or less automatic way. So, I can see why the CS/Math situation is upsetting, but I think I feel the depts. on why they do it that way (and in the case, of Math/CS, grad. students/post-docs often teach it. You don’t want people new to teaching loads and loads of students…). </p>
<p>Unless you are a senior who needs it to graduate, they will not overload you into it.</p>
<p>I think your kid will get in, to be honest. Just watch OPUS.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, everyone is aware of this problem. We just don’t have the staff to handle it.</p>
<p>Follow up: Emory opened up waiting lists for several of the sections for Intro to Computer Science. My son, somewhat uncharacteristically for him, stayed on top of the waitlist sign-ups, and was one of the first to sign up for the sections that dovetailed with his other courses. This past week one of those sections opened up five more slots, and he’s in.</p>
<p>FWIW Emory did realize that there was a problem here, and is working to some degree to solve it.<br>
Now the only problem is that he’s actually going to need to do the work.</p>