As a NJ Resident, Rowan has much to offer prospective students in general, and some majors have grown more renowned over time, Engineering comes to mind.
Is anyone able to weigh in on whether Computer Science has benefited from the growth of other STEM majors as well? Is the program more theoretical or hands on? How does it rank against other programs? Is it respected by employers?
Trying to make the choice as appealing to my son as possible. Being a NJ Kid…he finds Rowan less compelling than other choices, but I think it’s not a well-founded set of reasoning. Help me, help him understand why Rowan is great.
I don’t know any of the stats but I can tell you my son is a freshman at Rowan and loving it. The campus has grown leaps and bounds and there is plenty to do there, no matter what you like to do.
His roommate was a Computer Science major; from what I gather, a good student as he received scholarship money to attend and he’s switching to business because he was overwhelmed with the Computer Science.
There’s a brand new engineering building, brand new business building. A large donation this year to go towards Business. The new downtown area has classroom space for graduate classes and the writing arts. I don’t think there’s a major on campus that hasn’t benefited from the growth.
Not sure what part of NJ you’re from, but we’re about 1.5 hours away. There are a few former classmates of my son at Rowan, and he rarely sees any of them. There are almost 20k students now, so it’s not like you are going to be seeing your old high school classmates at every turn. I was sure he would end up out of state, but Rowan has really worked out great for him.
My son is also interested in Rowan for CS. The Department has grown significantly over the last several years. In 2012, the undergraduate enrollment for CS majors was 295. In 2017, the number is now 877! I know that they have added additional staff members, but I would love to get a handle on how the department has kept up with such significant growth. If anyone has feedback on this (has class size increased? any difficulty enrolling in required classes, etc.) I would love to know.
@Sally50 Those are real good questions regarding the impact and changes to adapt to the increase of entering students. The question that has concerned me most is the employment rate for the cs graduates. My son has Rowan as his first choice but I can’t find data indicating percentage of students employed after 6 months of graduation anywhere. Another figure I’d like more accurate numbers for is the ‘accepted salaries range’ survey for the cs graduates. I can find this information for all the other schools on his list but not for Rowan which is concerning me. Since he is only a junior currently, we still have a bit of time to see what turns up.
My son is a freshman CS major at Rowan. He is doing well and is very happy with what he has seen so far from the CS program. He has no hesitation in stating that he is getting what he needs from the school. He had a lot of choices in colleges but went with Rowan because of a generous merit award and preference to stay in state. We were concerned with him going to Rowan (from a school competitiveness standpoint) but that has abated and feel confident that Rowan is going to deliver on a great CS education for him,
That being said, CS is a tough major and some of his classmates have already switched out due to the difficulty of the classes. It’s not a major for everyone but if your student can handle the courses; Rowan should be able to deliver a great education for the $.