Hi, I’m a prospective student who’s possibly thinking compsci and I was wondering how the program is at Smith? Are the courses as technical and specialized as they are at large research institutions? Do graduates come out with enough skills to immediately jump into the workforce, or do you find yourselves having to go to grad school? Are the professors interesting and the workload bearable? Thanks!
Hi @jedibaker! Not a CS major but I have some friends who are CS majors and I’ve done some CS-related activities and classes (deliberately being a little vague so it’s not completely obvious who I am haha).
I like the CS program at Smith because there’s so much support from professors, TAs, alums, and fellow students. It’s also great that you can get involved in CS or data science research as early as your first or sophomore years. You’ll get a good understanding of data structures and algorithms, discrete math, computer architecture, high-level programming languages like Python and Java, and more low-level/assembly programming languages (like C here, I think). There are some fun electives on AI, supervised and unsupervised machine learning, visual analytics (cross-listed with data science), graphics (in JavaScript), computer vision, Android app development, and more.
If you want classes that are even more directly applicable to most software engineering positions though, like those on web development, databases, software engineering, you’d probably have to go to UMass Amherst to supplement your Smith coursework. We have CS and Data Science classes that cover web development and databases, but I’ve heard they’re not very in-depth.
Still, Smith CS graduates can immediately jump into the workforce - many go directly to Google. Others go to grad school. And some do both.
I’ve had a mix of professors. They’ve all been really caring and good at explaining difficult concepts. One’s lectures were so electrifying that I almost changed my major. Another could be a bit boring. Another tried his best to make things relevant/interesting/funny to mixed results (it was a difficult and sometimes inherently dry course to teach though).
The workload varies per class and professor. 2/3 of my CS classes so far were very manageable. There’s one CS class required for the major and minors that’s known for being really difficult because of the sheer volume of material covered in the class, but other than that my upperclass CS major friends say the workload is manageable.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
A couple of things to check out.
Courses in CS: http://cs.smith.edu/courses.php
A tuition free MS at UMass: http://cs.smith.edu/BayStateFellowship.php (though UMass has high not-tuition costs to consider)
Praxis, a Smith program that funds otherwise unpaid summer internship, research, etc: https://www.smith.edu/cdo/praxis.php
Also, there’s summer research at Smith - SURF (http://www.science.smith.edu/student-opportunities/surf/) that you can use to do paid computer science research over a summer.
thanks everyone!!!