So I’m considering majoring in CS in UC; however, I have read / heard mixed opinions. I was hoping some of you could critique it. I ve heard it is highly “theoretical”, but does that mean that there not many project / research opportunities?
Also I ve read abt the dept. and they seem to have a great course, so I was a bit surprised when I saw its ranking to be not super high (like most of its other degrees). Maybe some of you could shed light as to why this?
Finally, how would you rate CS here compared to other schools (e.g. MIT / Stanford) and what part of their courses makes them different.
Stanford and MIT are the very best CS schools in the country and the world. Other than Berkeley and CMU (and maybe UIUC) you can’t really compare any other schools to them.
Here are some CS rankings you might/might not have looked at:
@katz2410 The difference lies in that they have more renowned, superstar CS faculty, better and more research opportunities, more resources in general, higher quality of CS students and also better reputation with top employers looking to hire CS grads. It is not just over Chicago though, Stanford, MIT have these advantages over virtually every other school for CS.
Specifically for Chicago i would guess that CS is more o the theoretical side, which could be a good or a bad thing depending what you want.
I like CS here. Lots of math - there are some absolutely wonderful professors esp in combinatorics, theory of algorithms, and functional languages.
We aren’t Stanford, and it would be a mistake to come here expecting Stanford b/c of similar US News rankings. There are some resources to support entrepreneurship, especially in the newly renamed [Polsky Center](http://polsky.uchicago.edu/) and Booth, but half your classes are going to be math majors who think startups are for people who are unfortunate enough to not get into a PhD program and running your own projects on top of schoolwork here is really, really difficult - the difficulty of CS classes is compounded because you’re going to be taking it on top of serious social science and humanities your first few years.
Currently there’s a bit of a staffing shortage but I think they’re massively increasing classes offered to keep up with rising enrollments.
People do get jobs - I think almost all the CS majors graduate with a job in hand and I know of at least a google pipeline. So it isn’t like coming here is throwing your career down the toilet.
In other words, if you’re interested in UChicago because of UChicago, you’ll find CS here great. But I don’t think our CS department is something worth coming to in it of itself, unless you have very specific interest in combinatorics or functional languages (or, like, computational linguistics…the more academic, the better, really).
That said, I DO think our math department is worth coming here for itself, so if you’re interested in CS from a pure math perspective, that’s something to keep in mind.
@Katz2410 Unfortunately I know basically nothing about Molecular Engineering. It’s very new, I know a few people who plan on majoring in it, but I don’t know any specifics :\ You can [email PSAC](https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/contact/ask-psac) about it, but keep in mind that their job is to sell the school to you so take what they say with a grain of salt.
There’s three variations of the math degree - Math (what most other schools call pure math), Applied Math, and Math spec Econ. Math spec Econ is basically a double major in Math and Econ with the requirements conveniently put together for you. Applied math is almost exactly the same as a math degree but they only make you take one quarter of Algebra and then tell you which electives to take (ODEs, PDEs, functional analysis…).
Math spec Econ is the biggest one, with 18 classes. Now you have 48 classes if you take 4 classes per quarter all 4 years. Subtract 18 for your major and you’ve got 30 left. Subtract 15 for the core and you’re left with 15 - enough to finish the CS degree entirely.
So yes. You can take CS classes and still study math and/or econ. Double and even triple majoring is relatively common here.
@Ynotgo I think I know a few…it’s definitely possible. Physics is 16 classes and CS is 14 (+3 more for the BS instead of the BA) so they would both fit without crossover but there are a fair number of classes that count for both.