Computer Science at WPI?

@Jaye66 You should ask on the Vassar forum.

My opinion: it’s a good liberal arts school. If you’re aiming for a great classical liberal arts education with small classes, Vassar might be the way to go.

Large companies typically do not recruit much at smaller liberal arts schools, and I’ve never worked with anybody from Vassar. I cannot comment about the quality of the CS program there. It’s also likely harder to get into a top CS grad school from Vassar (though getting into a top 20 program should be more reasonable) than from a top research CS undergrad program. Largely because there of cultural reasons (there are very few others pursuing that same path at Vassar) and the fact that the program and the professors are less well known to the research community at large and graduate admissions is very risk averse.

@pengsphils @frontpage @retiredfarmer Wanted to thank you all for the very insightful information re: CS at the various schools. S committed over the weekend to WPI. (Note he and dad made a final trip East in early April to visit top picks again) He is really happy with and comfortable with his choice and seems from our perspective a perfect fit for him!

Congratulations @chel17! Great to hear he chose WPI and wish him the best.

Congrats @chel17!

Vassar just built a new $150,000,000 science center, with an enormous new Computer Science facility. They’re also adding several new CS faculty members in 2017-18 and 2018-19. They have a huge amount of resources dedicated to their computing program.

Congrats on chosing WPI. I found it interesting how there were a few negative posts about the end result of graduating WPI but when I searched high mid-career salary computer science, WPI was up there with some of the most prestgious schools. The list is limited to Bachelors degree, not masters nor phd. So to me WPI Is a no brainer. Curriculum is not overboard difficult and overbearing, just adequate enough to teach you what you need.

Full disclosure- I have no dog in this, I’m going to RPI for engineering, but was checking out WPI for my little brother 3 years from now. It’s probably going to be one of my recommended so far

@GoRedhead

Curriculum is not overboard difficult and overbearing, just adequate enough to teach you what you need.


I do agree students can get a good education at WPI. But how are you able to determine what “adequate enough” means? It’s a problematic statment IMO because lots of people really don’t know “what they need” – there are hundreds of different trajectories in a CS career where the prerequisite knowledge varies greatly. And the purpose of an education is not limited to teaching things that are relevant to today’s jobs.

@frontpage
The opinion I gave on the evaluation of their curriculum is based on the comparison of the top 10 schools we are considering for my little brother. You google the school name, and the words computer science curriculum and it will show you the 4 year layour of classes. You can see a clear difference between a public state college and something like Carnegie Mellon which is among the best in computer science. I wish I can remember one good example, but we’ve seen very clear stark differences in some school’s curriculum.

@GoRedhead

I do agree with you that computer science is taught differently at different schools – I’m familiar with these difference.

Carnegie-Mellon is one of the very strongest Computer Science schools. Many public colleges, such as U Washington Seattle and UC Berkeley, are also among the best CS programs. Some others like U Maryland, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, or U Mass are stronger second tier CS programs. I personally think WPI’s methodology works better for engineering majors than for CS. 7 week terms are too fast and I think that depth is sacrificed to some extent for the condensed format. Also, there is less overall research activity than some other schools, and that on average affects preparation for grad school. It seems like research experience is almost required for getting into a grad program like CMU and is a strong factor in admissions to the stronger second tier programs (except for exceptional cases).

Jobs in the industry are also changing often. It looks like a lot of the interesting senior/4000-level electives at WPI are in security engineering and computer systems. Other schools have different strengths. Some schools like CMU are strong at everything, but most aren’t. I think this is worth looking at.

@frontpage
Very late… sorry! Just reviewing this discussion and was concerned about " I’m not sure if a compilers course has been recently offered at Brandeis or WPI." I was not able to confirm a compiler course at Brandeis, but found this information in the WPI course descriptions:

CS 4533. TECHNIQUES OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE TRANSLATION:
Cat. II This course studies the compiling process for high-level languages. Topics include lexical analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, symbol tables, intermediate languages, optimization, code generation and run-time systems. Students will be expected to use compiler tools to implement the front end, and to write a program to implement the back end, of a compiler for a recursive programming language. Undergraduate credit may not be earned for both this course and for CS 544. Recommended Background: CS 2102 and CS 3133. This course will be offered in 2016-17, and in alternating years thereafter.

Go gently on me “frontpage,” I minored is CS back in 1967, my course instructor was the head of RCA Spectra 70 computer operations on route 495 just outside of Worcester. We were also very involved with DEC, Data General. Prime Computer, Stratus and many other computer companies which were centered in the greater Boston area. DEC was the second largest computer company in the world. Their management believed in a future of larger, networked computers while treating their own PC’s as orphans. When DEC was bought out by Compaq which was bought by HP, everything quickly shifted to CA. including the Computer Museum from Maynard MA and the president of the RCA operations. MIT was the founding and managing horsepower while WPI was the lab rat. Their machines worked very well. Some great chips were developed. They just did not see the PC coming. Many of their WPI engineers lost a lot of their 100% matched retirement funds. Now, if they had left the management to WPI, things might have worked out better!? :bz

@retiredfarmer

Thanks for bringing this up! I wasn’t aware of the compiler course. Your story is pretty interesting…

Yeah the old DEC days were pretty interesting. Lots of great computer scientists and engineers from WPI no doubt helped build them. The I-405 belt is still a major technological presence.

I had a boss who was from WPI, enrolled in the PhD programs at Stanford and MIT, dropped out from PhDs twice to pursue other things, and had a long and fairly distinguished career at HP and later Microsoft. He’s an ultramarathoner in his 60s.