<p>Here is my suggestion: when you are considering a university (or college) spend some time on the web site looking at exactly what kind of real research is going on. Follow the links on the faculty web pages and look at the funding agencies supporting their work. It is not necessary that every single faculty member have an active research program, but certainly there should be enough that any undergraduate who is interested in participating in research have the opportunity. </p>
<p>Re undergraduate research opportunities: every department has an undergraduate program director–sometimes that is a regular faculty member, sometimes it is a dedicated position held by a professional in the field. Either way, it is someone who should be able to tell you whether or not undergraduates have the chance to do real research, where the graduates get jobs, which graduate programs they enroll in, and so on. Look at the web site and find out who that person is. Send an e-mail with questions, or better yet, set up a visit to the school and meet with the undergrad. program director and maybe some faculty who are doing research that interests you. If you can’t find any faculty members willing to meet with a prospective undergrad. then that tells you something about the undergraduate focus.</p>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind regarding the research programs at various schools. One of the advantages of large, well-funded programs is the variety of research going on; if undergrads actually get some choice, and have well-developed ideas of what they like, then that gives them more options. However, if a smaller, less-famous department has less variety, but nonetheless well-funded, programs that are actually available for undergraduates, then there is no big loss of opportunity for many students.</p>
<p>There are a lot of trade-offs to consider. </p>
<p>I recommend actual visits to universities and conversations with faculty members. You are asking some good questions.</p>
<p>As for as the HYP vs. Big State U question, this is another one that can provoke religious wars. However, in CS/IT, a prospective employer does have much more to judge you on than where you went to college. My brother in law and two of my nephews have majored in CS at state universities of no great renown in the field. My BIL has had a successful, lucrative career as a Systems Analyst for interesting companies. One of the nephews nabbed an embarrassingly high salary, straight out of college, at a major financial firm. The other is tripping over job offers as a 4th year student at his no-name state university out West. </p>
<p>A really brilliant physics student we know turned down Chicago for Pitt, due to costs, with good outcomes (published papers, grad school at Cambridge). A neighbor kid turned down Hopkins for VaTech, again due to costs; he seems to be thriving in CS there. </p>
<p>For a bright student who can swing it without incurring large debts, and who will take advantage of opportunities, I still prefer selective private universities. Not for prestige but for substantive differences in the educational quality (smaller classes, top-notch faculty and facilities, a more serious academic atmosphere, etc.) For kids from upper middle income families (too rich for aid, too poor for a name on the library wall) a flagship state university can be a better value particularly in S&T fields or in an honors college environment. The tippy top schools like Harvard and Stanford have been raising the ceiling on incomes qualifying for need-based aid, but others have been slow to follow, or in the current environment are back-sliding on no-loan aid. My oldest kid, who has scads of friends who graduated from top schools, tells me the biggest difference in who’s getting jobs and who’s not is in their work and internship experience, not where they went to school.</p>
<p>UW has about 40 faculty in CS and 150 UG majors so the S/F ratio is under 4:1. There is plenty of time and opportunity to get to know faculty as upper level classes are small. A good overview of the dept is here:</p>
<p>UW has 250 UG majors (hand count) and 200 graduate students. 37 full-time faculty (hand count), but let’s say the ratio is 450:40 which comes out to 11.25 students per prof. I didn’t bother to count affiliated faculty or instructors (if you were to refine this, presumably they’d be counted at some fraction of a FTE), nor did I adjust for professors granting proportionally more attention to graduate students than undergrads.</p>
<p>I believe that UW’s CS program is excellent, possibly among the top in the world, but let’s use real numbers, please.</p>
<p>There are 5 people at the instructor level and they teach a number of lower level classes and are not adjuncts so it’s fair to at least count them as halfs–thus you get 39.5 which I rounded to 40. They also are recruiting for 1 or more new faculty. I think 40 is a fair number.</p>
<p>I’m confused as to how two sources on the same site can provide major counts that differ by a full 100 heads. My number (250 UG) was obtained by hand-counting the student directory (linked above), which is linked in bold from the department home page. I initially went to get the number of grad students, which is conveniently summarized on the grad students page, and decided to count up the undergrads while I was there.</p>
<p>Sorry, but at a big research institution, those numbers are somewhat scoff-worthy. I’m not commenting on WI c.s. in particular, but well-funded research programs include all sorts of ‘research professors’, post-docs who teach an occasional intro course, and senior big-deal names who have no undergraduate teaching responsibilities at all. Some of those people may very well be valuable resources for undergraduates who want to do research, but the size of undergrad. classes may not be closely related to the putative F/S ratio. The question to ask is: Can undergraduates who are interested in research get an opportunity to participate, and at what stage (i.e., sophomore year, or not until senior year)?</p>
<p>^^It’s worth noting that my CS-department ratio includes grad students as well as undergrads–in context, this is only common sense because graduate students are at least as demanding, if not more demanding, of a body requesting a professor’s time. Also, columns are wonderful things, necessitating only that one count up to 125. ;)</p>
<p>I agree that student-faculty ratios are misleading, even at UG-only LACs. But I’ve always been suspicious of ratios like 4:1 unless it’s a very small department.</p>
<p>You can’t compare overall to dept ratios because you only take about 1/4 to 1/3 of your classes in your major. CS is one of those majors you won’t get too many non-majors dabbling in upper level course. Adjusting for that having 40 profs for 150-200 or so ug majors is a very good ratio no matter how you slice it. Business has about 80 profs for 1300 ug majors and another 250 or so MBAs plus PhD’s. No comparison but I had plenty of time to know all my biz major profs pretty well. </p>
<p>The CS website indicates there are lots of UG research opportunities and a very competiitve programming team that has dominated the region and gone to the world competition for a number of years in a row…</p>
<p>Thank you tk21769, Keilexandra, midmo, and barrons. I’m sorry I can’t reply individually to all of you, but I do appreciate your help. You’ve given me a lot to think about.</p>
<p>I doubt I’ll be able to visit many colleges, so I’ll probably block out a weekend to write to different colleges to ask about research opportunities. Email or an actual letter?</p>
<p>I’m somewhat of a minority in the CS field (emphasis on the somewhat) so I have modest hopes of finding a scholarship through some organization, if not the school. I’m not quite sure how this works―I haven’t really given a lot of thought into the financial factor of college since I’m still working on getting my SATs done.</p>
<p>How much stock should I put into published student:professor ratios? I think I read an article a while back about how colleges can sort of ‘massage’ the numbers, so I was thinking I’d just inquire students or alumni directly about professor accessibility.</p>
<p>Brown has several things in its favor for someone with your mix of interests:</p>
<ul>
<li>a strong CS program</li>
<li>an affiliation with the neighboring Rhode Island School of Design</li>
<li>an “Open Curriculum” that provides the guidance of faculty mentors, but without any restrictions on your freedom to mix and match courses from various departments</li>
</ul>
<p>Dunno about any Creative Writing program comparable to what JHU offers.</p>
<p>Thank you! Yeah, it’s increasingly looking like Johns Hopkins is the gold standard when it comes to Creative Writing. But I do like the Open Curriculum thing you mentioned…having a certain autonomy and flexibility in exploring different areas sounds nice.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure my parents have a deep-seated distrust of many Ivies, though.</p>
This attitude seems to be surfacing quite a bit lately (judging from some CC posts, at least).
People blame the financial meltdown on “elites”. They trace a line from Wall Street to the Ivory Towers.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is too fair or logical to connect computer scientists or writing instructors at Brown with the “quants” and financial policy makers, or whomever we’re blaming for this predicament.</p>
<p>Oh, it has nothing to do with the economy. They just think some big-name schools are better at marketing themselves than actually teaching CS. They are prestige snobs of a different sort.</p>
<p>^Lol Brown is my #1. This is random, but OP are you Greek?</p>
<p>Brown was the first thing that came to mind when I read the title of the thread, but they offer somewhat decent FA (though have jacked 2 people I know with need-based aid). The schools already mentioned are your best bets Greekfire. I hope it all works out for you :)</p>