Does anyone have a sense of which colleges that have a top 50 computer science ranking are less stressful and cut throat? My son will need to study quite a bit, but he should get adequate sleep, and at least a weekend social life. I have heard this week about Engineering student suicides at both MIT and Carnegie Mellon.
The top CS programs I know about are quite cooperative and definitely not cutthroat. However they are demanding and difficult.
The suicides at top schools get a lot of publicity, but they occur at a lower rate than in the general population. Additionally, it is unclear the they happen more often at top schools. It may be that they top schools report them more, there is not good data on this. If you are choosing a college because for 100 years there have been virtually no suicides or sexual assaults, I can assure you that all you have really learned is that they are not reporting them.
The top schools are more likely to disclose and count suicides that other schools don’t count. For example an enrolled student at an East Coast school who commits suicide during break, at his parents home in California. Incidents that involved a student, but did not occur any where near campus, or even during a semester.
Still when we sent our daughter left for a top CS program, it was a concern. It can happen to any student, at any school. No parents thinks it is going to be their kid, but some of us are wrong.
As a parent you can help by making sure that your student knows to reach out to you at the first sign of any mental health issues, and be certain that you will always be supportive and not critical. Additionally, I told DD1 when she left for college that I thought she was going to be a big success, but that I wanted her to know that I understand how difficult the school she is attending is. I told her that there is no shame in trying something hard and failing, and that even if she gets an F in every class, we would come and get her and welcome her home with open arms, and help her get back on her feet and make a new plan.
She has been doing amazingly well so far, but I am glad that when she is under a lot of stress she knows that we will always love her, support her, and have her back.
Unfortunately late adolescence is a time when a number of mental illnesses appear. There have been a number of parents who sent kids off to college who became ill freshman year. It had nothing to do with the stresses of the school.
CMU is intense, but I don’t think engineering is appreciably more or less intense in one place than another. And at least at CMU computer science is in a smaller school separate from engineering. They have an integration course for the CS freshman only which is really designed to keep things a little light hearted. (One assignment was to do something off campus.
There are many top 50 computer science programs that are part of major flagship and other universities. These U’s offer top notch CS but also have much more than science and engineering. Being part of a university where a student will mingle with other STEM students who are equally smart may take away some of the intensity while still giving the course work. I just do not equate CS with being “cutthroat”. I do see where MIT can be intense but it and the elite overall schools are not the only route to a good CS foundation.
I just looked at the USN&WR rankings for CS grad schools. So many schools in the top TWENTY (UW Madison tied for 11th and UW-Seattle higher) that are public flagship U’s which offer a well rounded experience for students. Yes, these are grad school rankings but undergrads benefit from that. CS students also benefit from top notch math programs which these schools tend to have as well. There are many choices available which offer Honors programs plus a well rounded experience. My son was an Honors math major with several more theoretical CS courses who added the required other courses for a second major and is working in software. Off hand I could name several schools where there is room for both the academics and a diverse social life (not all students party but there is a wealth of other ways to do nonacademic things).
Look at the list and if you do not need the top two or three schools you will find many diverse settings to get a top notch CS education without as much stress.
btw- the “will need to study quite a bit”- does this mean the math doesn’t come as easily to him? Top students tend to be more serious studiers in HS but also find time for extracurriculars. If your son needs more time to do the work in HS than the good math students he may not be looking at the top CS schools. ALL serious college students study “quite a bit” compared to the average student. When a student is passionate about a subject it is easy to choose to take more challenging courses and spend more time with them.
Short answer. Many choices in the top 10, 20, 50 that give great academic opportunities and a social life.
I attend Northeastern, and I think we’re just outside top 50 for CS- top 60, maybe? But I think we have a really good program per plenty of friends in it. The quality of education is solid, the co-op program virtually ensures hire post-grad (at really great jobs, too- Intuit, Hubspot…), and it’s definitely not a cut-throat environment or one where students can hardly live.
I never considered CS to be an intense major outside of MIT or Carnegie Mellon. Some schools have limited enrollment so CS majors can get their courses in this very popular major. Perhaps my view is skewed by a gifted son who just did things and didn’t seem pressured.
I know I shouldn’t judge by how hard my son(s) work. My older son worked hard at Carnegie Mellon - harder than he had ever worked before. But I thought the department had a very friendly vibe. He hung out with kids in the computer cluster playing video games between problem sets. Kids drew cartoons on the walls, there was an adjacent cafe. My somewhat anti-social kid had real friends there.
It reminds me what Mark Twain said… “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”
I just got accepted to Carnegie Mellon (School of Computer Science). I am kind of freaking out since I read that two CMU students committed suicide last week. Unfortunately, this seems to happen more frequently than anyone would hope. I checked how CMU provided remediation in the past… And it seems ridiculous – they focused in expanding emergency services and some minimal aspects. I was also reading a paper from the “ThinkTank” organization within CMU – and I was shocked to know that a few professors expected this rigor would help to “weed out” students… So, it seems that stress is an essential part of the program…
I really love Computer Science, and I think CMU would be the best place for me… But… Why CMU thinks that providing penalizing grades is the best way to educate a young mind? CMU also using “units” that should be reflecting the total number of hours in and out a particular class. But I only hear people doing much more hours than that… I am not afraid of working hard. I just wish I could work hard in a WARM environment. Give me some room for me to decide where I want to work hard, please…
But why places like CMU, Berkeley, and so on insist the best way to prepare people for CS is to overwork them in ALL CLASSES?.. I would probably learn much much much better if I knew I could have less punitive grading curves. A friend in Stanford explained that many classes are really intense, but he is not really afraid of failing I wish I could feel that way… I am not afraid of hard work, or even stress… I am only really afraid of non-sense grading curves and professors who think only robot-like students deserve to be in CS.
Kloud- there are lots of ways to study CS if you don’t want to intensity of CMU. And you likely know enough math to realize that two suicides at CMU isn’t relevant or predictive of anything without understanding the suicide rates of the entire cohort (kids 17-25 or thereabouts), where lots of data show that kids who DON’T go to college kill themselves at a higher rate than kids who do.
I know a kid who opted for CS at Drexel despite having more “prestigious” options. He’s having a blast, and a social life, and has a good job lined up after graduation thanks to having done a co-op there.
CMU may not be right for you. Ok- so go somewhere else.
I went to a top-4 CS school for undergrad, got enough sleep, had a social life on the weekends, and was for the most part, not stressed. A lot of the issues you hear about stress have to do with people’s attitudes, and realizing that attending a top college is not like high school. By this I mean, it’s not possible to take the hardest and the most classes, get straight A’s, and be the president of a bunch of clubs, and so on. From talking to friends, the same issues seem to appear at schools not necessarily known for computer science or engineering. And in my opinion, are not as related to presence of suicides as people think.
What’s wrong with Stanford? Or Brown?
One of those students was a foreign grad student. Their lives and stresses are nothing like those of the average undergrad.
@warbrain I feel that colleges were asking me to have “almost perfect” grades and scores, then I just needed to find the cure for cancer – and I will got in. . So, after many years in this system, how can colleges blame the students for lack of transitions skills to college life? Colleges are the ones creating this culture, in my opinion.
dstark – Brown was my top choice for CS, but unfortunately I did not get in. First of all, I thought their support was amazing. They have TAs to work very closely with all CS students. It feels more like mentoring than TA, actually. Also, there is freedom to structure the curriculum. Grade inflation also was a nice feature… From all CS courses, I think Brown is possibly the least stressful one.
Mathmom - there is another suicide-murder at CMU yesterday. I agree with Blossom that it may difficult to read these numbers. However, what concerns me more is how the way that CMU has responded to this situation.
My D was a CS undergrad and now a grad student at UC Berkeley. I think UC Berkeley is among the “top 50 computer science ranking.”
According to her, and according to what I observe of her and her friends, it is NOT cut-throat at all. I don’t think I would even call it is “competitive.” It appears competitive because every student is so smart and at least most of them work very hard. On the contrary, the atmosphere is very cooperative. There are study groups, there are informal clubs that meet regularly and discuss interesting topics in CS. My D told me that if anyone wanted the answer to a homework problem, he/she would get it just by asking around or come to the TA. For more advanced questions or if the student wants to learn more than what presented in the class, professors are available and very approachable.
But it is difficult. If a student just want to graduate with 2.0 GPA, it’s relatively simple. But if one wants an A for a class, or a GPA of 3.5 and above (e.g. for grad school application), he/she will have to work very very hard, again, just because everyone else is smart and hardworking too.
Interestingly, my D, when being an undergrad, many times told me (with a bit complaining hint) that her classmates were socializing too much, and that they should be concentrating more on studying.
Has she observed any change (among frosh/soph students) since the L&S CS major’s minimum entry GPA was raised from 2.0 to 3.0 a few years ago and then more recently raised to 3.3?
(This was done for capacity control reasons; L&S CS used to graduate fewer than 100 students per year, but now graduates over 300 per year; this is in addition to EECS also increasing, though to a much lesser extent due to being gated at the frosh and transfer admission stage.)
How hard one needs to work at somethings depends on one’s background knowledge and innate abilities. If a person needs to work very hard to get acceptable grades to continue in a field perhaps that person should reconsider the major. If you struggle to understand the concepts and need much more time to do problem sets/create programs et al than most perhaps the field isn’t your forte. My impression is that software development/program creation is always time consuming. With the huge increase in popularity of CS as a major the least able may not get the jobs desired. This comment is aimed at others, not the OP- he seems to be above average by his post.
She was admitted EECS, so if there was any change, it wouldn’t be among her cohorts.
She told me one interesting thing last weekend, however: there were L&S students taking the three classes in question with P/NP option, and purposely “asked for” an NP grade. They then retook the class with letter grade option. Now that they knew most of the materials, the chance of having good final grade increased tremendously.
Apparently the administration is aware of this practice, but hasn’t done anything yet.
@pentaprism I don’t like the term “cut-throat” because it puts people on the defensive and tends to mask the fact that there are very different cultures among the schools. Every CS/Engineering program requires that students work in groups, so one can’t use that as an indicator of culture.
Berkeley appears competitive because the students are competitive and the culture fosters it. Your second quote is more indicative of the Berkeley culture. This is true for MIT and CMU as well.
These are very good schools for the right type of person, but they can be less than optimal to deadly for the wrong type.
It has more to do with personality than intelligence. Some people have thick skin and are energized by competitive environments. Some people have thin skin and are uncomfortable engaging in competition.
I have family members who have attended MIT and I recruit at MIT for certain types of jobs, but I would not attend MIT (undergrad) myself and would not encourage my children to attend (based on their specific personalities).