<p>Critical mass is good. (#9).
CMU (06), was S undergrad school with dual degree ME and HCI. I have posted on Graduate Forum that you don't have to take a class in CS (programming) to get a MS degree in CS. This was not an appreciated comment. DS uses computers and what ever programming or application program, tool, or information to accomplish a goal. He supposedly graduated with a MSCS in Jan 08 (finished all requirements in Sept 07). Now on internship with professor and microsoft research lab-India. He has never taken a programming class--dislikes programming. CS is one of the means to the Goal.</p>
<p>My son taught himself enough computer science to take AP Computer Science as a freshman. He also took one course in computer graphics at Columbia's summer school. I don't think it's unusual for kids whose interest is computer science to be primarily self-taught. It's hard for a Mom to know just how proficient there kids are. My son also did some programs for scientists and was hired to freelance programming for a couple of years. He's very happy at Carnegie Mellon. Not everyone at CMU has as much experience as he does though. They have several levels that you can start with - my son skipped over a bunch of them. In addition to CMU he applied to Stanford, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Harvard, Caltech, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Schools we considered as well were: Berkeley, Rice, Georgia Tech, Case Western, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rose Schulman. Mostly rejected for geographic reasons.</p>
<p>Note, my son was 100% positive he would go into computer science and preferred schools that didn't make him take too much outside his areas of interest, but you may have different needs. </p>
<p>Top *grad *programs in computer science are generally agreed to be CMU, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford.</p>
<p>I know for a fact that my son only applied to the School of Computer Science at CMU and that was the only part of CMU that sent him an acceptance. It may have been different in earlier years however.</p>
<p>Even if your son doesn't have previous programming experience, don't assume he can't get into top programs, if his other stats would make them seem possible. 10-20% of CMU's CS freshmen start in 15-100, the lowest level that is offered (it's what non-majors take, too, if they have a CS requirement). There's also many students who are self-taught - most high school courses are not particularly high quality, anyways - and start in higher levels.</p>
<p>One of the advantages of being in a school with a large computer science program is that there will be many more options for elective courses. CMU enrolls around 140 undergraduates per year, while Rice enrolls around 30 (picking on CMU and Rice because I go to CMU and know Rice quite well). CMU will offer semi-obscure electives like "Pen-Based Computing" and "Computational Intelligence Lab"; Rice simply can't. Similarly, there is a much wider range of research at a school with a larger program - Rice's research is focused in a few particular areas (computational biology, computational math, grid/distributed computing), while at CMU you can find pretty much anything you would ever want (within CS). Rice does take the MIT approach and teach the intro programming courses in Scheme. One of the advantages of that is that it gives people with more experience less of an advantage.</p>
<p>Rice is still a great school with a solid program, but it offers something different. There are stronger humanities classes, a more even gender ratio, and one of the most friendly student bodies I've ever encountered. The residential college system is very appealing to some; for me it simply wasn't a priority. Rice also has a pretty strong physics program, I think.</p>
<p>I once met a girl at a Claremont College that wasn't Harvey Mudd; she was a CS major, even though her school didn't offer it. She just took all her CS courses at Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>Our S is currently a sophomore at CMU in CS - one of the deciding factors from our point of view was the career center - about as good as it gets. Also, the CS department is very invested in their students - with only about 140 freshmen entering the dept each year, they are able to keep careful track and give lots of help. DS did take a couple of years of CS in high school including AP and also did CS summer activities but otherwise nothing spectacular.</p>
<p>A few years ago, CMU decided they were missing a lot of potential by requiring high school background in CS so they dropped that requirement and reorganized their currimulum to allow varying starting points, as noted above.</p>
<p>Also, if I remember the parents' weekend talk correctly, CMU does not have a MS in CS, just the BS and then doctorate.</p>
<p>My son was accepted to CMU in CS but ended up going to UIUC, which is ranked in the top 5 schools for Computer Science. He has been VERY happy there. </p>
<p>It may be larger than your son wants; on the other hand, it has everything, should his goals ultimately change.</p>
<p>You can get a masters at CMU, lots of kids were staying for a 5th year to do so. I don't know if you can attend from another institution to get a masters there though.</p>
<p>You have one of the top 20 computer science programs in the country at your own flagship state university, UMCP.</p>
<p>And not everyone there is brilliant or extremely well prepared. Yes, there are kids (mostly from a place you may have heard of in Silver Spring called Blair) who did more computer science in high school than most computer science majors do in college, but there are also plenty of kids with limited or no background in computer science.</p>
<p>My son is a senior in the computer science department at UMCP. He falls somewhere between the two extremes of academic preparation that I described above. He took AP computer science in high school and learned some other programming on his own, but he is no genius, and he is not especially good at math (he actually flunked both the UMCP math placement test and the AP AB Calculus test and had to take both precal and calculus 1 over in college after having already taken them in high school). He came into UMCP with middle-of-the-pack academic qualifications. He was not in the honors program. He did not receive any merit scholarship money. He would not have survived for five minutes at Blair. He didn't even get to start on the computer science major until his second semester because he was behind in math.</p>
<p>He has had extraordinary opportunities despite his lack of extraordinary qualifications. He has had two good summer internships directly related to computer science, and he has been involved in a research project with a professor for the past year, which is going to lead to a published paper and an honors degree (even though he did not qualify for the freshman/sophomore Honors Program). The computer science department specifically encourages undergraduate research by sponsoring a one-credit seminar for first-semester juniors in which professors explain the research going on in their individual research groups and make it easy for students to contact them -- that's how my son came to be involved in research (for which he was paid, by the way). My son also had the opportunity to act as a teaching assistant while still an undergraduate.</p>
<p>He has chosen to go on for a PhD in computer science and has already received an acceptance from one graduate school that he finds attractive. He is waiting on several others. His classmates who have chosen to go into the job market have had no trouble finding jobs directly related to computer science, and some have been offered starting salaries as high as 80K.</p>
<p>If your son likes UMCP in general (and some do not because of the size or location), I think it's worth considering. He could do a lot worse.</p>
<p>St. Mary's Maryland. We just went to their open house and were impressed with their Physics and Computer Sciences. They also have a 3/2 program with UMD.</p>
<p>Sorry, yes, CMU does have a 5th year CS masters program only for its own students:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Fifth Year Masters program is only for students receiving a Bachelor in Computer Science degree from Carnegie Mellon University. The Computer Science Department does not have any other Masters programs. There are other Masters programs offered by other units within the School of Computer Science. Our Ph.D program is a "direct Ph.D" program, meaning students can enter having a Bachelor's degree.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Look for an interdisciplinary program. One that is not simply a part of an engineering, business, or math department. One that covers both theory and practice. Courses in logic, operating systems, networks, compiler design, graphics, etc. But also allows students to investigate subjects from finance to linguistics to psychology (human factors/man-machine interfaces), operations research... After all, computers are ubiquitous in every area of industry. Steve Jobs has a speech in which he praises the course in calligraphy he took as one factor in the eventual success of Apple Computer. Perhaps something like robotics or voice recognition will be key to a future company's success. </p>
<p>Put CMU, UCI, and RPI down on your list.</p>
<p>mdparent, your flagship university UM-CP has a very well regarded CompSci department.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is the nature of the computer science curriculum. Our son is a compsci/cogsci major at RPI(has loved it) on track to graduate in May(yippee). Compsci is a very theoretical major. Students soon discover that programming is little more than a tool and in many classes the students are expected to learn new languages/applications on their own. Our son has taken one purely programming course(Compsci 2) but has probably learned more than 10 programming languages including ones like Prolog-HiLog, Ruby and Panda. </p>
<p>My point in mentioning this is that hs students do not understand the nature of the compsci major and therefore, it may be wise for your son to choose colleges which have a well regarded compsci department but where he could see himself attending irregardless of his major course of study.</p>
<p>^ Like a Computer Engineering major, where he'd study computer-related electronics as well as CS.</p>
<p>I would strongly encourage you to further investigate St. Mary's College of Maryland as Shelly suggested. While they may not have the reputation as UMD and other flagship institutions, for an undergrad St. Mary's will definitely offer stronger training in the major. Your son will be in small class sizes and will receive individualized instruction. I know the faculty are very open to offering classes to meet a group of student's particular interest. I highly encourage you to contact a faculty member. The entire Math & Computer Science Department at St. Mary's goes on a first-name basis and they have a comp sci professor there named Simon who is a great asset to the institution. In addition by having the Naval Air Station nearby, there are a number of internship/job opportunities for students with computer science skills. </p>
<p>Instead of asking how to determine which schools offer a good comp sci program, I would suggest that you go on department websites and e-mail professors. See how much effort they put into responding to you. That will give you a pretty good indicator of how much effort they will put into your son.</p>
<p>UMMBen, i think you are sadly mistaken if you believe that a compsci major will receive a better compsci education at SMCM vs UM-CP.</p>
<p>SMCM has two csci faculty teaching 6 courses this term and one of the faculty is a visiting professor. But yes all of the classes have less than 20 students however none of them are what one would consider other than fundamental or basic elective courses.</p>
<p>UM-CP on the otherhand has 54 faculty not including about 20 affiliated faculty serving other departments but teaching some csci courses. This term UM-CP offers their undergrads 31 csci courses with about 50% having 20 or fewer students, 71% having 30 or fewer and only 2 courses having more than 40 students. And considering the world class computer sci facilities available to UM-CP csci undergrads the comparison is not even close.</p>
<p>Knowing your two csci faculty may be nice but it certainly is not indicative of the quality of the education you will receive. And if you want to specialize in a csci area like AI, data mining, bioinformatics, etc, you will be dead in the water at SMCM.</p>
<p>I attended large universities and the thing many people misunderstand is that with the large student population come magnificent faculty resources. And many departments, particularly those in the physical sciences and engineering, are quite small w/re to undergrad enrollment. In my undergrad days at OSU, there were about 35 CE undergrads in my class and we knew many of our faculty on a first name basis and most knew us also. They sometimes socialized with us during lunch in the student lounge, accompanied us on field trips, played b'ball with us, tail-gated with us on f'ball game days on the Hitchcock Hall patio, etc.</p>
<p>The OP in her second post asked how to find out about small colleges that offered comp sci major. No doubt that UM-CP has a great comp sci and engineering.</p>
<p>Fantastic, nuanced advice to the OP by everyone--as usual, I've learned more on this thread of CC than hours of scouring the web on my own. :-)</p>
<p>My son is also interested in computer science -- we're in NJ. I saw Steven's mentioned (& son is v. interested in Drexel, in Philly only 25 mins from us).</p>
<p>Wondered if I could jump on board here & ask if there were any other NJ schools (non-Princeton) that could be considered strong in computer science? I saw Rutgers listed on the top 30 US News grad schools in comp sci..not sure how their undergrad program ranks, though. </p>
<p>Thanks much for any additional thoughts...</p>
<p>Shelly14, I missed that post. And yes, if her son had an aversion to large universities, UM-CP would not be the place for him. But as I mentioned above, few LAC's are equiped to provide a strong curriculum in compsci because of faculty resources, unlike many other LAC departments in the humanities, bio sciences and arts where they shine.</p>
<p>If size is of major importance he probably needs to look at highly selective LAC which may have a significant csci department or midsized colleges like Case, Rochester, et al. I just do not think that departments with fewer than 7 or 8 faculty can provide the breadth of knowledge necessary for academic excellence in a field like compsci.</p>
<p>Jolynne Smith: </p>
<p>Drexel seems great for someone who is very practical minded and less interested in theory. It's also a 5-yr coop program which could be very good hands on training. If your son is an outstanding math student and likes it, I'd look for a stronger program with better students so that they can go at a faster pace. </p>
<p>Stevens looks very limiting to me. I went to their web page and was turned off immediately by the emphasis on the "hardware-software" interface. That's very specific and shouldn't be the focus of a CS curriculum in 2008. If you're going all the way up there, why not NYU. </p>
<p>Rutgers seems balanced and decent. </p>
<p>From what you told wrote about your son's interest in games, check out Lehigh. That seems like a very good and broad program that also has classes in AI game programming.</p>
<p>That's great, classicrockerdad. Appreciate that. I wouldn't have know that subtlety about Stevens, at all. </p>
<p>Son really likes Drexel (& it's nice that it's so close to us, is v. well-regarded by local employers and has a great co-op). Lehigh is fairly close too, so that's excellent to hear they'd have a strong program (had heard good things about them for other reasons, too).</p>
<p>I printed out your earlier responses explaining the nuances of theoretical CS vs. other types & have given it to son & husband to parse! There's a lot there...glad to hear it set forth so son can analyze it & apply it to his own interests...</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>Hi Originaloog,
You mentioned selective LAC with significant CS departments. How do you find those? I've looked and looked. My son loves Mudd and Reed (but at Reed would have to go to UW to do CS). He wants small and intimate with lots of faculty contact. We're trying to find LACs deep in CS and math but with a range of selectivity. He has scores for the very selective but these days that doesn't mean much. Any suggestions? Thanks all for any help!!</p>