me:
3.3
1200 sat
Sports captain
Many volunteer hours.
What are my best options for computer science on the east coasts and/or more specifically the northeast.
RIT.
As previously mention, RIT . . . Stony Brooks might be ok . . . Penn State might be ok-ish. More info might be nice, too, like where you live, what you can afford, whether you’re aspiring for something, etc…
Live in Massachusetts and let’s say price isn’t a factor. I’m just looking for ideas because I have none.
For an accessible LAC with solid CS, look into Allegheny.
It sounds like you’re not looking for Public In-States. If you are, UMass Lowell looks like a good match.
There are very few colleges that don’t offer CS, so if you could tell us what states you’re interested in, and what your other criteria are, we might be able to help you better.
OP if you are going for CS, consider you cheapest options. CS is very different from other majors, in a sense that what you get out of it depends heavily on you. You can and should start working part-time after your first year, you can work on open source projects, learn high-level languages like F#, Scala or Clojure, design simple games… List goes on and on. So don’t fall for high reputation of any school, any decent school would provide everything you need. UM schools will do it.
You really need to know how much your parents are willing to pay. It does you no good to get a list of great schools if your parents can’t/won’t pay.
WPI?
With Computer Science grads in demand, the requirements to get into that major have increased significantly. For example, RIT was suggested earlier but the middle 50% accepted to the CS major had SAT scores in the range 1330 - 1480. OP will need to get his scores up to gain admission to any “name brand” school as a CS major.
What is it about CS that interests you? …the strong job market, the theoretical underpinnings, the sheer geeky joy of working with computers all day long, some combination of the above? Understanding why you want CS will help you focus your search.
Remember that not all professional programmers have CS degrees. As others have said, entry to CS programs is getting tougher so another strategy is to consider other majors that interest you at schools you really like. For example, you could pursue a business degree while taking a CS or MIS minor and still build a good programming portfolio. If you consider that route, make sure the school you choose makes CS/MIS classes available to non-majors.
If you haven’t already, look into the MIS type majors at schools you like. For schools that admit by major, those majors might get you into places where CS admission wouldn’t be realistic.
Finally, how strong is your math? The math requirements for CS majors varies widely from school to school so if math isn’t your favorite or strongest subject, make sure you don’t apply to programs that require a lot of math classes or that require top math grades to proceed in the major. That’s where the MIS route is often the better choice…getting you into the same jobs as CS majors but without all the calculus and linear algebra (required by some schools).
While this was true in the past partially due to so little demand being met by CS majors previously, a CS (or related) degree is becoming increasingly more a standard box that’s important to have. Many recruiters will specifically look for the CS degree, if not for ease of skill verification in contrast to looking over a Github account to see if the work is actually substantial, etc. A minor these days is more useful for a person in field X who may want to work in CS tangential areas or overlapping ones, but not for a general programmer.