Im a high school senior living in NJ who wants to do computer science as a major. My top choice was stevens as I knew a fair amount of people who were going there for CompSci or Cyber Security and had heard it had a good reputation. recently however I heard that the department was falling apart and a lot of professors were quitting. I really like the town and the campus but I am not sure how good of a school it is for CS anymore. I am also looking into WPI, and Virginia tech CS for both.
Stevens is by no means “falling apart” with respect to computer science. The computer science department is one of the leading CS schools in the United States and has considerably strengthened in the last few years with respect to new research, expansion of its graduate and doctoral programs, and recruiting of outstanding new faculty. The average Stevens computer science graduate in the Class of 2017 received a starting salary of $83,700, which is considerably above the average of all United States computer science schools. Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and many other leading computer science and computer engineering employers recruit at Stevens in the annual on-campus career fairs. Those companies can have their pick of the best and brightest at any school they want, and include Stevens on their “must visit” list of schools.
Some new CS faculty starting this year:
Sandeep Bhatt, Teaching Professor, Department of Computer Science
Sandeep Bhatt comes to Stevens from Hewlett-Packard Labs, where he was the principal research scientist in the Security Management Lab. Previously, he served as director of systems performance at Akamai Technologies and as director of network algorithms at Bell Communications Research. Upon receiving his Ph.D, S.M and S.B degrees in computer science from MIT, Dr. Bhatt joined the computer science faculty at Yale University, and also held appointments at CalTech and Rutgers University. His research interests include applications of discrete mathematics in parallel computation, network design and management and VLSI layout. His pioneering research in the theory of graph embeddings influenced the design of communications systems for the Thinking Machines Corporation’s CM-5 machine and is widely used in data center networks.
Eric Koskinen, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Eric Koskinen was a lecturer/researcher at Yale University, a visiting professor at New York University and a visiting professor at Nagoya University in Japan. He received his Ph.D in computer science from the University of Cambridge. He also spent time at IBM Watson and Microsoft Research. From 2002-05, he was a software engineer at Amazon. Dr. Koskinen’s research yields programming language advances that improve the way programmers develop reliable, efficient and secure software and exploit multi-core/distributed architectures. He has made advances in a spectrum of fields, ranging from systems/concurrency methodologies to foundational results in formal methods. His research is supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, DARPA and the Office of Naval Research.
Xinchao Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
Xinchao Wang was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received a Ph.D. from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland in 2015, and a first-class honorable degree from Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010. His research interests include computer vision, multimedia, big data analytics and machine learning. He has published articles in top journals such as TPAMI, TIP and TMI and at top conferences such as CVPR, ECCV and ICCV, and has served as a regular reviewer for these venues. He received the Outstanding Overseas Scholar Award from the Chinese Academic of Sciences in 2016 and the prestigious Swiss NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015.
https://www.stevens.edu/schaefer-school-engineering-science/departments/computer-science
Good luck with your choice in the school you finally attend. I strongly recommend you consider Stevens.
Cheers, Michael, Ph.D. (Electrical engineering), P.E., Stevens '80
Thanks for the info, I know stevens is building a new comp sci building which I found exciting and i like the selection of classes they offer. It was just that after asking a few people who I knew that went there, they said the quality had declined but its nice to hear that stevens has a bunch of new profs for cs. I’m definitely going to apply there and depending on how many finaid i get I might just end up going there.
There is truth to what you have heard. Complaints I have heard are that there are not enough professors to teach the classes, and that classes are over crowded. Professors in the CS department have recently quit; I am not sure why.
There is a lot of construction currently going on at Stevens. Visit the campus and see for yourself. It will not be ready in the next couple of years. Student housing is strained. If you live in any type of Stevens housing, even in an apartment, you must purchase some type of meal plan.
Go and talk to the students and see what they say. Find out for yourself. Please talk to actual CS students at Stevens before you make this very important decision.
I also recommend that you look up some current CS professors on the Stevens website and then view comments on rate my professor.
stevens is a dismal place to be. Extremely overpriced and you really have to look closely instead of how pretty the surrounding town is. Ask those friends who you know are there currently if they are satisfied with the prospects of paying their exorbitant loans for what they are getting currently.
WPI is awesome for computer science so it depends if you can get in, but if you want to go for a different major then it might be easier. WPI is ranked high and gives plenty of aid.
Virginia Tech is great for Engineering but for Computer Science it might be a bit easier to get into the program than WPI. If you are looking for CompSci in NJ you might want to consider Rutgers NewBrunswick, Rowan, Stockton, TCNJ.
If your specialization in Computer Science is Information Technology or Information Systems then your best bet is NJIT. Rutgers Newark may also be considered if you want a smaller campus closer to New York City. In my personal opinion I’d say if your grades are good enough here are your top 3, Rutgers New Brunswick, TCNJ, and Rowan.
@slimmy are you currently a student at Stevens? I gathered from your posts that you are a current high school junior.
Not sure if you can apply the term ‘dismal’ to a school you are not attending. All schools have good and bad points. If you have specific concerns, it would be interesting to hear them.
@slimmy- I second rualum- do you currently attend Stevens? If not youtr comment is of no value. I’m laughing that you are comparing Stevens to TCNJ, Rowan, WPI, Stockton (you’ve got to be kidding!) all of which are less selective than Stevens, have less sponsored research, some of which have no research doctoral program in CS, and whose graduates trail behind those of Stevens in career outcomes. The average starting salary of a Stevens CS graduate in the most recent class this year was $83,700 with 100% placement in industry, government, military, or graduate school. Clearly the real world of industry and profession does not agree with you. That Stevens graduates as a whole among all majors command the tenth highest starting salaries and ROI on tuition means that they are not paying an overpriced tuition- in fact- they are getting a bargain. At tenth out of 1,130 schools in Payscale’s survey for example I would hazard to say Stevens graduates consider their tuition (of which they do not pay the “sticker price”) to be quite a good investment.
So, please, do enlighten this thread on your base of knowledge- not only about Stevens but all the other schools you named that you think are better.
@slimmy- additionally, your statement that “ask your friends if they are satisfied with the prospects of paying back their student loans…” too makes me laugh. Firstly nobody is paying the “sticker price” of tuition. Most students have about half of their cost of attendance covered by scholarships and grants. Some have full tuition scholarships. In case you haven’t noticed, New Jersey has among the most expensive public colleges and universities in America. With financial aid, many students can attend Stevens at roughly the same cost as a public institution. Secondly, Stevens has one of the lowest student loan default rates in the US, so, no, the vast majority of Stevens students have no qualms about paying back their student loans as I didn’t when I attended Stevens. Stevens students once again are the tenth highest paid college graduates in America, so, tell me- what do you think?
Stevens is a fine school. No one should say otherwise! A secondary school classmate of mine left for Stevens in 1963 as I left for WPI. I went to WPI because my father had lived in the neighborhood and said he had never seen students work as hard as the WPI engineers. I don’t think he was very familiar with the nature of engineering studies. We all worked!
FYI: The average salary for BS graduates in CS at WPI for 2016 was $85,456 (93.1% knowledge rate). Twenty six WPI faculty have been awarded NSF Career awards, six in Computer Science with the last two awarded in 2017. We are particularly proud of the Bernard M. Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering won by four WPI faculty in 2015 for the development of new educational approaches. I was not able to learn from the website the current research funding level in the CS department.
All WPI students are required to complete two research projects and a third thematic sequence or minor in the humanities to earn their BS or BA (yes, we have a few of those). One of the projects is in their major (the MQP) and equivalent to nine semester hours. A second project is interdisciplinary in nature (the IQP) and is also equal to nine semester hours. Coursework is coordinated with student research. ALL WPI undergraduates are now awarded a $5,000 credit on their tuition to enable all WPI students to participate in one of over forty off campus project centers around the world. This is not your standard classes abroad program. The $5,000 credit starts with the class of 2022.
The WPI alumni are very excited about this! We are not trying to declare war on the very reputable schools which are working hard to accomplish many of the same goals. Some of our methods are different.
retiredfarmer, WPI 1967 :bz
I am currently doing my graduate master fellowship at Stevens and undergraduate at umn-twins cities. Maybe it is irrelevant to the undergraduate situation but here just some of my thoughts to share. I have a chance to work with Dr. Koskinen in person, and he is very friendly and smart guy and also taken the class with Dr. Bhatt in the past spring. I will list some facts that you may want to consider and answer each one of them according to Stevens scenario.
Facts:
- teaching quality
- research
- social life
- professional networking
- Reputation
- In term of teaching quality, there are some professors are very good at teaching as compare to umn and class material generally is easy as I am a TA for the undergraduate course. In my experience, I found many research professors sometimes have a hard time in teaching which makes the class time inefficiently and unnecessarily confused student. However, Stevens has a high ratio of teaching professor and many professors is not bad at teaching. It is generally a good idea if you have an easy exam that you can spend more time focus on research to develop better profile when applying graduate school and if you pursue a professional career, then you may want to spend more time in professional network growth. The only limitation that you should concern, Stevens is generally a very small school that you don't have many chances to explore the different areas or high-level course in computer sci such as high level distribute system, internal data system, and bioinformatics. It is important to undergraduate if you have the curiosity about Computer Sci and it can really help you to discover your primary interests in the research study during the early stage.
- Generally, Stevens does not cover a wide range of research (Computer Sci department) area. Most of the professor here(2018) is focus on either machine learning, Data Sci, or cybersecurity. Few professors are doing software engineering as well. You should check the Stevens Ten year strategic plan to discover the most recent research direction. Gain a research experience is less competitive as compared to other schools like UIUC or UMN. Some labs have some fascinating research topics and publications. Check out the publication site to gain a more in-depth understanding. Many large universities have a competitive candidate pool bcos students have a strong wish for research experience. Many top labs in other universities may have 3:1(student: position) ratio. Thus, it may not guarantee to get what you want. This is not the case here. The undergraduate has summer research fellowship support by the Stevens which you can guarantee to have research experience(a good thing). Research is generally important and the most important factor for Ph.D.program as it demonstrates your capability of research and primary interests in the field.
- It is the most important factor for me, good quality of social life means so much when you became overly stress. So Play hard then work hard! Next to NYC is a good thing.
- For some reason, Stevens has very deep connections to some Financial Firms? They always organize networking events on campus(almost too much), and career center was one of the highest rank career services in the country. They always trying a new way to reconnect alumni and invite the new employers. I may not be the right person to speak for Stevens.
- Honestly, I have never heard about Stevens before I apply here. However, it looks like NJ has strong recognition for Stevens education. It is a very small department though so it may not have significant publications every year. Well, It is ABET approved and should be acceptable everywhere.
To be honest, all schools are like a platform for you and is up to you whether you want to use the resource available. Sometime it may not be a direct path to your goal, but life is about making mistakes and correct them.Eventually, you will work hard enough to get to your goal. So plan your goal, work hard and be proud of your choice.