My parents just let me know that they’re willing to pay for any school I get into. I’m a Texas resident applying to Texas A&M, UT Austin, Rice, WashU, Alabama, SMU, Cal Poly, and Case Western.
I’m applying to those schools for Comp Sci. Assuming I were to get into all the schools, which one do y’all think is the best pick?
Up to this point, I was in between Alabama and UT. With change in pricing, I guess I have more options.
My real question is it worth the price for prestige? My parents wouldn’t need loans, and the cost will not be a significant financial burden. Rice would be 150k more than UT.
I know I’ll get less things, like less spending money.
What is y’all’s opinions? If you were giving the option to attend a prestigious small private school for no cost to yourself, but it would cost your parents a small fortune, would you do it?
Do y’all think it would affect me financially in my future of computer science (cyber security) by attending a more prestigious university?
What are your parents’ assets and their earning potential for their working life? Sometimes $150K isn’t that huge if your parents’ revenue stream continues to grow. It’s great that you’re thinking about this – have an open & honest talk with them. Tell them that $150K seems a whole lot and “value” might mean different things to different people.
If it genuinely isn’t a burden for them, then pick whichever school you get into that you like the best and is strong in your major. You don’t have to pick now – go to accepted student visits at your top choices once you are accepted.
If you are able to do so, I would visit when classes are in session, attend a class or two, and see if there is a meaningful difference in quality of instruction and students and the overall campus vibe. It may be that you end up preferring a more economical option.
Of your Texas options, UT-Austin and Rice are the ones to beat. Wash U might be worth the upcharge with respect to prestige, class size, and a more personalized experience.
At the end of the day, maybe it’s not that much on a 500+k a year income, especially with the 150k spent over 4 years, but it still feels like a fortune to me.
I mean here’s the reality: your parents can afford it. You get to go where you want. Great.
BUT, if you’re asking if that’s going to improve your job prospects, no. It’s not. Not in cs. So really you just get to go to your first pick. If that’s really important to you, go. But if you want to save your parents money (whether or not they need to), there’s no career benefit to be gained here.
Of the schools you list, I don’t think it matters where you get your CS degree from, as they are all some what comparable (maybe with a few exceptions, but I won’t bother with that) and good schools with good CS programs. That said, I disagree that it doesn’t matter where you get your CS degree from. It absolutely matters.
Let me speak from experience as a CS grad (bachelors and masters) who has been in the industry for years and has actually hired software engineers.
When I looked at resumes, I absolutely looked at the school. Our HR department would get resumes from all over. It didn’t cost much money to interview the local candidates as I didn’t have to pay for travel expenses. When I choose to fly somebody in for an interview, they tended to be students who stuck out from the crowd. I certainly remember the MIT grad I few out for an interview. Why did she get chosen by me? Because she was the only MIT grad I had in my pile of resumes.
Yes, the school can matter, even well after you graduate.
Remember that recruiting visibility for a specific major or type of job may not necessarily correlate to general school prestige. For example, Silicon Valley computer companies who travel to recruit but are not large enough to travel widely are most likely to have heard of UT Austin (nationally well known) and CPSLO (regionally well known) than your other schools. But the recruiting lists may differ for employers in other regions and industries (for example, some employers in Texas may favor the schools in Texas over others).
Whether Rice or WUStL is worth more than UT Austin to you and your parents can depend on various factors. But it is unlikely that recruiting visibility is a factor that favors them if you major in CS and want a typical computer industry job (as opposed to Wall Street or consulting or some such).
@ColoFatherOf3 other than MIT, Cal-Tech, and perhaps a few other top tech schools, how far down the prestige list would you go in favoring spending for travel for a candidate? And how many years after graduation does that reallty matter vs. applicable work experience? I’m also a CS grad who has interviewed and hired in the past, so I’m just curious as I’ve never had an MIT or Cal Tech resume appear on my desk – so it’s hypothetical to me.
You are lucky to have options and I think right to evaluate whether it is worth paying $150k more for a different name. From the schools you have listed, I don’t think so. I think they are all good schools, so would then look at other things about the school that you like - size, location, sports, special programs. If you like music, does the school offer anything for you? If you like the ocean, go to SLO. Football? Texas, A&M, or Alabama are going to be a lot more exciting than CWU.
I like to save money so I’d pick one of the pubics with big money.
It depends on your parents’ real financial situation. If it’s truly not going to make a dent in their lifestyle either now or moving forward and the money that they would spend on your undergraduate education would not be needed for grad school or any current or future needs (when you say you’ll get fewer things, it sounds like it will make a dent), then select the school that truly is the best fit.
See what your options are, visit the schools, and make the best choice.
We can’t pick your college for you! If finances really are not a consideration, pickmthe place where you think younwill be happy and thrive as a student. Count your blessings that finances don’t need to be a consideration.
@stencils There are two types of filtering I did. On the top end, maybe 3-5 schools would cause me to pull the resume to the top of the pile: MIT, Cal-Tech, Stanford, (other 2 may depend on the day). I only had 1 MIT resume ever cross my desk, but that person got an all expense paid trip to Denver as a result. I probably did more filtering at the “bottom end” of the spectrum. If you were local and not from CU-Boulder, CSU or Colorado School of Mines, you likely didn’t get a call back from me unless I was really hurting to find somebody. If you were from a school I had never heard of, you needed to stand out in some other way or I filtered you out.
As for how long it matters, I think it matters forever to some extent. Unless you have the exact specific skills I’m looking for (not very likely), I want somebody who can learn the protocols of the industry I’m in quickly and start having an impact quickly. There is a large disparity between talent among programmers and I generally preferred finding people who were good at learning and programming in general. Those folks could pick up new things quickly. For youngsters, undergraduate GPA was a good indicator of how well they may do. For older folks, it gets harder, so you look at their body of work and rely heavily on the interview, but undergraduate school attended can also remain a good indicator.
Are there great programmers from schools I’ve never heard of? Absolutely! It just may be harder for them to get my attention on a resume.
Essentially, you’ll be paying for facilities shared with fewer people, more support, better dorms, more comfortable learning environment, perhaps a larger or more powerful alumni network. It’s all qualitative. Is it worth th pric diffrnc? Only you can decide. Have you visited the different campuses? Any stuck out to you?
Apply, get admitted. Then figure it out.
Caltech is really small, so it is not too surprising not to have encountered resumes of people from there. MIT is somewhat larger, but you will be competing with Wall Street and consulting employers, leaving fewer new graduates to attempt to hire by other employers.
Technical people I see in the computing industry tend to have undergraduate backgrounds biased toward state flagship universities (big and have many students capable of completing a CS major) and in-state public universities (big and relatively close and convenient to recruit at). There tend to be a smattering of self-educated people with no bachelor’s degree or one unrelated to CS. H-1B visa holders hired directly (not through outsourcing companies like Tata, Infosys, Wipro, and IBM) are likely to have master’s degrees from US universities after bachelor’s degrees from non-US universities.
“only had 1 MIT resume ever cross my desk, but that person got an all expense paid trip to Denver as a result.”
And I get all-expenses-paid trips out to the company campuses every single time I get an internship interview. So what? I don’t go to a name-brand school. CS is NOT a field where undergrad prestige matters.
– so it’s hypothetical to me.