It seems that, at least when ColoFatherOf3 is screening applicants, it is. Of course, a sample size of one means very little, but at the very least we can say that in some situations prestige does matter.
At smaller companies where anyone can decide to do anything, sure. At the powerhouse cs companies, hell no.
The CS field is as close to a true meritocracy as has ever existed. A graduate of any decent state university who has a paper or two published and a solid portfolio of code on Github is going to get the job ahead of any “top school” graduate who has nothing but grades and a diploma to show.
Of the schools you list, go where your enthusiasm leads you.
You are missing some perspective here. You made the same salary as the kids from Harvard, Stanford, UCB who ended up at the same place you did. The ones that did better, well, they are not working the same place you are.
Ok, so now we’re moving away from blanket statements and qualifying things. This is progress.
While it may be more meritocratic than most areas of employment, there are still plenty of inefficiencies in hiring. No employer can know the full range of possible employees, and no job applicant can know the full range of employers, so there are some who fail to find the potential best fits. Initial contact is still often made by referrals (which can be considered nepotism). Not every job applicant has a portfolio of open source software to show, and the interviewing process does have time and money costs while still giving incomplete information to both the employer and the job applicant.
Still, it is probably a lot better then in many other types of jobs, where referrals (nepotism) are relied on more, and it is more difficult for the employer to judge the job applicant’s qualifications in the interview.
Is it worth it? I would pose the question backwards. If your parents gave you a budget for college that was sufficient to go to Rice at full price would you go to Rice or go to UT and pocket the difference?
If you would go to UT, then choose UT and let your parents pocket the difference.
If you would choose Rice (realizing that you were blowing your budget in one place), then choose Rice.
Going to rice would not hurt my parent’s lifestyle; it’s more of an incentive to pick a cheaper school.
I’d have no loans from any school, but Alabama would have 35k grad school 10k cash and could join a fraternity
The grad school thing doesn’t faze me much because I know my parents, and I know they will most likely end up paying for grad school if I’m doing well.
On job aspect, I’m worried most about entry level jobs. My dad is a recruiter in the field and knows what I need after 3-5 years at a large well known company.
He just doesn’t know what what exactly it takes to get into a large well known company.
If I’m understanding the general consensus, a job at a large scale corporation does not matter about where I go?
What about internships?
I personally enjoyed the feel of campus in this order:
- Alabama
- SMU
- UT/Rice
- Texas A&M
Haven’t visited the rest
@WISdad23 if I was offered 150k to go to UT? I wish!
You may want to see if the career center at each school will tell you what percentage of recent CS graduates are employed, still looking for work, and in graduate or professional school, and what employers tend to recruit at each school, if post graduation employment prospects associated with each school are important to you.
You can try searching for “[name of school] career survey” to see if that is publicly available on the school’s web site.
The biggest companies often do recruit widely, so their presence on less well known (for CS) schools may not be that surprising. Medium size and smaller companies may not have the recruiting resources or needs to recruit everywhere, so they may recruit more locally or regionally, plus a smaller number of schools more distant from their job locations. Some companies are school-prestige conscious (e.g. Wall Street and consulting), so their school recruiting favors higher prestige schools.
“Ok, so now we’re moving away from blanket statements and qualifying things. This is progress.”
If OP is interested in small firms where hiring managers are likely to be biased like we saw earlier, then sure. If OP is looking to go to a top cs company, HR actually has policies in place for screening candidates fairly. It’s not just “Oh they went to MIT, therefore they get an automatic trip out here.” That would be ludicrous at Google, Microsoft, etc. No one at the top hires like that.
And at this point I think I’ve said all I can in this thread. OP, if you’re looking at name-brand cs companies, feel free to PM any questions you may have. I’m actually familiar with the hiring processes among those kinds of companies (because I’ve worked for them).
EDIT: And one last thing – Bama is pretty universally recognized as a fantastic engineering school. So I’m not even sure why we’re having this silly debate in the first place. They’ve given OP merit AND he likes it. Why shouldn’t he go? Even investment banking firms recruit there, and so does everyone else.
Courtney, words matter, especially when communication is being done on an internet forum. When you make a blanket statement such as “CS is NOT a field where undergrad prestige matters,” you should qualify it, unless the statement is an absolute truth. That’s all I’m pointing out. Inaccuracy does a disservice to those who come here for advice and don’t know any better.
There are two issues here:
- college as mainly a vehicle to an internship and, later, a job.
For CS, any flagship or Top 200 university in Princeton Review/Forbes/etc. will do. Not all employers may recruit there and you may have to hustle a bit more depending on the place, but all in all a string CS student will find a job regardless of where they’re from, and probably even a middling CS major with good internship reviews. - college as an experience : this varies and depends on what you, personally, are looking for. If football is important, then Bama is (literally) hard to beat. Rice will offer a different atmosphere, with the ‘house’ system reminiscent of the Oxbridge system. Private universities will offer better comfort of learning, there’s just more money there. There may be more geographic diversity at Rice, then Bama, then UT. Austin is better than Tuscaloosa and UT will have more socio economic diversity than Bama. And what about weather… Study abroad opportunities… Companies that recruit there…? What you prioritize really depends on what matters to you.
Bama vs. Rice vs. UT? All three will take you where you want to go. So, now, think if your ideal college and what characteristics are most important to you. Give each I’d those two points. Add discrete elements that matter to you and give them 1 pt.
Does any college come put on top?
And how do you feel about the result - excited? Disappointed?
Finally, you have several months before a decision is due. If really you can’t decide, let it sit and sift and percolate.
Courtny is clearly an accomplished young woman, but she doesn’t know what she hasn’t yet been exposed to.
There are two things to consider here. First, every college has a wide range of students, and there is overlap between the more talented students at a state flagship and the students at highly selective colleges. This is why students from both places end up at well known companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc. These companies need lots of people, and they cast a wide net in order to pull in strong students from all over.
But many of the most talented students have even better options. For example, are you demonstratably one of the top 200 hundred strongest math kids in the country, AND do your professors have strong relationships with companies that pay top dollar for this talent? Well, you may get “invitation only” interviews. There certainly are very strong students at the state flagship level, but companies recruiting at this level find it much more efficient to search at colleges where the concentration is higher.
If you decide you want to do something other than cs, or you want to do something with your cs degree that isn’t traditional, your network could matter. In my experience, where someone went to school doesn’t change how much they get paid but it does change whether or not they get an interview. Or whether someone will listen to their idea in order to fund it.
Schools tend to have their strongest networks in their region. If you found yourself in a different part of the country, (relocated for family reasons, for example ), network and reputation could matter. Of course, the further away from school you get, the more experience matters.
I would consider whether you might need that money for grad school, how flexible the programs are (if you change majors, want to do things outside your major), and the overall environment.
While your question is about getting a job after graduation, college is about the 4 year experience as well. Those are your first years as an adult and ones you will spend in an environment unlike any other. Your parents are probably asking you to think about the whole picture.
As a parent, it’s great to have a kid who is sensitive to the costs. Freedom of choice is also an enormous gift to give your child. You can pursue learning all your life but you can only go to college once, and I suspect your parents want you to make those 4 years as wonderful as you can. Go to the accepted students day and see how you feel then.
Once more from me. Make sure your parents are really OK with total costs anywhere. If they are, consider yourself fortunate, and make your college choice according to other factors.
It’s great that you’re sensitive to costs for your parents. I would revisit your top schools and go to the school we’re going to have the best experience. You mention jobs and grad school, so focusing on recruiting is really not the most important because you may end up in grad school. That tells me you’re unsure of what you want to do and you really should just choose based on where you feel most comfortable, not where you’ll have the best chance of working at Apple or Amazon Etc. ( which by the way are not the end-all-be-all of jobs).
I have nearly 30 years in the software biz, 25 of it making staffing decisions. I’ve been on the record here many times saying that prestige of undergrad degree does not matter if you want a good job, and that the three true geniuses at my shop today all have degrees from different SUNY schools. If you have the gift, and love the craft, you’ll always work, no matter where you went. End period.
That being said… if you want to work at a specific company, then yes, it can matter.
It has been explained to me by someone smarter than I am that MIT and CMU are feeder schools for Pixar. Can you get a job at Pixar with a CS degree from my alma mater, Syracuse? Sure. Is it much, much easier if you went to MIT?
What do you think?
The reason your early jobs are important in programming are because that is where you develop your professional portfolio and experience. If your first job is ASP & Oracle, it is likely your second job will be also, since experience is so valuable.
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