Why wouldn’t a safety be academically suitable?
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Regarding probability, event dependence becomes practically relevant as certain information becomes available. That is, in the case of colleges, an early admission result can help predict further results. Before that time, events must be considered independently. If this represents fallacy in the minds of some, it might be because they have been unwilling to consider that the best independent estimates for admission to some colleges for some applicants might approach zero.
Correlations generally can’t be inferred from early admissions alone, because most early admissions (ED, SCEA) are exclusionary. They must be inferred from historical data on cross-admits. Such data are generally not publicly available, making correlation estimates difficult.
However, colleges in similar category would have higher correlation of admissions than colleges in different catagory. For example. a tech school would have higher correlation than another tech school but lower correlation with a non-tech school. Likewise, colleges sharing other similar attributes would have higher correlation among them than with others that don’t share these attributes. Consequently, one way to maximize, mathematically, one’s chance of admissions is to apply to colleges that are more “distinct” from each other. But that isn’t generally practical for many students because they don’t “fit” all these “distinct” colleges.
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With respect to CS, look into Bucknell and Lafayette, which in most years fall into this acceptance-rate range. I’m hesitant to recommend these schools as ideal social fits for your son, however.
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Bucknell is a match and a reach if you go for engineering/business
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I’m afraid social fit is not ideal at Bucknell, Lehigh, and potentially Lafayette. Although somewhat preppy, he’s not outgoing and is more of a gamer. He spends a lot of time on academics and decompresses playing screens and legos. In normal times, he goes on a few outings (dinner, movie, hang out) with friends, but mainly keeps to himself.
In general, schools with high levels of fraternity participation may not be ideal for your son.
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@merc81 Agree 100% 
Does he need merit money? Would he qualify for fin aid? People have put forth wonderful schools, but do you have 300K in the bank to pay rack rate for school for him? If not, perhaps you need to add this to consideration, since one needs schools that are financially within reach, too.
Union College in New York is worth looking at.
I have a CS degree. I’ve long been one of those who felt that other than class size, there’s not much difference between how CS is taught at different schools, so I wouldn’t get too caught up in questions like how many upper-level CS classes or CS professors are available. If the requirement for a CS degree is a dozen CS classes, then it doesn’t much matter if the school offers 16 or 20 or 24 CS classes, unless one of those classes is something that particularly interests the student. I would look to see if a school’s CS program offers some kind of track or specialty that is of interest to the potential student, such as data science, graphics, or games.
The issue here is not whether a CS department is large enough to offer a larger number of additional electives, but whether a small CS department is missing some of the usually expected subareas of CS in its upper level offerings.
For example, Tulane’s upper level CS offerings are skewed heavily toward theory, though it has some AI/ML and graphics courses: Computer Science (CMPS) < Tulane University . However, operating systems and networking are combined in one course, and subareas like databases, compilers, security and cryptography, and hardware design appear to be absent.
Yeah that totally makes sense then
While it’s nice to take specific classes in things like databases, compilers, security and cryptography, they’re not essential. Like most skills in CS, you learn about those things as needed once you’re on the job. Almost nobody deals with cryptography or writes compilers in the real world. I used databases all the time, but never learned about them until I left school.
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As another aspect to consider, CS related courses available through other departments may not be immediately evident. For example, topics in machine learning and cryptography may be covered in mathematics departments; computer electronics courses may appear in physics curricula; even linguistics courses can support specialized areas of computer science.
Those are not the classes that distinquish any CS program. There’re many other much more advanced skills that are significantly more difficult for a student to learn elsewhere. MOOCs, etc. can’t go into the level of depth that an advanced class can. And there’s no substitute for a upperclassman project or even an undergraduate thesis supervised by a professor.
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If you intend to put your degree to work doing “X” make sure you can take classes that teach “X”. What you don’t want to do is be in the position where you are competing with other graduates who have taken many classes in “X” while you, instead, can only say “I can learn on the job”.
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Like i said previously, if a potential student has an interest in any particular class or track, check to see if the schools being considered offer those. But otherwise, you always have to pick and choose among classes. You don’t take everything that a school offers. If you don’t take a networking class, you take something else, like graphics. You can say that person will be at a disadvantage with an employer because they didn’t take networking, but what’s overlooked is they’ll have an advantage with an employer who cares more about graphics than networking.
Saying you have to go to a school with more offerings is like saying you have to go to one restaurant over another simply because the first one has more on its menu.
Nobody is going to be an expert or advanced in any particular CS topic just coming out of undergrad.
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For perspective, an LAC may require in the range of 9 to 12 courses for a CS major out of the 32 required for a bachelor’s degree. Students may elect to take more CS courses than this, of course, but would not take more than, at the rare extreme, 15 in total.
Unless the school’s department is so small that there is not much of a choice of what to take (i.e. you need to take everything or almost everything that it offers just to get to the minimum degree requirements for the major).
Yes, CS is amenable to self-education in many areas. But if the student goes to college to study CS with the assistance of a structured curriculum and instructors, why choose a college where the CS department is very limited in its offerings?
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Because the classes may be smaller, you may get more personalized attention, and the classes offered are enough. McDonald’s may have more on its menu than In-N-Out, but many people will prefer In-N-Out.
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