<p>Also, like most schools, the network and brand of UA-T would be more regional. There are probably folks in and around AL who would be impressed by a UA-T CS degree. Outside the region, not so much.</p>
<p>Then again, networking doesn’t matter so much for most software jobs and industries (though it always helps to have a mass of alums in a startup hotspot if you want to go there) and outside of a few industries and companies, most folks hiring programmers (often coders or ex-coders themselves) care more about the skills of the individual and aren’t snobbish about schools (though there are certainly some companies and people that are). Also, in the Northeast, there’s just a general bias towards state schools in some circles (unfortunate as that may be).</p>
<p>Does your son have no preference on region?</p>
<p>BTW, I’ve lived in the Midwest, Bay Area, and Northeast, and while the Midwest and Bay Area tend to be somewhat similar (just with differing proportions of hipsters/blue collar ethnics/immigrants/etc.), the Northeast is different. </p>
<p>Postings on these forums indicate that New Jersey residents are among those who most dislike their state schools, though residents of New York and the New England states also tend to be unenthusiastic about their state schools.</p>
<p>The 3.5 is to earn the scholarship. I think purple Titan might have read 3.5 in one of my posts. I noticed I had typed it but it was hours and several posts later and I couldn’t edit it. (What is up with the 15 min editing thing?). My ds does have scholarships which require 3.3 to keep. (The CBHP fellowship also requires a 3.3) </p>
<p>As I read through this thread, I wonder what the goals are of the OP’s ds. Is he aiming for a start-up, ground floor, high $$ job, or is he simply looking for a solid career somewhere? I ask bc our ds has a friend whose father is a top exec at a company in the SV. He has another friend who is majoring in CS at the small local university. Ds was trying to convince his CS majoring friend to transfer to a better university. Friend didn’t think he needed to. So, ds asked his other friend to ask her father about a career in CS from the small local vs “name brand” uni. The father’s answer surprised ds. He said that if his friend wanted to work regionally or work for a major corp, there was no need for him to change schools. If he wanted to be in the heart of a start-up, etc, then he was in the wrong place.</p>
<p>Ds’s friend is low key, just wants to have a job to live a decent life/have a family, kind of kid. He doesn’t have his eyes set on fortune or high pressure competition (he is actually the antithesis of that type of personality.). He is completely happy where he is. </p>
<p>The recruiting at UA does seem to be lackluster so I do think if he were to pick UA he would definitely need to be more proactive on the job search front.</p>
<p>@Mom2aphysicsgeek
What does he want? Good question with an answer that will probably continue to evolve. At least my answer to that question evolved a lot from the time I was 17. I don’t think he entirely knows but seems to prefer the western US but certainly not set on the west at this point. Probably a smaller company, but figures, like most, he will have to work for a larger company initially. He wants to position himself to be able to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves and have the most/best opportunities to choose from. How is that for a non-answer?</p>
<p>Remember, though, that this mainly applies to one’s first job out of school. If a student at an obscure school manages to make his/her way to a startup-heavy area as s/he gains work experience, then opportunities as an experienced person can be found, and school pedigree becomes less important with a greater track record of work experience and demonstrated ability in technical interviews.</p>
<p>Tim Cook, Apple CEO - Auburn University
But Apple company was not a hot stock back in the early 90s, $16. Apple probably was not able to attrack a lot of talent but it can happen.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to convey that choosing a local school was limiting. Actually the opposite. His point was that the friend could go as far as he wanted earning his degree locally. </p>
<p>Poor example. Tim Cook was already a successful experienced exec by the time he joined Apple. Nobody cared what school he went to at that point.</p>
<p>And of course it could happen. In fact, it happens often. In the US, there are many paths to success.</p>
<p>In certain industries and regions, certain schools (and majors) do have powerful life-long networks, however. How much you believe that is worth paying for is up to each person to decide.</p>
<p>By “certain industries”, do you mean Wall Street, management consulting, and big law (with respect to one’s law school)? By “certain … regions”, do you mean the northeast?</p>
<p>Banking, trading, and MC anywhere (I don’t care about law because I think it is a stupid career to go in to) & there does seem to be more of an effect in the NE, true. Also, if you work internationally, folks in some countries are even more snobbish about schooling than Americans (and their perceptions will be imperfectly correlated with USN or even Wall St.). But I was also referring to the fact that most schools tend to have a strongest network locally and possible in certain industries. For example, USC is known to have a legendary alumni network for a school outside the top tier, but obviously most of its alums are in CA (concentrated in SoCal). Some presence on the East Coast, and I’ve never seen a USC alum in my many years in the Midwest. GWU isn’t really known as a brand name school outside the immediate region of DC, but within DC, GWU alums are known to help each other out. No one outside of Louisiana (and the surrounding area) would think of LSU as being an elite school, but the power elite in Baton Rouge probably consummate more business deals in the suites of Tiger Stadium than anywhere else. You’d probably get frozen out of more deals as a Harvard alum and an LSU alum would have better connections down there. In the film industry, USC is a golden brand. In the halls of academia, not as much, etc.</p>
<p>More pertinent to this discussion, in the VC/startup scene in the Valley, Stanford just confers so many more benefits compared to other schools. And yes, Cal, MIT, Harvard, Illinois, and Cornell certainly do give you an edge over other schools in terms of the network, but nowhere outside Stanford does a kid go from interning at a VC while in school to being a VP at that VC a year out of undergrad. That pretty much doesn’t happen. </p>
<p>Well, VC is finance, so one would expect that industry to be school-prestige-conscious (like other high profile finance areas) in preferring to recruit at Stanford over other schools.</p>
<p>Of course, Stanford is not generally a place to find merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I cant think of a single Stanford grad with just an undergraduate in engineering/Computer science that starts a well known company except SnapChat and Instagram. All others have PhD degree from Stanford, like Yahoo, Google, etc… I’m more impressed by U of Michigan, where you can find lots of CEO of well known companies that just have an undergraduate there, Twitter, Nest, Groupon, Craiglist, to name a few on top of my head.</p>
<p>Craigslist guy went to Case Western.
Groupon guy actually studied music at Northwestern.
Most of the 4 Twitter guys were college dropouts. I don’t believe any of them even attended Michigan.</p>
<p>Makes me wonder where you’re getting your information from.</p>
<p>True that the vast majority of tech startup founders from Stanford were not CS undergrads, however.
That’s why the strategy of going somewhere free for undergrad and saving the money for Stanford grad school could make sense. BTW, Jerry Yang was a EE undergrad and David Filo got a masters from Stanford. Neither were PhD students at Stanford. The go-somewhere-free-for-undergrad-and-then-Stanford-masters route was what David Filo took. He went to Tulane on a full-ride (or full-tuition) scholarship for undergrad. Looks like Tulane just re-established their CS program again . . . . well, sorta . . . . no OS course is offered, so it can only be seen as an “incomplete” CS program (as an aside, I know they were in tough straits after Katrina, but cutting a CS program seems especially short-sighted given the limited cost and large upside).</p>
<p>BTW, Paypal, YouTube, and Yelp founders all only had a bachelor in CS from Illinois.</p>