CS Schools with Good Merit Scholarships

College Search & Selection
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<p>@dadinator‌
@DrGoogle</p>

<p>Ah, you’re looking at the current CEO’s, not the founders. Craig Newmark founded Craigslist (hence the name). Buckmaster was recruited by Newmark (Buckmaster also studied classics and medicine at UMich after going to undergrad at VTech,majoring in biochem). However, like most startups, the origin story is a bit messy (<a href=“Craig Newmark, filthy rich on eBay's millions”>http://gawker.com/283002/craig-newmark-filthy-rich-on-ebays-millions&lt;/a&gt;) </p>

<p>Andrew Mason founded (thought up) Groupon (Lefkofsky provided the seed capital).</p>

<p>Costolo is the current CEO of Twitter and was not one of the 4 co-founders.</p>

<p>Thiel was a co-founder of Paypal, but he came from a derivatives trading/hedge fund background. Max Levchin was the other co-founder and he only had a BS in CS from UIUC. He also pulled a bunch of UIUC CS grads in to Silicon Valley (who later went on to found YouTube and Yelp).</p>

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<p>For some of these companies without the CEO would have become extinct, Twitter is one of them, very chaos in the beginning. This is why the Stanford president suggested to Stanford grads to not become CEO right away.
<a href=“John Hennessey on Entrepreneur CEOs”>John Hennessey on Entrepreneur CEOs;

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<p>A lot to think about. Cheap undergrad and big name grad if needed? Big name undergrad and spend the big bucks for it and hope $ not need for a grad degree? Somewhere in between?</p>

<p>Fortunately we have a few months to figure it out and see what options avail themselves.</p>

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<p>CS is not a field in which one typically needs a graduate degree, unless one wants to go into the type of research or academic jobs where a PhD is expected.</p>

<p>For CS, there are many good CS departments in terms of academic offerings that can be found at colleges that are not generally super-selective or highly prestigious. But there are also small and weak CS departments in otherwise generally prestigious colleges.</p>

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<p>At this point, I don’t think he is really thinking he wants to go to grad school. At least not until something comes along that indicates he should. He wants to get a good solid undergrad degree, have some good employment options to choose from and go to work. Exactly what type of work? He doesn’t know yet.</p>

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<p>@WAPacker. You might consider Michigan State. The MSU Honors College is recruiting high-achieving students very aggressively: In-state tuition, plus $15,000/year, plus a ten-hour/week Professor Assistantship paying $2500/year. It’s a pretty good CS program. MSU is also a top-75 US news university and ranked in the top 100 in the world in two different surveys. If your son enjoys sports, MSU was top-10 in both football and basketball last year. It’s a beautiful campus too.</p>

<p><a href=“http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships-incoming-freshmen”>http://honorscollege.msu.edu/scholarships-incoming-freshmen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Note that, unlike Texas A&M, the MSU Honors College scholarship package does not require National Merit Finalist status. A student can also qualify with 1500 SAT or 33 ACT scores. With your son’s ACT score and GPA, he should be an auto-admit. Also, MSU has rolling admissions, so don’t wait too long to apply.</p>

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<p>@Beaudreau Thanks. I have a co-worker whose son is heading to MSU this fall. We have talked about it a little but my son still says he needs to research it. I will push him and get busy and do his research. I don’t think it initially made his list because it is not a top 50 (arbitrary #) rated CS program according to USNews. Of course, Alabama isn’t either.</p>

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<p>@WAPacker. Yeah, I figured if you were looking at Alabama, you must have relaxed your criteria a bit. I’m an MSU graduate, so I am a bit prejudiced.</p>

<p>My oldest son is heading off to A&M this fall, so now we are starting over with son number two and son number three is up next year.</p>

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<p>@Beaudreau Alabama started out as one of his safety schools due to the large guaranteed merit but he has found some potential opportunities within the honors program there that he likes the sound of. I don’t think UA is at the top of his list but it is no longer on his list just as a safety.</p>