For example I am comparing the CS programs in UT Austin and RPO. My question (and I do not have any special interest in UT Austin) is - why is UT Austin WAY ahead of RPI in CS? How does one measure that? Do UT Austin undergraduates make twice what RPI CS undergrads make? Do UT Austin undergrads know CS twice as better as those from RPI? My D is going to school in 2017 and I struggle with this everyday. If prestige is important then a CMU, MIT, Stanford is probably way more prestigious. But then when you get off the “CS Ivy list” (my term for top CS schools), how does one say that a UT Austin with almost 2000 students in CS can provide way better education than RPI which has 350 CS students?
UT Austin is really well known for computer science. They have a great national and global name recognition to them. A lot of rankings for CS are based on research and rankings from other deans and department heads give.
As for size, UT has more students because of the sheer size. There are 40k undergrad students at UT vs 6000 at RPI. It would make sense they have over 5 times the students in their program. With a bigger program, however, comes larger class sizes, but there are generally more courses offerings as well.
CMU, MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley are all powerhouse CS schools. It’s very hard to compare any school to them.
The rankings are usually based on employment, faculty strength, research, and primarily the reviews given by other schools. If a school is not nationally recognized, XXX college that has never heard of RPI won’t give it a high ranking.
Hi Jpgranier, thanks for your reply but the crux of the question is - is there really a difference other than the ‘perceived’ status? In this example RPI offers as wide a course offering as UT Austin so what I am trying pin down is something like (as an example) - undergrads from Austin make $30K on an average more than RPI students because employers know that Austin’s CS program trains the students to be significantly better CS professionals!
No, that’s not the case at all! CS is generally a fair playing field. This means a student from XXX college would not make more than a student from XXX as long as they get the same position. A common thought, however, is that a more prestigious school opens up opportunities for higher paying jobs. Not sure how true that is, but it sounds pretty logical.
To summarize, you won’t make any more at the same company and same position with a degree from RPI vs UT.
One thing I might say is I see RPI as a pretty regional school, meaning most of your job opportunities will be in the northeast.
Hey Jerseyshor, I might be able to better answer your question. I personally am an engineering senior at RPI who have/had a lot of roommates and friends involved in the CS program here and elsewhere.
For example, I have a couple of friends who study CS at CMU and the degree there is notorious for being one of the hardest degrees on campus including all of the engineering degrees it competes with difficulty-wise. CMU also has one of the best CS programs in the country (not a coincidence).
By comparison, the a lot of CS majors I know at RPI are generally considered to have a lot of free time compared to many of engineering degrees here. When it gets down to hours a week put into schoolwork at RPI, CS majors here probably spend about 2/3 to 1/2 as much time working on projects/homework than engineers do. This lack of time contributed is due to the amazing amount of free electives CS majors have at our school. The free electives are really there so CS majors can pursue further CS-related coursework but a lot of them use it to take bull-shi* psychology classes so they can earn the degree the easiest route possible. I believe this CS curriculum is changing to force them to take “concentration” classes but as of right now that is not the case.
So I guess my overall point: CS is a very technical field and many employers give coding tests to test the ability of the individual. Schools where CS majors get paid much higher probably require more rigorous course load in order to graduate, more kids get weeded out of their programs which means the kids are better prepared/higher quality…which leads to them doing better on coding interviews/knowing more about comp sci…which leads to higher pay…which all results in better rankings for the school.
One last note: The first year of CS is difficult at RPI because students are required to take a class called “Data Structures” which is the notorious weed-out class here. But after that class there is a lot of schedule flexibility. It is definitely possible for your kid to become an excellent computer scientist at RPI assuming she is proactive about her learning and/or uses those free-electives wisely. I know a lot of extremely intelligent CS majors here who have gotten 6 figure jobs at top tech companies.
Sorry for the rant
Let’s start here. I have no horse in the game here for either of these schools but know the CS industry pretty well. I would rate that statement to be very false. RPI and UT-Austin a pretty close to peers in CS. You could probably argue a small advantage to UT, but employers really don’t care.
I worked an internship with students from both schools, on the same development team no less. The company hired equal numbers of graduates from both schools at my location (national company, many offices), and recruited on campus at both.
Thanks for all your responses. I agree with all your responses. The reason why I posted this is because I am in the middle of this debate with my D and am trying to prove to her that if she gets into a CMU, MIT or Caltech then there is good reason to go to them as they are the ‘CS Ivies’ and she will get a better CS education in those schools. However, when comparing between a RPI, UT Austin, UIUC, UW, UMD, etc (all v good schools) the differences are not great and it makes sense to go to the school based on who awards you the best financial package.
I think the discussions on CC spend more time on ‘chance me’ while these types of threads really help people make decisions.
Like Randomdude I wish there were other CS students who would respond here.
Personally, id say the best CS schools are MIT, Stanford, UIUC, Berkeley, CMU, and Cal Tech.
RPI, UT, Georgia Tech and a few others are second tier.
I wouldn’t debate over the quality of education and prestige because they are both about the same level.
What you should be going over is campus feel, COST, and what your daughter wants.
What is the cost of both schools? At UT I have seen many people on this forum establish residency after the first year… definitely look into that.
You’ll find a lot of quality posts similar to this thread in specific forums. Here are some that I would say i check first before anything else:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/math-computer-science-majors/
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/
There’s a pretty solid CS community on here since we tend to skew towards being active on forums in the first place. Not enough to have a student from every school, but at least an alumni. If you have questions beyond this in the future, I highly recommend posting them on the Math/CS forum if not for a specific school only.
Hey Randomdude, anyway we can connect with a current CS student at RPI?
I wouldn’t say that. Those may be among the schools with the top reputations, but one can learn just as much going to a LAC or directional state U. CS is one of those fields where you learn by sitting in front of a computer and hacking away rather than through lectures. A data structures class at Stanford is going to cover pretty much the same material as a data structures class at Sacramento State.
Some of the best programmers I know don’t even have college degrees. They just loved to program and learned on their own.
It goes back to the original premise…everyone says MIT, Stanford, CMU and Berkeley are the best CS schools. No one can explain exactly why with precise answers…just reputation as being so. It goes the same after that as well as the rankings. Thus UT being ranked higher=better than RPI ranked lower but no other explanation can really be given.
For better or worse, “the reputation being so” makes a difference. You can make this argument with just about every subject when it comes to how different two programs really are. The reality is, those names open doors easier than the other names. It could just be that smarter students get into more selective schools that are ranked higher that perform better in the industry and that all feeds the reputation. I think that flow has a decent deal of merit in many cases.
The problem with finding any big differences in CS is that often a teaching approach or philosophy makes the biggest difference when it comes to the success of students, but I know of no ranking that really gets at this, nor frankly do I know how someone reasonably would.
I don’t think any of this is wrong inherently, but I would be really cautious on how you apply this. It seems as though this is implying that it doesn’t matter where you go to school. While this is true for some students, I would strongly disagree in the general case.
Some other relevant facts/info that show very different possible conclusions than the one this implies:
- Many LAC's or directional schools do not have extensive CS programs and could lack significant subjects.
- I think that some lectures can be much better than others at conveying CS knowledge effectively in order to make your practical learning easier.
- Many students are not motivated to do all of their learning on their own and like the classroom setting. The more stuff that is touched on in classes and well enough to be a jumping off point for a deeper dive when needed/wanted, the better for these students. This is where CS programs can make a huge difference.
Jerseyshor, if you inbox me your email I might be able to connect you with a compsci major at RPI.
@PengsPhils, I was saying it doesn’t matter where you go to school because I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years and see who gets hired and for what positions. It used to matter because the venture capitalists and angel investors hung around a handful of schools like Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon. That created greater opportunity for the CS and engineering grads at those schools. And even if you were a student at a top-tier school but didn’t have a great idea for a new business, you probably had classmates and friends who did. If they got funding, you could get in on the ground floor. But these days it’s so easy to launch a software business that people don’t need lots of money at the start, so it matters less where you go to school.
I used to work at Stanford and took a few graduate-level CS classes there. The main thing that might distinguish it from lower tier schools would be the spirit of entrepreneurship that permeates the place. At most colleges, you go to school to get a degree and then a good job at a good company. At Stanford, and I’m guessing at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, you go to school to get a degree and start a company. That said, I’ve worked with plenty of “top-tier” CS grads who sit in the same cubicles doing the same type of work as people from no-name schools. I also know people without college degrees who have started very successful high-tech businesses. Where you end up career-wise depends on your own abilities, not on where you went to school.
I agree completly. What I am saying is that the quality of education affects your abilities, not that you get hired because of the name of your school. There are some recruiting effects, but generally, yes, I agree with your analysis and have seen the same. Still, there’s a link between your school and abilities I think you are ignoring
I disagree with your premise that all CS programs are exactly the same. Many are very similar, but there are significant differences at some that I believe make a significant impact. A lot of it is not the material or the class sizes but how it’s taught. Again, teaching quality is not easy to determine and is not correlated much with most CS rankings. See big research powerhouses.
The problem again with qualifying or backing up this theory is that the disregard for degree in the industry doesn’t disprove it. The hypothetical value added of going to X school vs Y school that isolates for initial ability and intelligence is very hard to look at or even confirm accuracy.
I didn’t mean to imply all CS programs are the same, but I also don’t think one will necessarily come out of a top-tier CS program knowing more about CS and better prepared for the work-force than someone who comes out of a lower-tier program.
Berkeley is often mentioned as a top CS program. I would have done terribly there because the lower-level undergraduate CS classes are too big, In my case, getting a CS degree at a small college with no reputation worked out better because the largest CS class I had was about 25 students, and if I had a problem, I could talk to the professors rather than graduate-student TAs. The smaller school was a better learning environment for me.
Please note that computer science programs are ranked based on reviews of college presidents, not by research citations, quality of education, or money made. The rankings by US News and other sources mean close to nothing. Schools like RPI or Vanderbilt or Darthmouth have garbage computer science rankings while schools like UMass Amherst or the University of Minnesota are ranked higher. I find this quite unfair considering that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
UMass Amherst is by all means a good state school - but you cannot compare the course offerings, rigor, or student body to RPI or Darthmouth, etc. Each program is also different. I think you should stray away from the rankings and focus on the demographics of the study body and what the school has to offer. Look at the curriculums and compare. For example, RPI’s median SAT may be a 1420/1600 while UMass Amherst may be closer to 1100/1600 and average GPAs at RPI may be close to a 3.9 or 4.0 while at UMass Amherst its a 3.4. Each school may have very different offerings.
The study body at RPI, thus, can generally be considered “smarter” than UMass Amherst yet UMass is ranked higher for CS. I generally feel being around the smartest people possible makes a program better. Also think of the opportunities available and the class sizes. Smaller schools like RPI or Darthmouth may offer smaller class sizes than UT. They also may make it easier to pursue great opportunities with companies. Consider this, everyone recruits at RPI or Darthmouth just as they do at UT. Google, IBM, Microsoft… the State Department. You name it, it’s there but there are also less students so companies fight over you (though not always). There are also large co-op and startup business programs offered as well as undergraduate research programs that accept a large portion of the student body. Consider these things when applying and where alumni go out of college based on each school. Do your research, make a decision based on where you ‘fit’ in most.
P.S. CS Powerhouses as mentioned above like CMU or MIT, that’s where the comparison dies - those schools are top of the line.
Since, I’m a biased RPI CS & CE student here’s RPI’s employment report: The average starting salary is 94k. https://www.rpi.edu/dept/cdc/Annual%20Report%202015.pdf
Compare that with Virginia Tech: (79k) https://db.career.vt.edu/scripts/PostGrad2006/Report/DetailReportSalaries.asp?College=00&Majors=Y&Cohort=2014-2015
@joedoe Well, not necessarily.
For example, check how usnews rank colleges.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/ranking-criteria-and-weights
While “reviews of college presidents” may be among factors evaluated during the calculation of a college’s ranking, it is not necessarily the only factor that determines the ranking of the school’s ranking.
@HardOREasy I was responding specifically regarding Computer Science rankings. The Best Colleges ranking is separate and I believe a more trustworthy source of information regarding colleges than rankings for professions, although they may be more accurate for business or finance where ‘prestige’ is more easily defined. CS Rankings are defined just by “surveys of academics at peer institutions.” (http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings)
Example:
RPI CS Ranking: 52, RPI Best College Rank: 39
UTexas Austin CS Ranking: 9, UTA Best College Rank: 56
Darthmouth CS Ranking: 40, Darthmouth Best College Rank: 11
As you can see… the tables turn a bit… Darthmouth goes from 40 to 11… RPI goes from 52 to 39… Texas goes from 9 to 56… quality metrics are assessed more by best college rankings than CS rankings.