<p>Since I assumed that most of you have jobs on this forum, I was wondering when you're hiring someone for a position does the ranking of their college in a particular field matter? </p>
<p>I want to apply to some schools that hopefully will give me more financial aid than OOS public's but some of them are not highly regarded in their field. Not that they have bad programs, just that they aren't ranked on US News and World Report and are relatively unknown for computer science. I looked at the course selection they have for their computer science and the classes look interesting, but I'm afraid that I will not be able to find a good job after graduation. </p>
<p>It’s highly unlikely that your hiring manager knows rankings of any college other than the obvious ones, Harvard, Yale, etc. Find a school that is a good fit for you and don’t bother with rankings. They are meaningless.</p>
<p>^^^^^This! My son is an electrical engineer. He graduated, not at the top of his class, from a no name state university and had a job contract a month before he graduated, with a well regarded national company. He had quite a bit of relevant work experience, as well as a paid internship with a well known, national company. What distinguished him from other applicants was his experience and ability to communicate well, a very desirable quality in geek fields.</p>
<p>Thanks SteveMA and congrats on your son’s successes fishymom! This is great to hear because my biggest fear about majoring in computer science is that no one else will be social.</p>
Very good first step. Next, if you get a chance to visit the campuses of these schools, ask the admissions office to help arrange for you to meet with a professor or two in your field, and sit in on a class. Talk to the other students. You can also ask the admissions office for some graduation statistics - most schools can tell you what percentage of their graduates in different majors have a job within 6 months of graduating, for example. It’s a lot more work than simply reading a rankings chart, but it will give you much better information.</p>
<p>You are definitely on the right track. Good luck!</p>
<p>ComicStix, Don’t worry about finding other kids who are social. My sons are both engineers and nephew is studying computer science. All very social and athletic. Lots of kids in those kinds of fields are plenty “social.” Good luck!</p>
<p>My dad never graduated college…makes $250,000 year as a certified financial planner. My stepbrother, in the same business, makes an equally substantial salary having graduated with a degree from a “no-name” local university. </p>
<p>My husband also never earned a degree and makes over $80,000 as a certified orthotist/prosthetist because he joined the Navy out of high school many, many years ago and learned a valuable trade in the process.</p>
<p>Of course, I would NEVER advocate a young person throw off an education; things are much more competitive today, and I doubt my dad or husband would be markertable in their field now without having a degree.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I know PLENTY of folks doing quite well having graduated from regional or local universities. If a person can get admitted and graduate from an Ivy league or Ivy league-caliber school with minimal debt–GREAT.</p>
<p>However, my experience indicates that what truly matters is what kind of work and study ethic you are bringing to the university and how much are you taking advantage of resources available to you? What kind of field are you going into? Is it one that shows signs of upward growth? Are you taking on internships and networking while in college or are you goofing off and just getting by?</p>
<p>These things, more than where the degree came from, is as much a predictor of economic success as anything.</p>
<p>Nope. A better college is what I call a “smart stamp” - it tells me that the likelihood that this particular person is really bright is higher. But there are plenty of bright people who go to non-highly ranked colleges for plenty of reasons - they weren’t brought up to think expansively / going away from home, there was no money for college, they needed to stay close to home to care for relatives, etc. I focus on the person in front of me in the interview - how quick they are, how they present themselves, do they appear to be problem-solvers, creative, the type to take initiative - and that tells me the majority of what I need to know.</p>
<p>For CS, being at a school local to employers is a good thing. So does being at a school well known for CS that non-local employers are willing to travel to. Note that bigger schools are also traveled to more often, since there are more students to recruit there. If you are at a non-targeted school, you may have to be more aggressive at finding and applying to employers (contrary to popular perception, it is not so much an issue with the big, well known computer companies, which recruit widely and which you know about and can apply to anyway, but the smaller ones you do not know about where being local or at a targeted school helps). However, for subsequent jobs after your first one out of college, your school name matters less.</p>
<p>As far as the quality of the CS curriculum, you can check two things. If the CS degree program is ABET accredited, that indicates that it meets a decent minimum standard and is not a bad CS degree program. However, non-ABET-accredited CS degree programs can be good, although they can also be bad. So the other thing to check is the course catalogs for advanced CS courses like:</p>
<p>algorithms and complexity
theory of computation
operating systems
compilers
databases
security
software engineering
digital systems and design
computer architecture
electives of your interest (common electives include artificial intelligence and graphics)</p>
<p>When some people say that your college’s name, ranking, and prestige (or lack of it) follows you through life when applying to jobs decades in the future, they are probably referring to employers like investment banks, management consulting firms, and big law firms (with respect to one’s law school).</p>
<p>A “smart stamp” can be an advantage for a quiet, introverted type who doesn’t like to brag or “sell” himself; employer expectations are higher and the applicant is more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>Extroverts who are comfortable speaking with non-technical personnel don’t necessarily need this leg up, but are more likely to have to go into interviews with the expectation that they prove themselves to be a cut above their class peers. I think those students in the top quarter of their class will do well coming from anywhere, but those in the bottom quarter of a generic-name school may have trouble marketing themselves.</p>
<p>Yes, ranking matters–but not someone else’s ranking–your ranking. Because the established rankings are so popular, nearly all colleges make lots of institutional data publicly available, and you can cull through the data and see which colleges look the best to you. I recently “ranked” nearly 200 colleges, including about 120 on the USNWR or Forbes list of best colleges. Guess what? My top four rank somewhere between #20 and #75 on the more established lists, and a few Ivys don’t even make my top 30.</p>
<p>Think about what is important to you, and determine for yourself which college is “best”.</p>