Hey! I’m a female freshman in HS who is 100% sure I’ll go into computer science, and I am hustling to become a Software Engineer. My counselor told me that since Computer Science is such a growing field, and as long as you aren’t stupid/lazy/unfortunate and have a genuine passion for it, you’re safe. Therefore, she told me that since I was a bright student, it didn’t matter if I went to a prestigious school like Caltech as opposed to a school like Texas Tech. That I’ll get a job either way with enough determination. Is that true? Should I challenge myself moderately and not sweat it if I don’t get into Caltech or Georgia Tech?
Sounds like a good plan.
The better schools generally have better recruiting and connections, access to startups and recruiting. Do the very best you can in HS, on standardized tests, and in your community, and you will have the maximum possible choice.
Unemployment is only 5%, so 95% chance you’ll get a job pretty much no matter what you do. That’s setting the bar pretty low. The question is what kind of job you’ll get, and how interesting your work will be. And the three magic words are “on-campus recruiting.” I can’t stress enough how important on-campus recruiting is. You’ll have opportunities presented to you that aren’t available to the general public. And the opportunities are going to be more interesting and lucrative at Caltech than Texas Tech.
Once you get out into the workforce, a decade or two down the road, where you went to school fades in importance. But on-campus recruiting can give you a real leg up at the starting gate, if you’re smart and motivated enough to take advantage of it.
Don’t aim low as a HS freshman. Challenge yourself throughout your HS career, maximize your college choices, and then make a thoughtful decision when the time comes. There are certainly advantages to going to a top college as noted in the posts above.
Good CS departments/majors are common, and not just at highly selective/prestigious colleges.
The flip side is that there are some weak or limited CS departments/majors (e.g. too few or too infrequent course offerings), sometimes at colleges which otherwise have good reputations.
If you do well through high school (aim as high as you can while still doing well), then you will likely have more choices of colleges, which means that, within the universe of colleges with good CS departments/majors, you are more likely to find a good fit in terms of net price after financial aid and scholarships and other criteria that you may have. Even if you are fine with less prestigious colleges (selected for good CS departments/majors), doing better in high school makes you more likely to get scholarships for a lower cost of college, and makes you better prepared for any college that you later attend.
As a CS major, you should not have trouble finding a job that pays well when you graduate, assuming you attend a good university, and that includes Texas Tech. However, the quality of the university will determine the type of company you can work for…and the ease/frequency with which you will find offers. If you wish to stay in Texas, you will likely have better opportunities if you attend powerhouses such as Rice, TAMU and UT-Austin.
Do as well as you can in high school as you can so that you have options. The goal should be to go to the best college that you can get into, that is a good fit, and that your family can afford. The ultimate goal is to actually finish a degree, and if you can do that debt free that will be a bonus.
My daughter is intending to study CS next fall, and decided a big campus was not for her. She’s applied at places ranging from 1200 to 15000 students, one LAC (who sent a grad to g*gl) and a small state u (sent a grad to ppl) as well as some engineering schools. The two I mentioned are probably the least prestigious.
We encourage her to look at fit, but balance that with cost.
You have time. Figure out what kinds of environments you like, walk around a couple of campuses, and when you get to be a junior, take some tours. But don’t get anxious about it. Life’s too short.
The real issue is whether your aspirations are to have a job, or to do ground-breaking research or push the frontiers in your areas of STEM related interest. Attending a Caltech or MIT gives you the opportunity to interact with some of the brightest scientists and students. To challenge yourself at the highest levels and be inspired by your interactions with others that share your passion.
The above applies to all areas of study, and, in conjunction with the associated reputational benefit that stays with you, are two of the primary reasons to attend an academically elite school.
Simply put, the better the college/university you attend the more interesting the options you are likely to have available to you post graduation in terms of both graduate school and employment opportunities.
I agree with posters above. Don’t sell yourself short! You would not be going to college if all you want is a job. A highly motivated student can probably do well, in terms of a job, with a diploma from any school. So no matter where you end up going you can probably be successful. But as others have said, it isn’t all about getting a job. It is also about getting the best education you can and about being as well prepared as possible to make a difference in this world. And that can happen from any school but it is more likely from some than from others.
I don’t believe everyone should attend the most competitive school they can get into. Some students do better in small nurturing places; Others do better sticking closer to home. So I don’t think any one school is everyone’s ticket. But, that is a decision each student needs to make themselves. As people have already mentioned, the “top schools” are more likely to have other high achieving students. If you are someone inspired by being around top students, then that would certainly be a plus associated with those schools.
Naturally I don’t know the history here but it is a little unsettling to hear a GC telling a student that the school they attend does not matter. Would the GC have given the same advice to a male considering computer science as a career? If you want one of the top schools and don’t get in…you should not sweat because a person with the right set of attributes can do well out of any school. But why not try for one of the schools known to be great for what you are studying? Go for it! Take that risk. And if you don’t get in, then make the best of where you are and keep on striving but not sweating.
I don’t know, I agree with your counselor more than most of the posts on this particular thread.
First of all, you can absolutely go to college if all you want is a job. Some people really want to push the frontiers of science and achieve the highest heights and run a company etc. etc. And some people just want work they are reasonably content with and that will support their other endeavors in life - hobbies, travel, family. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes the work they want requires a bachelor’s degree, so they go to college.
Some people don’t want to make a difference. And for some people, a small difference is enough.
Secondly, where you went to school doesn’t fade 10-20 years down the road; that’s putting way too much value on it. Where you went to undergrad becomes a lot less important 1) one or two jobs into your work history, and/or 2) once you have a graduate degree. I have a PhD and nobody cares where I went to undergrad other than as a cocktail party question.
Thirdof all, you don’t have to go to a Caltech or a MIT to push the frontiers of science or make a difference anyway - or even to work at a top tech company. I work at a top tech company and my colleagues have degrees from top schools and non-top schools. What matters are your skills and experiences. On-campus recruiting can definitely make a difference in your first job out of college…but lots of people eventually work their way UP to a top technology company. You don’t have to start at one, necessarily.
Fourth, I think this is all a moot point because Texas Tech is an excellent university! There are two NSF-funded summer REUs at Texas Tech. The faculty are engaged in interesting and relevant research. There’s a combined BS/MS program in software engineering. They list some of the companies their alumni work for on the CS department webpage, and those include Lockheed Martin, Cisco, Intel, Nortel, Toshiba, Lucent, Sprint, and Raytheon among others. Three astronauts have graduated from Texas Tech; there are a variety of distinguished military personnel who were educated there; the CEOs of General Motors, Finisar, Belo Corporation and Wellpoint; the current chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force; the director of DARPA, and many other scientists attended Texas Tech.
Sure, if you get into Caltech or Georgia Tech or MIT and can afford to attend those places those are excellent choices, with great opportunities, and you’ve got other great in-state choices in TAMU and UT… Yes, top schools do offer you access to resources that less-well-known schools don’t have, and those resources can sometimes give you a leg up. But I think you already know that, and your question was more about whether you can do what you want to do with a BA from Texas Tech. The answer is of curse you can! Your counselor is right in the sense that you can still get a great education and have an excellent career from Texas Tech if you want to. Your counselor is also right in that evidence supports the idea that bright, ambitious students tend to do well no matter where they go.
I do think you shouldn’t aim low in high school. In addition, if you challenge yourself in HS, you’ll be able to choose where you go and, most importantly, to have more affordable choices.
It also irks me when a guidance counselors tell a girl who wants to study stem “not to sweat it.”
Of course, it depends what “moderate challenge” means at your high school - could be 2 APs a year jr and sr year, could be all-college prep classes and precalculus regular as a senior when you could have accelerated without trouble.
It’s true it’s such a growing field that you’ll find a job, but your college experience, opportunities, and resources matter- you don’t want to close any door.
It also depends whether you’re first-gen (neither parent graduated from a 4-year university), lower-income, an under-represented minority, or from an immigrant family: in these situations, where you go to college matters since you don’t have a network to fall back on, your entire professional network comes from the college.
If you’re from a middle/upper middle class family, it doesn’t matter much if at all.
I don’t think it has to be caltech or bust, and I certainly don’t advocate things we see sometimes like 12 APs and 4 important EC’s and kids crying because they so lack sleep!!! Find balance between challenging classes (4 years each of English, Social Science/History, and Science including all three of Bio, Chem, and Physics, plus Math up to precalculus honors or calculus, and foreign language up to level 4 or AP, with a total of 4-8 APs) and “fun” classes in whichever way *you define fun.
- Also, check out non-Texas history information such as John Green's CrashCourse US History or KhanAcademy history, due to certain revisions made to your state's history curriculum which may leave you with gaps you may have to fill either before AP USH or before college. ** you can alter this a bit during senior year in particular, in that you can "double up" in something and drop another. So you could have only Level 3 in a foreign language or only 3 years of social science, but 'double up' senior year for science.
Like investment banking, CS is one of those majors where going to the right school will give you a big leg up in your initial job prospects. The list, in no particular order, goes something like this:
Stanford
MIT
CMU (although they lost a bunch of profs recently)
UIUC
Cal- Berkely
CalTech
UWashington
Harvard
Princeton
There are a couple of other schools like UC-San Diego, UCLA and some smaller Bay Area school with good relationships with Silicon Valley. If you can’t swing one of these schools, and live in Texas, shoot for UT not Texas Tech.
^ Why isn’t San Jose State on that list? I believe it has more grads in Silicon Valley than any you listed. Or for that matter San Francisco State. Nice cherry picking data.
Your only a freshman. When I was a freshman I was sure I wanted to be a doctor. Plans changed a few times actually. I don’t want to be a doctor now. What you think you want in freshman year might be very different from what you actually might want in the future
I think the school you go to may have an influence on finding your passion in a particular field of computer science. As a Georgia Tech (undergrad and grad), I read a book by Michael Arbib called “Brain, Machines, and Mathematics” and became hooked on Artificial Intelligence (AI). As part of that, I also had a interest in formal languages and transformational grammars. I ended up on the research staff at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Computer Science Department (AI Lab) for a life-and-career-changing two years. The point is, so many people see “computer science” as “programming,” but many of us were turned on by Computer SCIENCE.
I highly recommend the “Computer Science Field Guide,” an online interactive resource for high school students learning about computer science, developed at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.