Even after 2-3 years your college will be relevant on your resume (after 15 maybe not), as will your alumni network and connections cultivated at school. Attending a top CS program has long term benefits.
Its kind of about upping the odds. There are going to be excellent students at every single school, but
some schools expose students to more. And yes there are always weaker candidates MIT and Stanford.
It does even out to some extent, but don’t underestimate that degree on the resume. Everyone gets job rejects, MIT students used to glue them to their dorm doors, as a badge of courage. Girls get less rejects than boys, and it
gets discouraging for boys lately. That will even out eventually over time too.
so if a student can afford it, just go to the “best” school, as long as it seems to fit. We can endlessly argue about ranks, but usually there is a standout academic school, and most engineers would be wise to go to that one, in their list of acceptances. Might as well challenge oneself, is how I see it. How can it be bad to do more work and gain more skills.? But if the student is really floundering, and drops out, thats an issue. but again, the highest rank schools have the lowest drop out rates too. Dropping out of college is a serous thing to think about, and it happens a lot around here, for boys, so whatever it takes to stay in college, is a good plan.
This Google recruiter makes this observation: “Recent experience has taught us that we can find great tech talent in a much wider range of places than previously thought. For one thing, there are far more qualified college applicants than there are spaces for them at top universities.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/3062713/i-hire-engineers-at-google-heres-what-i-look-for-and-why
Stanford, MIT…they’re fantastic! I would be touting their value if I had a kid there. But there are so, so many good schools out there. UW? UT Austin? Carnegie Mellon? Harvey Mudd? Cal? Rice? Ga Tech? Illinois Urbana-Champaign? Rensselaer? Michigan?
Lots of awesome places for a kid to make connections, learn advanced principles and kick off a successful career.
Examples?
ABET accreditation for CS requires 1/3 of the degree in CS courses, which tends to be a lot more than five courses.
According to the ABET site, there are 296 accredited CS programs.
ABET accreditation for CS doesn’t matter, anyway. As I said before, I have 35 years in the field, and it wasn’t until four or five years ago when it was mentioned on CC that I even knew there was such a thing. I’ve never heard CS accreditation discussed at work.
Top notch schools like Caltech, Columbia, CMU, U of Michigan, Stanford, UCSD,… don’t have ABET but their CS graduates have big job offers.
@Coloradomama : “1. curriculum in CS varies widely and ABET means nothing for CS, the best programs are very mathematics heavy with linear algebra, graph theory, and combinatorics. There are literally THOUSANDS of ABET acredited CS programs that offer about five CS class and are worthless across the USA”.
Agree, a real CS curriculum teaches the theory and mathematics underlying the operation of computers and the “why” of computing, not just programming. No, there aren’t “thousands of ABET accredited CS programs”. There are slightly under 300. And no, accreditation is not worthless. The accreditation criteria require a heavy emphasis on computer science and an exposure to theory of computation and mathematics. There are great CS programs in a wide range of schools, not just the big names everyone touts as if they were the only schools offering CS.
As time goes by you will see even the big name schools who might think “We’re MIT/Stanford/Caltech/CMU/etc etc. We don’t need accreditation. We know we’re the best so ABET doesn’t mean anything” (yeah, sure, OK, LOL) bite the bullet and seek the ABET CS accreditation. In engineering, all those schools are ABET accredited. It is a hallmark of quality in engineering education and will be no less so in CS.
“2. Alumni networks are KEY for any engineering career including software engineers, because engineers lose their jobs usually once in their 40s and once in their 50s. The ones that go to subpar universities buy a franchise in their 50s to keep working. Or start a business on their own, often failing and losing their retirement. The engineers with top degrees can get a job in their 50s, for the most part, as long as they had no really long unemployment and they kept learning new things at all their jobs, including software skills, management skills, and people skills.”
Merely having graduated from Stanford, MIT, CMU, et al does not exonerate one from business downturns and layoffs. One doesn’t have a guarantee of a job just because he/she attended any particular school. I worked with two graduates of MIT in CS and a graduate of CMU in computer engineering who were laid off when the business cycle of that particular company (a major aerospace/defense contractor) began to wane. If attending those schools made them that much better or valuable to the company’s future business prospects than those trained in the state university or the many other good CS schools in the area then they would not have been laid off.
I worked with a (then) newly minted electrical engineer from MIT when I was with the former Bell Labs. This gentleman was given a simple assignment to design a digital filter - something that is easily doable by a freshout graduate of any accredited EE school. Any EE graduate should be able to do this in a reasonable amount of time. He floundered along with that assignment for several weeks until it became apparent he could not do it, so it was handed off to another engineer (who happened to be a graduate of the state university). He completed the task with little difficulty. Much later, when promotions were considered, the latter gentleman became an engineering supervisor while the MIT graduate was passed over. It is not the school you attend, but rather the quality and effectiveness of your work. In all of my assignments nobody cared about the school you attended after your first job. It was all about the quality of your work.
When a resume comes across my desk in response to an open position, the school that the applicant attended gets far less attention than his/her experience and accomplishments.
“I think that many people believe that CS is a trade though, so you just learn it on the job. There is some truth to that.
But only a small subset of the hundreds of thousands of CS majors will actually become good programmers. Most will stuff off into quality engineering, business, finance, or real estate.”
Quality engineering isn’t something to “stuff” (sic, I think you meant “slough”) off to. It is an established engineering discipline. All of the companies I worked for had heavy investments in quality engineering, quality assurance, and statistical quality control. In the 1970s-1980’s Ford and GM’s share of the US automotive market shrunk from 84% to about 14% for each of them. Why? Because they paid no attention to quality. Their corporate attitude back then was “people will buy whatever we make because we’re Ford/GM/Chrysler” (just like the MITs/CMUs/Stanfords of the world claiming that accreditation isn’t important because they have the big name). When the Japanese (who did pay attention, embracing the American Dr. Edwards Deming, a pioneer in statistical quality control) came into the US market with a much higher quality product than what Detroit was producing, they quickly gained a large share of the market. Quality matters. Ironically, the most coveted award for quality in Japan is named after Deming (when the Big 3 laughed at him). They didn’t laugh when Toyota, Nissan, and Honda ate their lunch.
“Engineering is NOT what your mom told you. Its just a job, and often it means retirement at 50, if you went to a subpar university and did not build skills in your career.”
Most engineers in the world today didn’t go to big name schools yet technology continues to advance. Reference my description above.
“IT ALWAYS HELPS to have Stanford or MIT on the resume. Maybe even get a better headstone for your burial? !”
Maybe, for your first job out of school. After that, it matters little.
Cheers,
Michael, Ph.D., P.E., Consulting aerospace engineer
MIT is ABET accredited, but Carnegie Mellon is not. Yet most CS people believe Carnegie Mellon is one
of the top programs in the USA. Carnegie Mellon chooses not to maintain ABET as it costs time and money for their faculty, but we’ll see if they change their mind later. MIT has complied with ABET.
I don’t see anything special about ABET accredited list of CS schools, but it is growing over time. I don’t think employers use ABET as a bar for employment in CS.
I was a IC quality engineer, for some years and a manufacturing and R&D engineer and no one asked about ABET or PE in my subbranch of EE, semiconductors, as it was not considered useful for what we did, largely chemical processes to build integrated circuits. Thats my perspective. I also hold a PhD in engineering, in electronic materials. And would still maintain that having particular universities on resume helps years later, in particular to win government positions later in life, in agencies like Naval Research Lab, or Patent and Trademark, DOD or DOE. Government agencies prefer certain degrees. The alumni network also matters.
So for instance, Miami U in Ohio is ABET accredited in CS but small in CS. Its just not going to work as well
to get the next job, if you have a smaller network of classmates to consult.
So both size of program and active alumni may help in the field you are looking in, which is why MIT is
strong, it has a very active alumni network in most states and abroad too.
But I agree with @Engineer80 that there are always going to be non practical engineers coming out of top programs that do not really belong in engineering. They will find their calling.
Quality engineering in software at one time, was more of a testing function. In the old days, women without technical degrees had that job, in fact to test software, at firms like DEC, today it requires more degrees. Quality engineering at employers like Microsoft is a very high level position as it really is important for code to work!
More on ABET, I think in CS ABET is weaker designation than in aerospace engineering. Aerospace engineering
is a slightly older field, and borrows from mechanical engineering, a very old field of engineering, so ABET is more
established in criteria in my opinion for Aerospace programs over CS programs. I have known a few ABET professionals in aerospace who worked at Ball Aerospace and they felt aBET was good in their field.
So for instance, Haverford College, which has a really fine math program, and CS program, has not
gotten ABET accredited in CS, yet the graduates are getting into some of the best graduate schools for CS,
because of that strong math emphasis.
So ABET may not be something CS employers or grad schools care at all about. Its something that
smaller schools want to get though to boost their enrollments.
I noticed that some regional preferences are evident in ABET accreditation, so the state of Ohio seems
to have a fair number of ABET accredited public programs for instance.
Hewlett Packard, Seagate, AMD, National Semiconductor never asked me or my husband about ABET,
and never hired based on ABET accreditation. a professional engineering license is not required for circuit designers, either. I was a recruiter for Hewlett Packard, sent to various technical schools that HP preferred, and ABET was never considered in my field, a subbranch of EE (process development for ICs) . But also the CS hiring at HP, ABET was not considered.
That could change but ask Google. I think you will find that Google does not care about ABET accredited schools.
They do love Carnegie Mellon grads.
One thing that is really troubling about ABET for CS is its self selective. ABET does not find the top programs, colleges go to ABET and follow a set of rules to get accredited. Another problem with CS and ABET is that if there is a liberal arts version of CS, that one will not get accredited, is my understanding. A third problem is some very top programs do not want to take the time and money to get ABET accreditation so are not on the list yet offer very top curriculums.
So in Massachusetts U Mass Dartmouth is ABET accredited but the much more highly ranked U Mass Amherst is NOT! I would go with rank and not ABET to choose a rigorous CS program. US News ranks are not perfect, but it aligns with good research schools that attract many international students who are using rank and not ABET to choose their college. High ranked CS programs like CMU have the top innovative CS curriculums and lots of on campus research as well. ABET accreditation is about curriculum and not research, its more of a check box, for the basics in CS curriculum.
“But I agree with @Engineer80 that there are always going to be non practical engineers coming out of top programs that do not really belong in engineering. They will find their calling”
Yes, like the two gentleman from MIT (they were reasonably practical and good workers, actually) and the then newly minted MIT EE (who knew all the theory, but couldn’t actually design anything) with whom I used to work who, at last I heard, were still unemployed at 50+ (the former) and never got further than line engineering (the latter). With the age discrimination that is rampant in America today, I wish them the best.
“I was a IC quality engineer, for some years and a manufacturing and R&D engineer and no one asked about ABET or PE in my subbranch of EE, semiconductors, as it was not considered useful for what we did, largely chemical processes to build integrated circuits.”
ABET and PE are two different things. Some engineering employers won’t hire graduates of non-ABET accredited schools for engineering positions. The tuition reimbursement program of my employer for example for employees going for undergraduate requires that they attend an ABET accredited school if they are studying engineering (CS probably not). Most federal government and state agency engineering positions require the applicant have an ABET accredited undergraduate engineering degree (again, CS, probably not). PE is required in positions that directly affect the public safety, the most common being civil, environmental, electrical, mechanical, etc., engineers on public works projects, buildings, highways, water supplies, bridges, power plants and utilities, etc. (the engineer who signs or seals drawings for these usually must hold a PE license in the state). I once was offered a position with the transit authority of a major city doing communications engineering work for that city’s subway system. A PE was required for that job. Some universities require their engineering faculty (especially in civil, mechanical, and environmental engineering) to be PEs in that particular state (which enables them to sign off the applications of their students to take the Engineer-in-Training (EIT) exam in their senior year. In my opinion, all engineers should be required to have a PE even those working in private industries in which traditional public safety work is not a factor (I worked for Bell Labs for 24 years and after that in the aerospace industry, and never did any work actually requiring a PE for example). It improves the stature and professionalism of the engineering profession, IMO.
I don’t think that ABET carries much weight in CS right now. It is more relevant in other disciplines (ME, AE, etc) as it is table stakes in gaining accreditation like PE. I cannot recall ever seeing any requirement like “successful completion of BSCS from an ABET certified university”.
@Rivet2000 - you are correct, ABET for CS doesn’t carry as much weight as it does in engineering right now. ABET accreditation in engineering was around since 1936 (in the form of ABET’s predecessor, the Engineers’ Council for Professional Development or ECPD), whereas the CS accreditation began with the Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB) in 1986. A few years later, CSAB merged with ABET and now ABET handles both engineering and CS. In engineering, an ABET accredited degree is required for many government (federal and state) engineering positions and some employers too distinguish between accredited and non-accredited. As time goes by the CS accreditation will be considered more of a figure of merit by employers and schools and they will deem it of value to seek the accreditation.
Until employers see value, the accreditation will hold little weight. Having been involved in such bodies the problems they face are steep and many. High ranked CS programs will (for the most part) avoid accreditation as it undermines their brand value. Lower ranked schools will seek accreditation as they feel it will put them on par with stronger universities under the assumption that all “accredited” schools deliver an identical graduate. If the accreditation does become become valuable, the more powerful universities will then engage in a bear-hug where they will drive the criteria making it harder for many schools to achieve accreditation or by fragmenting accreditation levels (think gold, silver, and bronze levels) to achieve a differentiation. This is common in how these things usually play out.
The primary reason the ABET maters in some fields is because its requited in order to gain a professional license (sometimes state issued). For instance, in order to get state inspectors to sign off on plans for a new bridge or repairs for an existing one, a PE needs to be involved. Part of getting a state issued PE license is graduating from an ABET engineering school. That’s the value chain. This is not the case with CS so there is little industry pull for it. Until a similar pull evolves I don’t see ABET being a requirement for most CS heavy industries.
I don’t think higher ranked schools believe accreditation undermines their brand value. I believe they have a somewhat provincial opinion that having a “big name” that somehow superseeds or lessens the value of accreditation. In engineering that has not proven to be a viable stance, as most highly ranked engineering schools in the US still seek and maintain their ABET accreditation. The ABET accreditation is valuable not just for sitting for the PE exam but it is required by many government agencies for engineering positions and it is regarded in industry and academia as enforcing a standard of quality and course content and depth. Most professions have some form of accreditation of schools in their field whether they be medicine, law, architecture, teaching, et al. When you see your physician when you aren’t feeling well, do you ask them where they went to school? They are all graduates of medical schools accredited by the medical college accreditation board (I don’t recall the exact name of the agency) and they are all licensed by the state to practice medicine, so, they are all equally capable of rendering the proper diagnosis and treatment (unless they do something to prove otherwise). Most graduates of accredited engineering or reputable/accredited CS programs are likewise capable of doing the work in those fields as well (but of course, some aren’t).
I don’t believe “highly ranked” schools turn out a superior graduate to lower ranked ones. The entire academic ranking game (begun popularly by US News and World Report) isn’t a transparent tool to supply valid academic advice to prospective students, it is a profitmaking enterprise to sell magazines, subscriptions to their online rankings, and advertising. As I pointed out in earlier posts, I worked with ineffective graduates of highly ranked schools (including MIT and CMU) and effective ones from lower ranked schools (and vice-versa). The person is the key not the school. Once you have your first job, few care about what school you attended. In my organization we look at the experience and quality of work done by the individual not just the school they attended. I suspect that is true in most workplaces and industries as well.
It is unlikely ABET will devise tiers of accreditation. ABET explicitly states that accreditation does not rank order schools by quality or fitness. A school is accredited or it isn’t and all accredited schools meet the same standards, so their curricula are equivalent with respect to an acceptable breadth and depth of course coverage, qualification of faculty, and all the other criteria they deem relevant. Are MIT or CMU CS graduates better programmers than those of Rutgers or SUNY for example? Doubt there is any correlation, and I’ve seen that in my own experience.
Not that it can’t happen, but except for new graduates, I’ve never seen a software engineer get hired with the help of an alumni network. The connections you make through work are the ones that will count.
So when I say “highly ranked” I don’t mean USNWR. Perhaps highly regarded is a better phrase. There are probably many reasons why some schools don’t go down the ABET path. Brand value certainly plays. Also, I’m sure some say that it is irrelevant to them as their program exceed the ABET requirements (if you look at them they are really pretty basic).
There is a large group of people that think that the college one graduates from does not matter. I’m not in that group. I believe everything on a new BSCS job applicant’s resume is either directly or indirectly tied to the school they have graduated from. Subsequent jobs will rely less on college and more on experience, but as long as there are alumni networks, the college tie will remain.
I suppose that government could require ABET (they can require anything really), but I don’t see why. I don’t see major tech firms requiring it now or in the near future (I just can’t think of a reason).
An interesting exercise would be to ask every young CS person you know what ABET is. Hear that? Crickets.
I suspect most young CS people don’t know of or care about ABET. The school may make somewhat of a difference in one’s initial job. When we hire newly minted CS graduates for example we look at the person’s courses, grades, internship/co-op experience (if any), design work done in school, any other experience they may have, etc. more than the name of the school from which he/she graduated. If those “highly regarded” schools exceed the ABET requirements so much as they think, then it would seem it wouldn’t be much of a burden on them to seek the accreditation. If somebody tells me that they are such a great engineer or software developer and that they are a “can’t miss” candidate that we should hire just because they attended MIT/Stanford/CMU/etc, my response to him/her is “you have to prove it to me, not simply expect someone to take it on faith that you are so talented just by virtue of having attended that school” (I’m from Missouri, you have to show me!). Again, I have seen many examples to the contrary in my career. When on the job, it is the quality of your work that counts not where you went to school.
Two different but related topics.
Regards ABET for CS, you’re right: young people don’t care, many schools don’t care, industry doesn’t care. That may change someday, but not anytime soon. For now, ABET is a NOP (don’t care).
Any kid that shows up and says “hire me because I went to CMU” will most likely be shown the door. I doubt that happens very often. However, the things that you did mention as important (courses, grades, internship/co-op experience, design work, etc) are all directly/indirectly tied to the school they graduated from. And that’s why schools and programs matter…
Hi can anyone recommend a good source that lists/ranks maybe the top 50-75 CS programs in the country? I found the list on Niche and on US News, but on US News, I can only get up to the top 16.
I’m not as interested in ranking as I am just knowing where some solid programs are. I’m trying to help a high school student identify some good programs.
Thanks!