Does the college matter for a CS major?

“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.” - No, there is little correlation between the school and those things. We have hired people that had great courses, grades, and internship/co-ops at well known employers from many schools not just “top” ones. There are far more great CS (and engineering) programs than just the “top 20” or whatever.

There are great, good, adequate, and not so good programs out there. That just makes sense. Great will always be in demand.

Again, the person is the key not the school. Try to get a guarantee from MIT or CMU that their graduate will do a good job in one’s organization. Will they give me a money back guarantee on their salary if they do not do the job well? Of course they won’t. Most of the software development and engineering in the world was and is being done by people who did not attend those schools and yet progress still goes on. I know software developers who learned coding on their own not even having done a CS degree at all. Apparently, it is something that can be learned by doing or as a hobby. The degree whether from a great, good, adequate, or not so good place is no guarantee of anything. What makes a program “great”? To my mind, it is the quality of the work done by the product of the program (the graduate). In my experience there is little or no correlation between the popular regard of the school and the quality of the work the person does. I’ve seen great work done by graduates of “less great” schools and poor work done by graduates of MIT and CMU (and vice versa). The person, not the school, is what matters.

My only point is that colleges matter. Your hiring experience experiences sound very different than mine, and that makes sense. When I hired a new grad all I had was their resume that reflected the entity of their college experience. And the graduates of a handful of colleges have, over time, proven to great performers for what we needed (may not be what you need). Have I missed a diamond in the rough? Maybe, but when I hire new grads I try to minimize risk.

@collegemomjam

These are imperfect but outline a good set of programs:

CSRankings looks at research output to top conferences. It’s not inherently correlated with undergraduate program quality but should at least give a tiering feel. Anything in/near the Top 100 there should be adequate, and most of the top 25-50 will be strongly known in the CS world.

http://csrankings.org/

Check the “new-grad” slide for a list of 25 most present degrees in top companies in Silicon Valley. The list is biased to both larger programs and those in California but is still helpful.

https://hiringsolved.com/blog/hiringsolved-identifies-top-skills-backgrounds-make-2017s-wanted-tech-employee/

USNews is completely a peer survey from academics, so I wouldn’t put much stock into it beyond the top few names. It’s also dated to 2014. Niche looks at mostly tangentially relayed factors such as funding, the popularity of major, and even purposefully weights the number of students in the program rather than correcting for it. Still, probably better than US News.

The two links above, while again imperfect, put thoughtful consideration into complex data or have a significant novel data source.

@PengsPhils thanks so much!

This sounds different from my hiring experience, too. Going to a top school can help you get an interview right after graduation, when you’re being compared with other new grads and there’s not much in the way of work experience or demonstrated skills to differentiate people. The assumption is that if you went to a top school, you must be at least semi-competent, so you’re given the benefit of the doubt. But the ultimate decision would be based on the interview, and in the majority of cases, someone from a “lesser” school would be given the offer because we felt they were a better fit.

I’m just coming up with rough numbers here, but for new grads your school may account for 75% of the reason you get that first interview. After 3 years of work experience, that number may be down to 15%. And the more years worked, the more that number deteriorates.

My very first job was with an aerospace company about 10 miles away from Stanford. The company wouldn’t hire people from Stanford because we figured they wouldn’t stick around very long. (We did have lots of Cal grads in the company, though. Upon further reflection, maybe that had something to do with discrimination against Stanford grads.)

That sounds about right. Interestingly, I’ve also heard of job candidates that were turned away because it was felt that they would not stay long (they were bottom fishing). That’s basically the same as saying the job wasn’t a good long term fit. This reason was most often cited with candidates from a handful of colleges.

I’ve never found the CS programs among most US universities to be drastically different from each other. The CS program from just about any public university should suffice. Usually the most respected (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best for your student) is the CS program offered at the state flagship.

Here’s another ranking that seems no better or worse than any other. Select United States in the “any country/region” drop-down -

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2018/subject-ranking/computer-science#!/page/0/length/25/locations/US/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

Thanks @simba9, very helpful!

ABET accreditation for CS basically means that the major is of decent or better quality, as opposed to low quality. Lack of such accreditation means that the major can be in the full range of possible qualities, ranging from top end like CMU to an insufficiently technical business IT major with a few extra programming courses.

I.e. an ABET accredited CS major will not be bad, but will not necessarily be better than the better non ABET accredited CS majors.

ABET accreditation for CS does require one fourth of the degree in math and non CS science, so CS majors that are not engineering based often do not try to get it because they do not want to add additional non CS science requirements.

The one place where ABET accreditation for CS matters is as a prerequisite for the patent exam, though those with non ABET CS degrees can fulfill the prerequisite with sufficient non CS science.

ABET accreditation does not undermine brand value. However, it may not add enough brand value for a CS department that already has a high reputation in CS (e.g. CMU) to be seen as worth going through with the process.

Note that some high ranked schools have rather limited CS departments (e.g. Emory).

As someone who graduated from a top 5 USNews undergrad school and now have a job, I can absolutely tell you in the software engineering field, no one gives a damn about ABET.

What is ABET? CS isn’t engineering.
I hope people here aren’t misled to believe that ABET is actually important in the CS field because legitimately 0 companies I applied for ever cared about such thing.

Here are a few things I wish people here were informed about in CS:
No one cares about ABET. CS is NOT engineering.
No one cares if your 4 year degree is BS or BA or whatever. Like I said, it is NOT engineering.
As long as your degree is accredited (aka you go to a reputable school and not some shady for-profit), then you have a fine degree.
And colleges DO matter for CS too but that’s only for a very few select schools in the US. Attending somewhere like Harvard or CalTech or Brown or CMU or UCB is a huge advantage in getting a ‘step to the door’ interview with the most selective firms in software engineering. The chance of getting an interview with somewhere like Jane Street out of college is almost improbable if you do not attend a top 15 school. If places like Jane Street, Ren Tech, Facebook, Quora, Snapchat, etc. are where you want to work right out of college, then yes, prestige matters.
If your goal is to ‘get a job’ after graduation, then no, colleges don’t matter as much. But that’s for almost all fields. I can claim that econ grads for state schools get jobs too but if one’s goal is to work in a place like Goldman Sachs, it’s probably best for the student to attend a place like NYU Stern, Columbia, Harvard, UPenn Wharton, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth.

And please go to the best school you can get into (that you can afford). Most of the learning in college happens outside class and having peers who are some of the brightest in the world is a learning experience in itself too. Remember, most of your classes in college aren’t really CS courses in undergrad. They are going to be like philosophy, religion, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. The CS department isn’t going to “shape” you much there during the four years of studying in comparison to the peers you hang around with (who might not be CS majors).
Having friends who do biomedical engineering while loving to read philosophy in their free time and spending countless hours to learn at least 2 foreign languages to ‘translate’ online novels for fun is not something you can find everyday. And having those friends also be very well informed of the other majors like CS because they spend the time to make sure they are on the same page as their other friends while taking ridiculously difficult courses both in and out of their majors for the ‘adventure’ especially since they truly enjoy writing 20+ page essays every other week (especially since they truly value friendship and want to take courses together irregardless of their major) is an experience I feel not many schools could accommodate.
And a noticeable amount of peers I met during college finished courses like Modern Abstract Algebra or Abstract Topology during high school and those peers weren’t even majoring in Mathematics. Two of them were majoring in computer science and the other two being linguistics and chemistry. Those types of friends are I feel harder to find at some less selective schools.

College is 4 years a student spends from morning to night. Just make sure to make a rational decision and not go in a huge debt for an undergrad degree (and ideally, no debt).

However, some reputable schools have small CS departments with limited offerings, or which are overspecialized in specific subareas. Examples include Emory, Holy Cross, and Tulane.

@AccCreate and @coloradoma are on point with ABET, ABET is only important if you want to work on infrastructure for the government. The government loves accreditation’s so they can point to that when things go wrong. Civil mechanical and others where a PE (BTW another BS accreditation which is just another thing to get money out of you, ABET gets money out if the school) is needed, it’s beneficial to have it as it’s easier to get your FE/EIT/PE. Still with the number of fraudulent people/companies out there claiming to be engineers I doubt these certs will go away any time soon.

@CU123 - Neither ABET or PE are “BS accreditations”. The purpose of the PE is to ensure that only those who are trained and competent engineers design infrastructure that affects the public safety such as bridges, highways, public utilities, power plants, transportation systems, reinforced concrete structures, tall buildings, water and sewage plants, et al. Do you want to drive on a bridge “designed” by someone whose competency has not been vetted? Outside of the traditional civil and mechanical engineering fields which are most visible to the public in terms of infrastructure, the PE is a hallmark of professionalism. Some engineers go the extra mile and earn their PE even though they may not do work in which a PE is required. I was an EE and Comp. Sci. major and I went for the professional hallmark of PE for example. I’ve never done work for which a PE was required. In my opinion, all engineers should be required to be licensed. Engineering affects the public welfare and safety every bit as much as any other learned licensed profession such as law and medicine. Would you consider hiring an unlicensed attorney or have an unlicensed physician treat you?

ABET is essential in my view for engineering. It ensures a minimum and uniform standard of course and curriculum breadth and depth, adequate faculty in both numbers and preparation, and that the education turns out adequately trained and qualified engineers. For a school such as Caltech or Brown for example to claim that accreditation is not needed because “we are Caltech/Brown/et al” strikes me as arrogant hubris. Yes, ABET accreditation is necessary if one wants to get a federal or in most cases a state level engineering position, to sit for the EIT and PE exam, and for many employers who value and know the importance of ABET accreditation as a requirement for their engineering positions.

Michael S., Ph.D., P.E., SM IEEE, Consulting aerospace engineer

ABET for CS? Not so much.

I would like to re-iterate the following:

Computer Science is NOT engineering.
Computer Science is a SCIENCE like physics, chemistry, biology.

Hence, it is a field in which ABET means nothing and I don’t suspect such fact changing anytime soon especially with the leading CS schools ignoring ABET forever now.
Considering Computer Science originally stemmed from Applied Mathematics department and it’s ludicrous for mathematicians to need ABET, I don’t understand why people here keep emphasizing ABET in this forum.

ABET is important (and sometimes critical or necessary) for engineering in fields like mechanical, environmental, etc.
ABET is … let’s just say no one knows it in fields like Math, Computer Science, Physics, Biology, Chemistry.

I don’t mean to offend @Engineer80 but I think you are mistaking Computer Engineering with Computer Science.
I don’t know how things rotate in the Computer Engineering world but at least for Computer Science, ABET is unheard of. I really hope this message is clear enough so that parents do not stay misinformed (if they are currently).

@AccCreate - I know very well the difference between engineering, computer engineering, and computer science. I have undergrad degrees in both EE and CS.

Computer engineering is more concerned with (but not limited to) the theory and design of computer hardware, circuitry, architecture, etc. Historically, it was a subspecialty of electrical engineering but is now an ABET accredited major. CS traditionally was concerned with the theory of computation and software, but of course both Comp. E. and CS have aspects that are common and interdisciplinary.

I agree with you that ABET accreditation for computer science isn’t regarded by industry (and hubristically dismissed by some CS schools as “not important”) to the same extent that it is in engineering. In engineering it is essential, as prior posts have described. Perhaps right now it is not as essential in CS as it is in engineering (including computer engineering) for getting a job in the field, but in my opinion as time goes by it will be recognized more in the CS and software industry as a standard of quality, course breadth and depth, and faculty qualification as it is in engineering.

ABET is specific to engineering and computer science. It does not address physics, biology, chemistry, or math as separate majors, so why mention them?

The average traditional CS trained software developer or computer programmer is not an engineer even if he/she attended a rigorous “top 5” or whatever CS school. CS is not engineering. Stop calling yourselves “software engineers” if you do not have an engineering degree. There is an ABET accredited software engineering major if you want to be an engineer doing software.

If you study engineering, don’t waste your time with a program that is not ABET accredited.

I don’t think this will be the case at all because most programs do not have ABET accreditation for reasons outside of depth of CS. Typically a degree without accreditation is because of the physical sciences or humanities requirements not being specific enough, occasionally also math though that will actually matter if you go into more complicated areas of CS beyond going into software “engineering” (yes the title is silly but yelling about it might as well be yelling at a cloud. Luckily titles don’t appear to mean much in pretty much any industry these days). ABET accreditation guarantees depth in CS but there are tons of school without the accreditation that offer the same depth, so any company that discriminates by ABET will only cut their hiring options needlessly.

Again, you’re projecting engineering onto CS. Name one of those “hubris” schools and show me where the lack of CS courses are - that’s not the part of ABET that usually prevents accreditation. There’s no hubris in rejecting it, it’s about using the extra credit space in varying ways.