<p>tl;dr</p>
<p>really the school doesnt matter as long as its
- cheap and/or gives you a killer scholarship/grant
- accredited
- visited by many and/or good employers</p>
<p>Hi all,
Had read all of this and in my opinion the school doesn’t really matter. I have two B.S. degrees, one in Math and the other in Civil Engineering. Graduated from the University of New Orleans (I’m not even sure it is Tier 2) in May 2010 after passing the F.E. exam (the state licensing exam for engineer majors). I had worked through college paying cash (my school only costs 2.5k a semester), although eventually I took out some minimal loans, about 14.5k for both degrees. My job though was relevant to the civil engineering job I had always wanted. It started with wearing the blue collar cutting concrete with a lot of Mexicans on the jobsite (and learning Spanish along the way), and eventually interning at a major geotechnical engineering firm in New Orleans redesigning levees & floodwalls for my senior year. Along the way I took 20 hour semesters and was heavily involved in ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers). I waited about 3 weeks before getting a job in New York City, and have been working up here ever since. The person who’s job I took over was a Cornell graduate going back to grad school at Stanford. When I came in for my interview, they asked me questions pertinent to the job I would be doing and exact questions about real things that I knew and learned. They didn’t care about my academic credentials other than that I graduated, and that I was licensed by the state. They asked me specific questions about Hardy-Cross, turbulent and laminar flow, hydraulics and fluid mechanics. If my knowledge of said subjects made me more qualified than the other guy, then I don’t see a reason why they should have been hired over me. I think that being able to move 1400 miles away after going to a no-name school and saving about 100k more than my ivy-league colleague was a good move for me. In the long term, I have no idea if that will carry me, but I have hopes even in this economy. If that wasn’t enough, I’m continuing to get calls for interviews for resumes that were posted months ago. I think if you’re qualified to do a job, bust your *ss in what you do, then who you are will show more than any sort of academia pedigree or amount of pretentiousness ever will. There is no real substitute for taking advantage of every opportunity and working hard at the same time. Hope this helps.</p>
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<p>Plenty. You have to know what you can make your scanner do (and how to make it do that), what you can make your parser do (and how to make it do that), what yacc means when it tells you about shift/reduce conflicts and reduce/reduce conflicts, how to build a data structure to handle the parsed input so that you can use the parsed input efficiently for whatever you are doing. Basically, the projects at work were similar in scope to a compiler course (UCB CS 164) project.</p>
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<p>Of course, that’s IT, not software development. Also, remember that most people in IT are not CCIE or better in skills (and not paid anywhere near as much). A CCIE may be far less work than a bachelor’s degree in engineering, but it is hardly something that any high school graduate or dropout can do. Indeed, given how poorly most people run their home computers, CCIE capable people are probably few and far between, whether or not they have other education. You might say that there are some people who make careers out of IT with little technical skills, but having more technical skills and knowledge than typical can only help in distinguishing you from the rest of the field.</p>
<p>Considering the quality of IT services that I have seen in industry (the vast majority of IT people are far below CCIE skill level), it is no big surprise that high profile cracks of sensitive information occur on a regular basis. Not to mention the proliferation of odd policies that make it easier to do denial of service attacks and such.</p>
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<p>Labor markets are often not optimally efficient. Get used to it. Dilbert cartoons are based on real life workplaces.</p>
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<p>Nor was I. Why are you asking me?</p>
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<p>No need to petition, since engineering programs have free elective space to take whatever you want. And L&S CS majors can use Statistics 133 to fulfill one of their two required non-CS technical courses.</p>
<p>The most useful courses are the ones where you can learn the theory being the concept and how to apply the theory to practical applications. Best of both worlds… CS courses with computer programming can be that way – learn the theory in lecture, apply it in computer programming assignments.</p>
<p>But if you insist on asking the question, then the answer is, it depends. But I will give a software development and an IT example (using [UCB</a> EECS courses](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/]UCB”>Courses - EECS at Berkeley) for reference, but one can match up similar courses elsewhere).</p>
<p>Software development: major in L&S CS or EECS. Prioritize the following upper division courses for career utility:
First priority (concepts commonly used in industry): CS 169, CS 170, EE 122, CS 162
Second priority (commonly used in some subareas, but not all): CS 160, CS 186, CS 164, CS 184, CS 161, CS 150, CS 152
Third priority (uncommonly used in industry, though possibly used in very specialized subareas; take them as free electives if they really interest you, but do not expect them to be that useful in most career directions): CS 172, CS 174, CS 182, CS 188, CS 189, CS C191</p>
<p>IT: No need to major in CS. Concepts taught in EE 122, CS 162, CS 186 will likely be useful if one is on the more “technical” side of IT (system and network administration). UGBA 149A will likely be helpful. Or perhaps do [Technology</a> and Information Management at UCSC](<a href=“http://www.tim.ucsc.edu/]Technology”>http://www.tim.ucsc.edu/) instead. Or do [Business</a> MIS at SJSU](<a href=“http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/departments/BUS-section-10.html]Business”>http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/catalog/departments/BUS-section-10.html), get a CCIE while there, and consider taking the CS versions of networking, database, and operating systems for a stronger background in the “technical” aspects of IT than a typical IT person.</p>
<p>thanks for your input bharring. You sound like a pretty driven person and really in the end, that is what makes anyone successful.</p>
<p>My experience in engineering was long ago, but was consistent with BanjoHiitter’s posts.
My first real job was with a large engineering firm. That firm recruited from afar at only a not-huge list of major, well known and well regarded engineering schools. However they also recruited at basically every engineering school within their region.</p>
<p>People at the nationally regarded schools may have a better chance at jobs out of region. But if you want to stay within region, I can’t tell that it mattters that much, for that firm i worked for. though it might be that they went deeper in the class at some of those schools than others, I can’t say. It’s possible that even within region the “better” programs are more heavily recruited. I wasn’t in a position to compare.</p>
<p>I have no opinion on IT, which I’m not sure is actually on point for this thread.</p>
<p>I’m wondering though, why it is “BanjoHitter”, and not “Frailer”.
<a href=“Steve Martin banjo, frailing, clawhammer medly - Loch Lomond Sally Anne - YouTube”>Steve Martin banjo, frailing, clawhammer medly - Loch Lomond Sally Anne - YouTube;
<p>I think school matters, sometimes. I think it matters if you’re planning on attending a top grad school and if you are looking to find a job in another part of the country out of college. If you go to a lesser known school, and plan on staying in the general area, you’ll probably find a job. It’s easier for employers to get talent locally. Keep in mind though that your first job is very important. Once you start looking for the next job, and the next job, it will be less about your schooling and more about your experience because they’ll be looking to hire you for particular skill sets. (However, you could say getting great experience, on average, is attributed to your schooling. Recruiters coming to big engineering schools, hiring students with great gpas to work on important things.)</p>
<p>Take the state of Maryland for example. You have College Park and Hopkins as the two main engineering schools - which are also two of the best in the country. You also have schools like Towson, which i don’t think has engineering, and UMBC which apparently does. In this area kids from UMBC and Towson get jobs at big companies. Why? Because they’re local and because there are tons of jobs in this area. A lot of the time it’s about being in the right place at the right time. However, to get a job at these big companies you’d have to be a standout at those particular schools because they’re competing with Hopkins and MD grads too. If these grads looked for jobs out of college, in a different part of the country, the story would be much different for them. Not the case for the MD and Hopkins grads.</p>
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<p>Then let me ask you this: how many other developers would ever use those sorts of techniques on their every-day job? I rarely meet a developer who ever uses those skills. </p>
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<p>But we’re not talking about any high school graduate. We are specifically talking about those who are actually good enough to have survived engineering programs at a decent college, perhaps of Berkeley caliber, but not necessarily restricted to be so. Many, probably most, of those people could have certainly become CCIE’s if given the opportunity. Honestly, there is absolutely no comparison between trying to learn CCIE skills and trying to understand, say, quantum chemistry. </p>
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<p>So? If anything, this only strengthens the argument still further - IT workers clearly don’t have to demonstrate a high level of skill while still being paid well anyway. The fact that many IT workers are incompetent only reinforces the point that if you happen to be one of the half-decent ones - i.e. of at least a CCIE level - you can enjoy an excellent career without, frankly, having to excessively strain yourself. And like I said, anybody who can survive an engineering program at a decent school can certainly become a CCIE. Put another way, why should somebody exert themselves to be just an average engineer when they could become one of the best (relatively speaking) IT workers, particularly when the latter pays far more? </p>
<p>The core problem is that engineering companies, sadly, don’t really pay their engineers particularly well but somehow seem to always have the budget to pay their IT workers. Until that changes, there will continue to pay a migration of people from engineering to IT. Sad but true. </p>
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<p>Sure, but then that’s all the more reason to take advantage of their stupidity. If companies continue to insist on paying their (competent) IT workers more than their engineers, despite less intellectual preparation, what should you rationally prefer to do? </p>
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<p>Um, ucbalumnus, because you were the one harassing me. You’re asking me to provide an answer that I am not obligated to provide. After all, I was not the one proposing that those from lower-level programs can enjoy the same opportunities as those from higher-level programs, and don’t believe that’s true. Those who are actually making that proposition should be the ones to provide a clear, non-obvious, but actionable pathway as to how that would take place. </p>
<p>So like I said, if you want a direct answer to your question, then ask the people who stipulated the proposition in the first place. It wasn’t me. </p>
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<p>I’m not even talking about elective space. Use it to trade actual upper-division requirements. Why not? I know people who have successfully done it. Granted, success is not guaranteed. But there’s no harm to try. </p>
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<p>Very good. Now was that really so hard? I’m still mystified as to why it took you numerous posts, including posts that unnecessarily challenged me that added nothing to the conversation, for you to finally contribute something useful…but indeed you finally did. </p>
<p>But more to the point, I think that far more college students - including (or perhaps especially) those in low-paying majors - should pick up IT skills and certifications on the side such as the CCIE, RHCE, or OCM. Or become a SAS programmer - for example, Harvard has an ingenious undergraduate statistics course that specifically teaches you SAS (and some R) to the level that many of those who finish the course can become legitimate entry-level SAS programmers. To be clear, it’s a time-consuming course, but it’s still just one course that teaches a highly marketable skill. These are the sorts of courses that you should be looking for.</p>
<p>While there are IT jobs that really are not very technical, there are IT jobs, positions and employers who are basically software developers. They are heavy into the software engineering life-cycle and CMMI standards and accreditations. Software engineering is basically systems engineering applied to the development of software. Systems engineering is spinoff from industrial engineering. When there are “front-end” applications developed in Java/C++, etc…there ARE concepts that are used from the teachings of computer science foundations.</p>
<p>I can agree about not having to major in CS, but when someone asks me about getting into software development, I tell them to take the following as a minimum:</p>
<p>1) The first two required CS courses. These are usually two C++ or Java courses.</p>
<p>2) Data Structures. This will give you the general background on how data structures work on just about most platforms.</p>
<p>3) Programming Languages. At one time, I might have “nah” to this course, but it has dug me out of some issues during a project or two.</p>
<p>4) Operating Systems. A MUST have. I still get surprised when I see commons actions and attributes between Windows and a Linux/Solaris/Unix-flavor.</p>
<p>5) Algorithms. While you may not see any algorithms done in class on an actual project, this courses puts your mind in a “mindset” to create or conceptualize and algorithmic approach to a computing/coding problem. I may go as far as also suggesting the senior/grad level “Analysis of Algorithms” (not the one given at sophomore level).</p>
<p>6) Networks. This is part on having the “information/IT” concepts and goals in your back pocket. You can try to ignore networks but after awhile, you will get tired (and embarrassed) of asking your network specialist to answer every damn question.</p>
<p>7) Databases. Data HAS to go somewhere so it can be retrieved so this area is needed just about everywhere. I would suggest taking the CS-DEPARTMENT’S version of the course first…then head to a Microsoft/Oracle training vendor for the practical details.</p>
<p>8) Graphics. Whether it is science or for games or just a part of a software application, it is not a bad idea to have knowledge in this area.</p>
<p>9) Software Engineering. Just one overall course.</p>
<p>There may be some prereqs that are needed for the above courses. Some schools prefer some low-level/assembler-like course before the operating systems course and some schools do not.</p>
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<p>The problem with such a course is that, even after having taken it, you still end up having to ask your network specialist every damn question. As I said before, most network courses, at least as taught in upper-division coursework within major research universities, concentrate on queueing theory. Yet, nowadays, if you’re having network issues, it’s almost never because of an overflowing queue, but rather because of a looping route table or black-holed domain of which the class is of only minimal help. I can’t think of a single CCIE that I know who has ever taken a formal CS networks course, and they all seem to be doing just fine without it. </p>
<p>But anyway, more to the point, which CS courses should you not take? I think that’s what the reader would find more interesting.</p>
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<p>I am late buying the “Super Bowl Sunday Eats”, so I have to come back later, but two CS courses off the top…Theory of Computation (turing machines) and a sole course on Computational Complexity. If one cannot sleep at night, maybe reading about Church’s thesis will help…but for employment?..nah.</p>