<p>My dad works at a tuition exchange school, which means I have free tuition at a select number of smaller private schools. I want to go into computer science, but none of these schools have a ranked computer science program. I live in North Carolina, near UNC Chapel Hill, NC State University, and UN Charlotte, whose CS programs are ranked #20, #47, and #99 respectively. These are state schools, so they are affordable...but unless I pick up a lot of outside scholarship money, the tuition exchange schools are much cheaper (I would only have to pay for board, books and supplies). In your opinion, is the prestige of these programs worth paying the extra money for, or does prestige even matter that much?</p>
<p>I will definitely pursue graduate school after undergrad. I will no longer be eligible for free college for grad school, so I will likely be attending UNC Chapel Hill or NC State for my masters and doctorate degrees. With this in mind, does the prestige of the program at which I attain my undergrad degree even matter if I attain my graduate degrees at a highly-ranked institution?</p>
<p>One more thing: what is more important to employers, the prestige of the program or the prestige of the school itself?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you intend on pursuing a PhD, undergrad prestige is important as it provides you more opportunities for research and thus resume building for top grad programs.</p></li>
<li><p>PhD (and consolation masters) programs are generally fully funded, so you don’t pay tuition regardless of where you go - indeed, schools are generally expected to pay their students a stipend.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Both wrong and incomplete. Undergrad “prestige” guarantees you NOTHING in terms of more opportunities for research. On the contrary, if you are top student in a second-tier program you are likely to get more mentoring, research opportunities, internships, and counseling than if you are a middling student in a “prestige” program. (If you at the top of the heap, it won;t matter much either way.) You MIGHT get good research opportunities at a prestige program, but it isn’t because of the prestige, but because of the school’s commitment to undergraduate research.</p>
<p>Second point: many good Ph.D. programs are attached to “weed-out” masters programs, where only a few students receive funding, and after two years, the Ph.D. programs decide which students they want to keep. This is going to vary both by school, and by department. (I don’t know much about CS departments.)</p>
<p>Perhaps in English, but in the United States nearly all PhD programs in STEM fields are fully funded - it’s unusual to not be offered funding.</p>
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<p>I use prestige as a proxy for research activity here - generally a better school will have professors conducting more research, and with a generally smaller teaching load, making more time for research. Many of the top undergrad programs in the country (MIT comes to mind) are renowned for the research opportunities provided to undergrads, due both to formal programs and departmental resources in the sciences.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how much I agree with that, as only one or two of the top ten schools I know within my field (Materials Science & Engineering) have any sort of appreciable fail rate for candidacy/qualifiers. Generally by that point your advisor’s already invested about $150,000 into you, and they’d really rather you stick around and do well. The only programs I know that tend to fail people out are those that don’t guarantee funding, and in the more technical fields, they tend to not be the strongest programs.</p>
<p>“I use prestige as a proxy for research activity here”</p>
<p>But it’s not. Generally speaking, the bulk of the research in this country in many subjects is conducted at state universities (and not always the flagships either.)</p>
<p>And there are a TON of programs in this country that offer ONLY a Masters program in STEM fields, and there are quite a few places that have separate tracks for Masters and Ph.D. students. (And in most cases, you PAY for the masters program.)</p>
<p>The schools in the tuition exchange program I am considering are Elon University, Gardner-Webb University, Coker College, Mar Hill College, and Methodist University. Tuition will be free for me at all of these schools. Coker would also provide a free room. Mars Hill also offered me a $14,000/year scholarship, but that might be retracted once I apply tuition exchange. In addition, there is a North Carolina Legislative Tuition Grant that will cut $1,850 from the remaining costs of all of these schools except for Coker.</p>
<p>In other words, I’ll only have to pay a few two or three thousand dollars a year at one of these colleges if outside scholarships don’t make them completely free.</p>
<p>Coker’s class schedule lists only about 6 CS (freshman / sophomore level) courses for the whole academic year. So it may not be where you want to major in CS.</p>
<p>The others appear to have a rather thin selection of CS courses compared to a typical university. Inspect the course catalogs and class schedules carefully. At this point, it is not so much about the prestige as it is the likelihood that the CS course offerings may be too limiting.</p>
<p>None is ABET-accredited for CS. ABET accreditation is not generally an issue in CS employment like it is in civil engineering, but lesser known schools often seek ABET accreditation as validation of their programs meeting a minimum standard of quality. While UNC-CH’s reputation is high enough that no one will notice the lack of ABET accreditation in CS, other schools like Appalachian State, NC A&T, UNC-G, and Winston-Salem State do have ABET accreditation for CS. NCSU does also (some higher ranked programs do get ABET accreditation, though not all do).</p>
<p>Just go to the free school, you will never regret being debt free. You will also have a much better experience at a small private college where everyone knows your name as opposed to a large state school where you are a number.</p>
<p>ABET is completely irrelevant for CS; ABET is more of an engineering concept.</p>
<p>UNC Chapel Hill is a wonderful CS school; you’re very lucky to have it as an in-state option. Honestly, it’s attractive even at OOS prices. That program would be a fine springboard into grad school.</p>
Agreed, your advice in this thread is pretty far off the mark. The research is what gives these schools prestige. Research activities with quality faculty will lead to great opportunities for grad school. The CS PhD programs will be fully paid for. The weeder classes are pretty much an undergrad concept. </p>
<p>UNC-CH can definitely deliver what you need, OP!</p>
<p>You may want to ask the CS departments at schools like UNC-CH and NCSU (or other desirable graduate school for CS) about whether they regard majoring in CS at one of the tuition exchange schools as sufficient preparation for graduate study.</p>
<p>No one seems to care about ABET accreditation from a well known school like UNC-CH. But for lesser known schools, maybe …</p>
<p>The other thing is, the first stops in NC for computer industry employers doing college recruiting are almost certainly UNC-CH, NCSU, and Duke.</p>
<p>If the OP is talking about the Tuition Exchange program (and not another variant), he should be aware that TE scholarships are not guaranteed but depend on a) a balance of imports and exports from colleges in the exchange and b)the target school’s resources. Some schools on the Tuition Exchange only give 10% or fewer of TE applicants a scholarship. Also, the scholarship amount may vary. TE is unpredictable and, you will not know if you have a scholarship until March of the year you will be going to school.</p>
<p>If you are an NC resident and want to attend graduate school after college, UNC-CH will offer you every opportunity you need.</p>
<p>I would not spend any money on UG if it is possible to get it free. My own D. was on full tuition Merit scholarship at state UG, she got the same results as Ivy and other Elite school graduates, they are in the same Med. School. The difference - they are having loans, D. does not.<br>
Another point, your plans now is to go to Grad. School. You do not know if your plans in 4 years will remain the same. If you want to be employed after UG, I do not see any point in paying for UG. Again, mine was free as my employers paid. They would have paid for prestigious school, but it would require travel on a daily basis. So, I went to local college all the way thru MBA on employers’ dime. I am a computer programmer have been in IT for about 30 years, worked on different platforsm, using different languages, worked in many unrelated industries. When they hire you, they are looking for experience mostly. However, everybody knows that you will need to be re-trained at every job and you do it mostly on your own. People with experience do it faster. However, we do hire straight from college, local one. I am employed at huge international company with 30,000 employees doing business all over the world and our customers are the largest manufactureres in the world serving markets in Europe, Asia, North America, South America. We deal with our international customers on a daily basis. We do to recruit at Ivy/Elite schools, we do not see any reason.</p>
<p>The title of your post is deceiving because the difference in the schools that you are considering is more about quality of undergrad education program than about prestige. If you were comparing NC State or UNC-CH to Duke, that would be about prestige. I would go for either NC State or UNC-CH over any of the schools mentioned. In state tuition is a bargain.</p>