<p>As pamom points out, prestige is not the issue here: quality of education is. As others pointed out, the issue is whether each school has a sufficiently large and good CS department to offer you a sufficiently excellent education in the field. It sounds as if some of them definitely do not. </p>
<p>MianiDAP amakes good points, but her D would not have prospered had she gone to a school that did not offer sufficient courses to fulfill the premed requirements and prepare her for med school, free or not. If you go to a school with meager CS offerings because it is few thousand cheaper, you may be making a bad bargain.</p>
<p>I agree with those above who say that UNC-CH sounds like your best choice, or possibly NC State, assuming that you can get in and that you get in-state tuition.</p>
<p>The problem here is not the prestige factor, but the fact that the listed tuition exchange schools have very thin offerings in the student’s intended major (one is clearly unsuitable for majoring in the subject, while the others are questionable at best).</p>
<p>I agree with others here. It’s not about the ranking so much as what the colleges offer you in the major you intend. Remember that college is about education, about learning something, and that can be easy to miss in all the talk about best dorms, or best majors for post-college employment, etc. If you want to study computer science, then you need to go to a college with a good computer science program. Of course, getting free tuition is nothing to sneeze at, but rather than looking at a college’s rankings, look at what they offer you in terms of courses, opportunities for research, internships. </p>
<p>In general with undergrad prestige: yes, it’s a boon for graduate school. But a lot of people think if you go to a prestigious school, opportunities just fall into your lap. Not so. Having a well known name at the top of your resume might get it a second look, but if the rest of the resume doesn’t show that you have the skills needed to perform the job, it goes back in the discard pile. Going to a prestigious school might give you access to a network of alums in high-powered positions, but if you don’t do the legwork of finding out who they are, scheduling informational interviews, preparing yourself well for jobs in their fields, etc., you’ll get a handshake, but little else. Prestige is what you make of it, not a golden ticket to success and glory.</p>
<p>OP: I would strongly suggest you to go go Chapel Hill. The state schools in NC are rather inexpensive, especially for in-state students like you, and UNC-CH is a perfect balance of quality and price. The other schools in your exchange program are not worthy of your goal and will have huge opportunity cost for you --they could not pay you enough to give up Chapel Hill. NCSU has good CS programs too, but the overall student body at UNC-CH is of higher quality (so you could get more of the “peer effect”). </p>
<p>Education is too important to pick the cheapest. Going to college is life changing. Quality first, price second. Think about the return of investment over a life time, and don’t be overblown by the “free is the best” nonsense.</p>
<p>"Education is too important to pick the cheapest. Going to college is life changing. Quality first, price second. Think about the return of investment over a life time, and don’t be overblown by the “free is the best” nonsense. "</p>
<p>-Quality will depend on student much much more than the place. Opportunities to excell in academics and outside are huge absolutely everywhere. If success is not achieved, place has very little to do with it. I have too many examples to support my opinion, both of gradutes of very top Ivy/elites who struggled after graduation as well as kids from public state UGs who had great choices and full control over their next step.<br>
We have considered Merit scholarships when choosing both Private HS and college, worked wonderfully in both cases. If anything, Merit scholarship will lead you to place that has already appreciated your kid as their potential student, who they believe fits very well there. It was very true in both cases, perfect places that will have permanent spots in our memories.</p>
<p>Going to a low quality UG college is not a good route to graduate school. What are those places? Coker? Mars Hill? No PhD supervisor is going to waste his hard-earned grant funding supporting a student from a place like that.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the above - go to Chapel Hill.</p>
<p>The choice here is not between Ivy/elites and major state universities.</p>
<p>It’s between major state universities (one of which, UNC-CH is unusually highly regarded for a state university, and the other, NC State, which is on a par with most major state universities) and smaller, lesser schools that don’t offer much in the student’s intended major.</p>
<p>At this level, there is a difference that matters.</p>
<p>Perhaps a pre-med can find the pre-med courses at almost every school, but an intended CS major like the OP will find the breadth and depth of CS courses lacking at the tuition exchange schools that the OP listed.</p>
<p>Indeed, at least two North Carolina in-state universities, Appalachian State and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical, have total cost of attendance (at in-state list price, before considering any financial aid) that is competitive to the listed tuition exchange schools’ cost (after deducting tuition), but have much broader and deeper computer science course offerings. If UNC-CH and NCSU are not affordable, AS and NC A&T (and perhaps other state universities) would be better choices for an intended CS major than the listed tuition exchange schools.</p>
<p>“Perhaps a pre-med can find the pre-med courses at almost every school, but an intended CS major like the OP will find the breadth and depth of CS courses lacking at the tuition exchange schools that the OP listed.”</p>
<p>-Well, again anecdotal evidence on my part, but I myself is CS with over 30 years of experience and 3 degrees - at CC, BS and MBA, all from local college. Statement above is not supported by my experience neither by experience of many of my cooworkers at various jplaces of employment in many industries on several computer platforms writing, updating and troubleshooting software written in several different computer languages. Simply not true and nobody can judge it unless they went to several places for the same major. More than many other fields, CS involve lots of re-training at any place of empoloyment done primarily by programmer on his own. The more experienced ones will do it faster, that is why companies usually are looking for experience. Sometime they hire from the college, most do it locally. I believe, I pointed out to all of this before.<br>
I believe in going to college that fits best personality of student and do it as cheaply if this option is available. For one, we told our D. not to be concerned with tuition cost while choosing her Med. School, we could pay because we did not pay her UG tuition (free!). It did not bother us too much that she decided to go to the most expansive Med. School because she felt that it fits her the best. Also the notion of not getting into top Grad. program because of “free” UG education is not supported by my experience either. Well, others have different experiences, we all just share here what we have. Statistical data is not that interesting, since it does not incorporate unique situation of eacg applicant, I do not see any reason to waste time searching thru rankings and such…</p>
<p>I think one of the values of attending more of a name school that is more selective is that you will find yourself in classes with somewhat more competitive students. That’s good preparation for whatever you decide to pursue professionally.</p>
<p>^It will be competitive, many will fall out after first programming class. Surviving rate in my CC first quarter of programming language class was 30%. Yes, 70% did not continue in CS afterwards. We were in Computer Lab. (no doing from home few decades ago) till midnight and later. It is overhelming at first, have to get used to certain way of thinking, only very persistant and hard working (maybe with a tiny dose of specific ability) will get thru. These are not always your typical “A” students, being passionate about it seems to be more important.</p>
<p>You might want to look at the CS courses offered at the OP’s listed schools. At least one of them has fewer offerings in CS than most of the local community colleges around here. And all of them have less breadth and depth in CS than the local low-prestige state universities around here, or the low-prestige state universities in North Carolina.</p>
<p>It is not about prestige in this case; it is about whether the schools in question have sufficient offerings in the student’s intended major.</p>
<p>It does not matter, wide offering does not mean much, as employers are looking for people with certain narrow experience. I really do not care which college anybody is choosing, as I let my own kids to decide what is the best for them. This is the only right approach I know. I am glad that my D. choose free UG, we paid full price for our S., but it was very cheap and he did not plan to go to Grad. School. It also happened to be one of the best programs in his field (graphic design) in the country at that time. However, he was not satisfied with offerrings and did a lot of study on his own, using his own resources. It made a crucial difference at least at the beginning of his career. Then they just learn on a job as everybody else. There is no question that my D. success depended comletely on her also, her taking advantage of all opportunites. She knew that if she did not then she would get nowhere even after having all A’s.</p>
<p>I went to college with a few girls whose parents worked at the school. So they got free tuition and lived at home. They used this major STEM based flagship university as their community college taking their Freshman English and History courses for free before going off to either the other flagship but more general University or private colleges to major in teaching and such (These 3 girls were not the egg head sort their fathers were.) You however, already have 2 years of AP college credit. So you don’t need to use for father’s tution free exchange to get your core curriculm out of the way. You already did that with your AP classes. What you should try to do is go to UNC-CH for UG and Masters so you can spend 4+ years there. Have a life. And make some real connections. Then go to another top ranked university for your PhD. They always like to see you change institutions and gain knowledge from a new set of faculty along the way.</p>