Feedback on IIT for Computer Science

Colleges and Universities A-Z Illinois Institute of Technology
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1

Hello,

Got admitted to IIT, Drexel, WPI, Rose Hulman, RIT , University of Washington(Bothell Campus). Our current top list is IIT, WPI, UW Bothell for Computer Science.

We have some questions about IIT and hoping someone can answer these.

  1. Why is IIT ranked so high in this list for Professors Get Low Marks, least happy students. How is quality of Computer Science professors? Can someone clarify

https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings?rankings=least-happy-students

https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings?rankings=professors-get-low-marks

  1. How easy it is to get access to professors for individual appointment on regular basis for things like tutorial. How long do you have to wait?
  2. Do you have situation where some professors are not good and you have to look for tutors outside of school?
  3. Do you have challenge with registering for courses that you are interested especially during Freshman, Sophmore years for high demand classes

Reason why IIT is in our top list is because of the CS curriculum which seems to have interesting and latest up to date developments in CS field though IIT is less known/branded compared to WPI, Rose Hulman etc…

Thanks for your help.

2

I’m highly suspicious that this is true. WPI, Rose Hulman, and RIT especially are all very solid CS schools with known programs that have been around for some time. Can you highlight what they are missing / where you got that info from? It smells of bad marketing to me.

I can’t speak to the ins and outs of IIT but generally those low marks + solid other options would be enough for me to eliminate it unless it has some other significant draw like a much lower price or better fit.

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@PengsPhils - Thank you for your response.

  1. compared the CS curriculum across these schools and seems to find that IIT and WPI had lot more choices for CS courses and are more up to date with IIT slightly ahead in my opinion. Background of the faculty seems to be good too.

http://bulletin.iit.edu/undergraduate/courses/cs/
https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/computer-science/courses

  1. Graduation requirements and how much time you are going to spend on your major focussed courses.
    Humanities which is not my top interest and IIT seem to have
    lot more choices to satisfy Humanities, Social sciences that have tech flavor. For Rose Hulman for example I see lot more Humanities requirements and also has some outdated content in CS.

https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/academic-departments/computer-science-software-engineering/_assets/pdfs/CS-flow-chart-20200115.pdf

http://bulletin.iit.edu/courses/hum/
http://bulletin.iit.edu/courses/ssci/

Yes, Price was factor too, 10K per year cheaper at IIT. Thats why I wanted to hear from anyone experience at IIT or heard anything about IIT about professors and the quality.

4

You keep saying this but as someone who looks pretty closely at CS curricula and works for a very modern tech company I can’t seem to find the difference you’re seeing here honestly.

You didn’t link to it, but RHIT’s catalog of classes seems just as full as the others. All of them have “modern” things like Machine Learning courses, game development, and all of your core topics and upper level specialties.

https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/course-catalog/current/programs/Computer%20Science/course-descriptions.html

It’s one thing to make sure you have sufficient courses in your major but avoiding humanities entirely is probably not the best idea either. Social skills and world context can be quite important in software engineering these days as it becomes a more and more powerful and political world. This does not make the CS programs inferior. If anything, I would say it makes them stronger.

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@PengsPhils - thanks for pointing the CS at RHIT link, I pasted the typical flow chart for CS earlier. Upon looking at it again, you are right they are comparable for CS.

Regarding Humanities my point is that there are lot more choices for Humanities at IIT than traditional Humanities like example below. I don’t want to completely avoid humanities, but would be great to have lot more choices to choose based on the interests. Thanks again for sharing your insight.

HUM 354
Science and Technology Studies

or Social Science

SSCI 318
Global Health

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@findrightfit - I have been busy teaching my IIT courses online and have not had a chance to check in. I am a physics professor but I know the CS department well. If you are still trying to make a decision and have any further questions, please reach out. I think that WPI and IIT have much the same flavor. They both have Ph.D. programs in CS. Rose-Hulman is a bit different since it is all undergraduate.