Lots of Michigsn VS X school threads and that should tell you enough. All my son’s CS friend’s had great internships and job offers early,last year, I know of like 10 of them. Don’t worry about rank. Every company coming to campus knows about the type of students Michigan produces and wants them . I know several that internshiped and work on special projects from Nasa.
A few years ago CS Michigan students went to the MIT hackathon and won it… Lol…
BTW - if you want Nerdy etc you will find your peeps. If you don’t want to party don’t. Saturday nights the libraries are FULL of students studying (during the times besides pandemics), you can easily find a study group also if you want to. My son worked on Sunday so after the big football game he went back to studying when he needed to. Go to at least some games and go from there if it’s your thing. If not, don’t go… It’s all up to you how you want to spend your 4 years.
I really don’t have an opinion on which you should do, but the idea that GaTech is a weaker brand name for somebody in the CS field suggests that you don’t understand how prestige works in the real world (as opposed to through HS googles).
I think OP is saying that GTech has a better reputation in CS but UM has the better overall reputation, once you leave CS (say Business or Intl Relations), which is actually pretty reasonable. The three years and flexibility of UM’s program would probably sway to UM. Good luck, these are great choices!
Our son broke the family chain turning down U-M for the military but is earning his CS masters at GT. There is no better college town than Ann Arbor, and U-M’s reputation and alumni network are top notch. However, I agree with @collegemom3717’s comment that you don’t understand how prestige or rankings work if you think Georgia Tech is somehow beneath Michigan in CS. GT is higher ranked than U-M as an engineering school overall and in every engineering department specifically. If you’re looking for engineering prestige/name brand, chose GT. If you’re looking for the best undergraduate experience, breadth of excellence, overall reputation, and alumni network, chose U-M—you can always go to GT for grad school.
You can graduate from GaTech in 3 years and even fit a semester abroad in. GaTech CS is a well respected program and ranked above CS at UMich, but it looks like you already made your decision. Good luck!
I like UMich for the college-town, and all the intangibles the school has to offer.
I like GT for the weather and the better handling of the overcrowded classes.
It’s a tossup … (for us New Yorkers, GT is cheaper too) …
I’d go with the higher-ranked school in the industry (Georgia Tech) and the one with more sophisticated networking (also GT) and better campus layout (again, GT). The Atlanta location, a tech hub with even more large-scale tech on the way (Microsoft campus just 2 miles away from GT) is also nearly impossible to beat. World’s busiest airport (Hartfield-Jackson) is 20 minutes away. GT kids are always off to other places via plane and car because so many places (Savannah, New Orleans, Florida, etc) are accessible. A college town like Ann Arbor is cute but isolated and wears off after a few years. If you think you might swing over to liberal arts at some point, U Mich offers more quality variety. But if you are committed to CS or engineering, it’s hard to see what anybody would not choose Georgia Tech.
One could make the argument that 4 years in a large metropolitan area would grow tiresome as well.
As for isolated, it’s a city of 120,000+ people and a 35-minute Flyer bus ride to the DTW airport. And 45 minutes to Detroit. “Isolated” is a relative term. D21 attends Cal Poly SLO, a small town in Central CA, which is roughly 3 hours to SF Bay Area and 3 hours to LA, depending on traffic.
Both Michigan and GT have a total student population of 40,000+ students, just more graduate students at GT. Having said that, reading the OP’s pro’s and con’s, I gather GT is their best fit and probable choice. Although 1 less year of tuition sure is nice.
Go to Umich. My son is on waitlist at GaTech and needs the spot.
Seriously, congrats. I’m sure either one will be fine, and both have name recognition. I would NOT worry about the rankings between these two. USNWR can give what numbers it wants, but people hire based on how the people they’ve worked with before perform, not based on USNWR rankings, and in CS, there are some USNWR top-10 colleges that I’ve heard multiple people say that they don’t like hiring from because they’ve been disappointed with the graduates. (Neither of these are that one). So really - don’t worry about the ranking. These are both well-known well-respected universities.
Being able to graduate in 3 years is significant. It means you can add a Master’s in that fourth year if UMich has a (normally) 5-year BS/MS program. Or if you want to double major, you could do that too. That would likely sway us towards UMich if it were my kid.
