<p>Hey! I'm a junior looking into colleges in the North East of the U.S. I know that I want to program computers, so I think I want to go into a Computer Science major. What schools in this area are good for CS?</p>
<p>Also, how important (in the CS field) is the undergrad school I go to? Is it essential to go to an Ivy League school with a good name, or is it more about getting a solid CS education, wherever there happens to be a decent CS program?</p>
<p>In the computer programming field, is a 4-year bachelors degree enough to get a good job, or is it preferable/essential to get a graduate degree?</p>
<p>Finally, as of now I have a 97.3 GPA and got 1460 on the SAT (taken cold, I was too busy to study much, just did one practice test to see the format). How good are these grades? Do you think I should study over the summer and re-take the SAT in the fall of my senior year, or is 1460 "good enough"?</p>
<p>if you got an 800 on math that would really help, 1460 is a bit low for MIT but your GPA could overcome it- i'd say take it again if you think you can do better as it'll help</p>
<p>CMU! They're even getting a new computer science building [donated by Bill Gates]. It's super nice. 1460 is enough, as long as your higher score is in math and it's like a 750+. After all, it's the CS school.</p>
<p>Like I said though, I'm thinking about taking it again in the fall. I didn't study for this exam, so I should do better (theoretically, anyway :D).</p>
<p>But what about my other questions? Does it matter that much if I go to Carnegie Mellon, or...idk...Queens College for undergrad? In CS, which is more important: skill, or a fancy-name college? And is a fancy-name college necessary to get sufficient education?</p>
<p>And what kind of degree should one get to land a good job as a programmer? Bachelors? Masters?</p>
<p>With your grades (presuming you are taking AP courses) and SAT scores (especially if you take it again and can get your math up 20 to 40 points), I would say your three best choices are Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon. My son and I just visited CMU. I was very impressed with their program. In the operating systems class you write an OS. In the compilers class you write a compiler. I talked with a CS professor at another school and he said that students were not seeing the forest for the trees while writing the OS, so his school dropped that requirement from the OS course. However, at CMU the students have to cover the material that the other schools cover PLUS write the OS. Basically, they do double the work. In fact, the CS professor I talked to at CMU said that you can expect double the work in all the CS classes (a 9 credit class is 18 hours of work per week). At CMU, Google, Microsoft, and Intel all have research facilities on campus. It's a simple phone call from a professor to get a student into an internship. There are so many different research projects on campus that you can be assured you will find one that interests you. For example, my son was jazzed about two projects - one was writing software to customize musical backup to a lead singer's rhythms, timing, etc., and the other was writing software to do automated auctions, essentially replacing human sellers (the program adjusts to the nuances of the company doing the purchasing the way a human would, for example, higher prices for companies without other options, lower prices for companies that might go elsewhere). I think a majority of students do research. I have not investigated the other two schools because my son does not have the SAT scores or grades to get into the other two. I doubt their CS programs could be any better than CMU. Although, I have a lot of respect for the ability of the graduates I know from MIT. I think MIT and Stanford are harder to get into because of their locations and because they offer a wider variety of majors. I have been on the Stanford campus many times and it is beautiful. Decide which one fits you by exploring the degree coursework, emailing professors, and visiting. I know for a fact that CMU and Stanford have a very different feel.</p>
<p>To get a job as a programmer is not that hard and can be achieved by getting a computer science degree at many different universities. However, to work on cutting edge software will require either a BSCS from a very top school (and doing research), or getting an MSCS or Phd, or teaching yourself the equivalent material as Bill Gates did. In my opinion, do NOT get a BACS degree. You just don't get the depth from a BA. It would be interesting to hear what kind of jobs recent BACS graduates have obtained.</p>
<p>The graduates in the BSCS program at CMU had high starting salaries even with a 3.0 grade point average. I'm afraid to quote exact numbers because I don't always remember correctly. My son remembers $75K as being the average. I suspect the salaries in large urban areas are higher than ones offered in small towns doing government programming, but the working hours are longer and the pressure is greater.</p>
<p>I don't know if I was exactly clear in the second part of my post about getting your degree at other universities besides the three I mentioned. I think you will be fine as long as the university offers a BSCS degree. Many of the LACs do not offer this degree. However, you need to think about what kind of programming job you want. Do you want to create the next new product, or do you want to program govt satellites, or do you want to work in IT for some company whose main business is not computers? There are also jobs in the computer industry in product marketing and quality assurance for students with a plain BSCS, but no research. Entry level positions in R&D tend to be on the more mundane parts of a software project, unless you have done research in the area. From these various entry level positions you can rise to a position designing a more critical part of the project, even without a master's degree, as long as you prove yourself worthy.</p>
<p>MIT and Cornell come to mind. Both have excellent Computer Science programs, and one of my friends recently graduated from Cornell with a computer science degree, and got very good job placement. He also liked the atmosphere at Cornell a lot. I'm not as familiar with MIT's CS program, but I'm sure it's wonderful too!</p>
<p>Ricegal, you certainly make CMU sound appealing! I mean, writing an OS...the last time I tried doing that was when I was ~8 and I wrote a batch file that changed the "C:>" prompt to read "Welcome to my OS! Type any command: C:>"! It sounds great. Also, my friend might be taking some programming courses at CMU this summer, so he'll let me know what it's like there.</p>
<p>BTW, you mentioned that you should plan on doing some sort of research at college to prepare for a high-level job, but the research sounds more like coding. What exactly IS this college level research? (Sorry if I'm being naive or...well...stupid. :) I haven't been investigating college as aggressively as most people I know, and my parents sort of started me off assuming I would go to a CUNY school like they did, maybe the Queens Honor Program, so I haven't the slightest clue what I'll do come application time :)).</p>
<p>Thanks once again! You've all been a real help! :) :) :)</p>
<p>D's bf is headed to CMU for CS. Way, way detailed in his college search....also applied/accepted at Cornell and Ga. Tech. If he'd been accepted to MIT, he probably would have gone there, but he's very excited about CMU. CS program is tops.</p>
<p>Before you can begin coding a large software program you must design it. Sometimes, the design can be the hardest part. It's like the difference between being an architect and a builder. There are all kinds of problems you can run into when attempting to do something new with software, and there are lots of papers written about how to solve those problems. One of my friends did a lot of reading about the GUI research being done at Xerox PARC before he wrote the first commercial windowing OS (since replaced by Microsoft Windows). I used to work on database design and the concept of a relational database was the subject of a lot of research papers way back then. It was a new way of thinking about data storage and retrieval, and required a more sophisticated design than the old way of doing things.
With regard to the research at most universities, I suspect that the professors do most of the design and have the students code it (although I have no way of knowing). It doesn't matter because what is important is that you will learn what the problems are that are inherent in your particular area of research, and that is what will make you so appealing to an employer, and/or enable you to develop a new product on your own as so many have done.
Also, there is a difference between coding for production and coding for research. Less error checking and testing, sometimes a more simple user interface, sometimes less emphasis on runtime speed, depending on the area of research.</p>
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Is it essential to go to an Ivy League school with a good name, or is it more about getting a solid CS education, wherever there happens to be a decent CS program?
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<p>HA! There is only one CS program that is even accredited in the Ivy League (Penn's).</p>
<p>Not many CS superstars have an Ivy pedigree</p>
<p>CMU-CS and MIT are the tops. But even if you have all 700s and all A's and real software experience, these are reaches. They are that competitive to get in. You will read on C-C that among the things you should do is put together a list of schools with a range of matches and at least one safety, and realistically see youself happy at the safety you select. So yes, check out MIT & CMU thoroughly and apply, but also find some schools with similar programs that you can count on getting admitted to. Cornell is also very difficult to get into. </p>
<p>Although it's outside of the northeast, I would suggest you look into University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana for CS (whose graduates developed many mainstream software products/companies). Also, perhaps look at University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, or Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.</p>