Hi, I posted this question in a different forum, but I thought you all might have some ideas. My son who wants to major in Computer Science received a wonderful offer of a full-ride for his four undergraduate years (plus $3000 for an internship or study abroad!) at the University of Richmond. We really needed a bargain, so this price is better than perfect! But he’s worried that their CS program is not the greatest and that he may not get into a good grad school if he goes to Richmond. His dream grad school is Stanford and he’d like to at least feel like he has a shot at it! Of course any other good-enough grad school would be fine too, but the question is: Will he really be shut out of some grad schools and even employment opportunities by going to a school that is not especially strong in CS? Or does he just need to do his very best and try to stay at the top of the class so that he comes out of it with stellar grades, and perhaps do some interning too, in order to get real-world experience? Keep in mind, Richmond is a wonderful school, so as his mom I don’t doubt they will provide him with a top-rate education, even in CS. But still I can understand his concern, and he’s now wondering if we should take out loans so he can go to Georgia Tech, where he was also accepted, but we would have to pay 32k/year (which would be personally disastrous for me). Other more affordable options include U of Arizona and Arizona State University, both of which seem to have fairly good CS programs, but would also be more expensive for us than Richmond, and infinitely more boring, since he has been here in Arizona most of his life and he was looking forward to a new experience. But on the positive side, they would not break the bank and that is a big factor for me.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
GT is great for CS, but if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it (by should “we” take out loans, do you mean should he?). I’d probably lean towards ASU over UA (it’s ranked a little lower in CS, but it has a lot of really interesting CS courses, is better for engineering/industry IMO, has connections to big companies in Phoenix, all the AZ jobs are in Phoenix, and I don’t think I’d want to live in Tucson).
Grad school = Master’s or Ph.D.? Stanford is very difficult to get into for CS Ph.D., but they have a Master’s program that’s “easy” to get into and is a major cash cow program. Their admission rate is probably close to 20% for Master’s. (But well under 5% for Ph.D.)
It may be possible to do well at Richmond, get intern/research experience, and get into a great grad school. But many adcom professors will question the program there. I’d guess many of the CS classes are much softer than those at, say, Michigan or Berkeley.
Richmond CS came up in another thread. A look at the course catalog indicates that its offerings of CS courses look reasonable (though probably with fewer electives than larger schools), but a look at the schedule indicates that many of the junior/senior (300-level) courses are offered infrequently (like once every two years), so a CS major there may have only one (or maybe two) chances to take each one during his/her four years (because s/he needs to complete the prerequisites in the first two years before being able to take them). This can make scheduling inconvenient at the very least.
@mathandcs Where the heck did you get those Stanford MS numbers from?
@mathandcs Sure, I may be a mere high school peon who knows not much about the graduate scene, but 20% for MS? You have got to be kidding me. Why wouldn’t more people just wait to blow money on graduate school at Stanford if it is easier to get into? I am not saying you are wrong, btw, I just want to hear your reasoning (again mere HS peon here)
http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/28881-ms-cs-admission-stats-particularly-cmu/ (hope I’m allowed to link here)
This is from 2012, so things may have tightened up a little bit. Still, 400+ MS students is huge, especially for a school of Stanford’s size.
Now look at http://www-cs.stanford.edu/masters_students and http://www-cs.stanford.edu/content/phd-students . There seems to be more than twice as many Master’s students as Ph.D. students. I think this is highly unusual for CS departments. I couldn’t find lists of Master’s, Ph.D. students at Berkeley or MIT, but here’s the page at Brown (which has a top 20 program, not a #1 program): https://cs.brown.edu/people/grad/ . The number of Ph.D. and Master’s students is pretty close to even.
People choose not to because even though it’s Stanford, in the CS community, it’s known for having this program that’s easier to get into. So while a Stanford MS would clearly appear stronger than an ASU MS, it would appear far weaker than a Berkeley MS. It also costs a lot of money to go to Stanford and live in the Bay area without funding.
@mathandcs I know US News and World Report do not mean much. But, then, if Stanford MS is exponentially easier to get into and the program is not as renowned as Berkeley, why does USNWR rank them equivalent?
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings
@mathandcs Thanks for the input! I’ve read that Stanford is “relatively” easy to get into for a masters in CS, and he says that would ultimately be his goal. At the same time, I’m not sure that he will even stay in CS. He is a kid with a lot of different interests, so he could easily change majors at any time. Also, I don’t think that worrying so much about grad school right now is the most important factor here. A lot can change in four years, and I think that if he does get a degree in CS from Richmond, maintains tippy-top grades, does internships, etc. he should be able to get into a “good” grad school for CS, if that’s still what he really wants to do at that point.
I agree it’s too early to worry about grad school. I don’t know anything about Richmond, but I would seriously consider ASU. It’s got a lot of opportunities and a pretty good CS program itself. It’s also in a city with good opportunities for jobs. Not so sure about CS jobs in Virginia. Arizona is also not so far from California if he wanted to head up for the big pay jobs after graduation.
I didn’t see Richmond even on the CS rankings. But there seriously is a difference at lower tier vs mid tier vs upper tier schools. I’ve taken CS classes at a school ranked around 50, and also ranked around 75. The lower-tier school is so much softer. For example, they have a class called “Software Engineering.” This class is really just a basic object-oriented programming class. They also have an Operating Systems class, which is essentially just the 2nd half of the Computer Organization class I took at the mid-tier school.
@lb43823 Those rankings are based on research (or equivalently (more or less), Ph.D. programs). The Stanford Ph.D. program is absolutely fantastic.
Keep in mind if you want to do a nonthesis M.S. at Stanford, you could probably do so without much trouble. But if you want a thesis option, it may be difficult to find a professor to work with when there are 400 other Master’s students, plus all the Ph.D. students (who are the main priorities of the professors there).
@mathandcs Oh wow, yeah I am stupid lol. Did not consider that was for PhD as well…fail lol
@chris17mom I apologize for thread hijacking 
Whatever you decide don’t “break the bank”. I agree that it is somewhat more difficult if the upper lever courses are offered only infrequently like at Richmond, however, if the Masters degree is his goal, then by saving some money on undergraduate studies, it might be possible to afford a good Masters program. Doing well at Richmond and getting internship experience will permit him to get into a strong Masters program.
@xraymancs Thanks, you are right. He needs to pick an affordable choice. I think he will be fine at Richmond (or any of the other affordable schools). He is a kid who always gets top grades and tries hard, so if getting into grad school for CS remains his goal, he should be able to do it, coming from any of those schools.
Check this out and other his post to undergrads
http://pgbovine.net/advantages-of-name-brand-school.htm
Does not he address your concerns?
As the author states himself, he is writing his article from the perspective of students who have the luxury of being able to afford the “brand name” schools. If you are putting yourself into massive debt then the equation changes completely and one must take into account what the author himself says, that after the first or second job, your undergraduate university no longer matters.
In the case of the OP, the same effect can be achieved with a Masters degree at the “brand name” school and it will only cost 2 years of tuition instead of 4.
if we are all into anecdotes, I have plenty having been a faculty member at Illinois Institute of Technology for 30 years. I don’t think that anyone on CC would consider IIT to be in the same league with MIT but our graduates in CS and Engineering as well as physics generally find excellent jobs and do very well on the PayScale surveys. From personal experience, my own son was a Computer Engineering major at IIT and got a very good job within a month of graduating during the height of the last recession. He graduated debt free and we did not have to compromise our savings.
@xraymancs Thanks for the article, it’s a good one! If money were not an issue, if my son was definitely going to stick with CS, and if we’d applied to a lot of brand name Universities that are known for having fantastic Computer Science departments, I think it would make sense to try to go for that prestige factor to some extent. But his situation has been a lot less straightforward than that!
In the first place, I’m not really sure my son will stay in CS. He likes writing code (he and a friend are currently trying to develop an app) but he’s also got a lot of other interests, like business, law/political science, and even creative writing! He’s always been good at math (he got 800s on both the math SAT and SAT Math II, he was always on math and programming teams in school, etc.) but he has absolutely refused to consider going into engineering of any sort (as his mom of course I was just thinking about a “good career” for him). I think he finds math and engineering kind of uninspiring or something, like he’s just been doing it so long and it’s not his passion. So I don’t think he will necessarily stay on the CS track or that he really needs a super-intensive, top-notch CS program. Majoring in business with a minor in CS might be closer to where he ends up, or he could surprise me again and switch his interest entirely. (When we first started the college application process he was planning to be pre-law, which is why his school list was not tech-heavy, and why Richmond ended up on the list).
His dream school was Stanford (which we probably would have been able to afford, given their generous need-based aid), but he did not get in. IF we had the money, I suppose he could consider Georgia Tech where he was accepted, but the fact is, I simply can’t pay 32k per year. So he needs to pick an affordable option, and he’s got some really good choices to choose from. And if he does stay on the CS path, he can always go to grad school and get really serious about it then.
Thanks again 
Unless he’s going to an elite high school like Choate or something, he knows next to nothing about math at this point and shouldn’t rule out studying math in college. Even all the freshman math students who are just in calculus know nothing about math. (Math is no more calculus than CS is programming.)
I think he is in AP Calculus B/C right now…He just doesn’t want to go further into math even though it’s been his best subject since kindergarten. Honestly, he’s been changing his mind and undecided about what he wants to study the whole time. I think he is really not sure! Which is ok, and he will figure it out eventually.
Thanks everyone
Sounds like an affordable option is the right way to go. Good luck to him!
@mathandcs @xraymancs @lb43823 @ucbalumnus
Hey guys, check this out!!! I discovered that an engineering major at the U of Richmond can get a dual degree with Columbia University in NYC!
http://preengineering.richmond.edu/program/about.html
So if a person wants to major in engineering (like computer engineering) they can get a dual degree with Richmond and Columbia. You can do 3 years at Richmond and then go up to NYC and do 2 years at Columbia, ending up with a Bachelors from Richmond and a Masters from Columbia.
It sounds like a great program and I mentioned it to my son, who was definitely intrigued! (He has always said he didn’t want to go into engineering, but computer engineering might be a different story, since he is basically very interested in the field.) I have no idea if he will end up doing this, but it’s great to know about the program! 