<p>Doesn’t matter for CS, only engineering.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, that does change my calculus somewhat. A non-renowned school that is not ABET-accredited in a major as common as CS? There seems to be no excuse for that.</p>
<p>Are you sure it’s not accredited? ABET uses EAC accreditation for engineering and CAC accreditation for computing; perhaps the list you checked only mentions ABET-EAC accreditation? Check ABET’s list of accredited programs to be sure.</p>
<p>If UGA is really unaccredited, which I find somewhat hard to believe, I would strongly consider going to the cheapest ABET-accredited school that accepted you. Or, if you go to UGA, major in math or something instead. People will tell you that ABET accreditation is meaningless in CS, but you know that’s not true; ABET wouldn’t bother if there weren’t value in it. Places like CMU, MIT, Stanford, etc. don’t need accreditation because the schools have strong reputations in the right areas. UGA, on the other hand, has little such credit.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that UGA should be off your list, but you’re right to be concerned. I’d be concerned if I were interviewing you and I knew your program lacked ABET accreditation.</p>
<p>Maybe they’re applying for accreditation? Ask around.</p>
<p>[Accreditation</a> ? UGA College of Engineering](<a href=“http://www.engr.uga.edu/prospective/undergraduate/accreditation]Accreditation”>http://www.engr.uga.edu/prospective/undergraduate/accreditation)</p>
<p>They aren’t even applying for Computer Science, I will transfer to GA Tech then. Or possible GSU, since they would take my credits. I think I’m just going to go to GA Tech though, since their degree is prestigious and will be noticed everywhere I go.</p>
<p>And money isn’t really a problem. It is just a main concern, my parents are paying for all my college, but I want to put the least amount of burden I can. Which is why I took like 10 AP Tests, but if ABET Accreditation is really that important, I can just go to GA Tech and take some summer classes to graduate in three years.</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>^ There’s no CS degree listed at the site you’ve linked to. Where is the CS department/program?</p>
<p>“Computer systems engineering” looks like “Computer engineering”, a.k.a. “Computer hardware engineering”, and it looks like they will apply for accreditation in that as soon as they are able.</p>
<p>Looking at the CS site, it looks like the UGA CS program is one of the “liberal arts”-style CS programs. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I wouldn’t necessarily hold a lack of ABET-accreditation against a student from such a program. Bear in mind, however, that the kind of education you’d get at GaTech versus the kind you’d get at UGA will differ greatly in the topics covered, breadth, depth, and emphasis.</p>
<p>[Computer</a> Sciences | Welcome](<a href=“http://www.cs.uga.edu/about/welcome.htm]Computer”>http://www.cs.uga.edu/about/welcome.htm)</p>
<p>This is their CS Department place. </p>
<p>I understand that it doesn’t have a C.S. degree. That’s what I meant, they don’t have one. Those are all the ABET accredited degrees that they have.</p>
<p>So, they are not accredited by ABET, :(. </p>
<p>And I don’t want to be a computer engineer (not that there is anything wrong with that), I wish to be a software engineer. </p>
<p>I believe that there is a difference, because a software engineer mainly focuses on programming, while a computer engineer is more like an electrical engineering degree, but with a focus on computers. </p>
<p>I BELIEVE, I really have no idea. </p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Degrees](<a href=“Undergraduate Degree Programs - UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - University at Buffalo”>Undergraduate Degree Programs - UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - University at Buffalo)</p>
<p>Atleast that’s what Bufallo’s website says.</p>
<p>So I guess I’m transferring to GA Tech.</p>
<p>Thanks aegrisomnia about telling me all about the ABET thing. I had no idea that there was even something like that. Man, I really wish our high school counselors told us about the whole accreditation thing.</p>
<p>I’ve been working in software for 30 years, and in hiring decisions I’ve never paid attention to accreditation. I’ve never heard anyone bring it up, either.</p>
<p>Most programmers don’t have CS degrees in the first place, so it would be foolish to deny someone a job opportunity because their CS program wasn’t accredited when you’re hiring programmers without CS degrees at all.</p>
<p>thank you for your input,</p>
<p>But I would like to try my best to keep my doors open, so I’ll probably end up going to Georgia Tech in case any employer wants an employee with an ABET accredited degree.</p>
<p>Unlike engineering, ABET accreditation is not a required for CS but its definitely better to go with an accredited one. You can get jobs in patent law.</p>
<p>Just some thoughts here. You ask if you made a mistake and that had you applied you would have gotten into Georgia Tech. I’m not sure what your stats are but there are plenty of kids who didn’t get in. Those kids stats were very good and you can’t just go by what the “average” class GPA,SAT scores and number of AP’s were. There were kids who were above those averages and did not get in. Some of those kids are going to UGA with the thought of transferring after 1 year. So you may have ended up a UGA anyway with the thought of transferring to GT.</p>
<p>Transferring to GT is a whole different ball game. You have to take all the required classes and if you look at the GT thread it looks pretty competitive. If you are going to transfer you really need to make sure you do very well your first year at UGA. Also it looks like from the website that they treat transfer students differently. If you start as a freshman you can decide your major later. But if you are a transfer student you have to apply as a certain major and if you want to change it later to a different one they may or may not allow it. So I would make sure you really know what your major is before you transfer.</p>
<p>Let’s just say that hypothetically I can get in.</p>
<p>Frankie, previously I recommended you to stay on The University of Georgia. Now, after looking at the tuition of both schools and doing some research. I strongly recommend you to transfer. Gtech is much superior in CS than The unversity of Georgia. 10 credits is not a big deal. You will learn 100x more stuff in Gtech, plus more internship oppotunities, more research opportunities, the accrediation, better professors. GTech CS department is superior than that of Georgia University in every single aspect. Fix your mistake and ignore the advice of the “experts” here. Now is the best time to transfer</p>
<p>This are the tuition pages</p>
<p>[Tuition</a> and Fees ? Tables 6.1, 6.2, 6.3](<a href=“http://factbook.gatech.edu/student-related-information/tuition-and-fees-tables-6-1-6-2-6-3/]Tuition”>http://factbook.gatech.edu/student-related-information/tuition-and-fees-tables-6-1-6-2-6-3/)
<a href=“https://www.admissions.uga.edu/article/tuition-and-costs-of-attending.html[/url]”>https://www.admissions.uga.edu/article/tuition-and-costs-of-attending.html</a></p>
<p>You will not learn as much as you would in GTech and that matters more than the degree itself IMO</p>
<p>You can take the advice of people with CS degrees and many years of experience working in the real world, or you can take the advice of people who haven’t even graduated from school and are guessing about what employers look for.</p>
<p>OP- I’m not trying to be condescending. Just saying there is no sense looking back at what might have been. Also you were interested in medicine. Now you are interested in CS. I was trying to say you need to be sure about your major before you transfer to GT. </p>
<p>BTW I did not go to GT and I worked as a Computer Programmer for 17 years. Half the programmers I hired didn’t have CS degrees. It really depends on the company hiring…</p>
<p>UGA < GA Tech in the computer Science department, </p>
<p>Yeah, 10 credits really isn’t that much, and plus they weren’t even really college classes. They were only AP Credits. </p>
<p>Okay, thanks everybody, I plan on transferring now.</p>
<p>to all those who are working in the field.</p>
<p>I understand now that it doesn’t really matter what college I go to.</p>
<p>But you must also understand that GA Tech probably opens more career opportunities than UGA does. </p>
<p>Like working at NASA for example. I couldn’t do that with a UGA degree, so I’d rather just go to Georgia Tech and get that ABET accredited degree, and not to mention the degree has some prestige to give me an edge in the corporate world as well. </p>
<p>The fact that GA Tech COULD open more doors, is enough for me to transfer. Plus as lightnin said, I probably will end up learning more there and develop to be a stronger engineer there. </p>
<p>Like for example, at UGA all you need is one semester of calculus, however at GA Tech you need to go up to calculus 3 for computer science! </p>
<p>I believe that there is a difference in personal development there, because I got the AP Calculus credit, and I know, that I am a different person from back when I didn’t know Calculus. Not to mention you can develop your own C.S. degree at GA Tech, so I can specialize very specifically in one area. Such as U.I. development classes mixed with Language classes. Which I think would be really cool, at UGA you only have six different kinds of C.S. specialization you can do, and you can only pick those classes. I would have ended up doing the software programming group of classes, even though I wanted to get some Artificial intelligence. At GA Tech, I can do both, and get an even more prestigious degree with the ABET certification. </p>
<p>But thank you for your input, and I will keep in mind that the degree truly doesn’t matter and it’s what you do after you get the degree.</p>
<p>@simba9 I’ve not been in the industry for 30 years, but I do interview candidates and review their credentials and lack of accreditation, while not a deal breaker, is something I consider. For the record, virtually all of the people I have interviewed have had CS degrees (or equivalent) and were looking for full-time development roles. I guess, generally speaking, claiming that those who disagree with you are uninformed (misinformed?) comes off as bit presumptuous.</p>
<p>I was referring to lightnin, who says he/she is 19, and therefore cannot have any real experience understanding the hiring process from the employer’s point of view.</p>
<p>When I’m looking at resumes, I look at skills and experience. During the interview, I try to figure out if the person is able to work with the team. I’ve worked both with and for too many excellent programmers who didn’t have CS degrees, degrees from prestigious universities, or degrees at all. I’ve also worked with bad programmers from prestigious universities. We just got rid of someone who went to the University of Chicago because he felt the need to tell everyone how to do their jobs.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that where you went to school has very little to do with how good of a programmer you are.</p>
<p>I’m not a big believer in rankings for CS departments, but just for grins, I went through the ARWU list of top CS programs in the world and checked which American programs were accredited.</p>
<p>[Academic</a> Ranking of World Universities in Computer Science - 2012 | 2012 Top 100 Universities in Computer Science | ARWU-SUBJECT 2012](<a href=“http://www.shanghairanking.com/SubjectCS2012.html]Academic”>http://www.shanghairanking.com/SubjectCS2012.html)</p>
<p>1) Stanford - no
2) MIT - yes
3) UC Berkeley- yes
4) Princeton - no
5) Harvard - no
6) Carnegie-Mellon - no
7) Cornell - no
8) UCLA - yes
9) Texas - no
11) Caltech - no
13) USC - yes
14) UC San Diego - yes
15) Illinois - yes
16) Maryland - no
17) Michigan - yes
20) Purdue - no
21) Washington - no
22) Columbia - no
23) Rutgers - no
24) Georgia Tech - yes
28) Yale - no</p>
<p>Only 8 of the top 21 programs are accredited.</p>
<p>Does anyone really think CS degrees from places like Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, Texas, Caltech, Maryland, Purdue, Washington, Columbia, Rutgers and Yale are somehow lesser degrees because they’re not accredited?</p>
<p>Apparently so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t need experience to know that every single employer does not have the same point of view. They look for different things depending on the job. </p>
<p>Stanford and the other top 50 CS schools don’t need accreditation because we know they are good. However, when a place is ranked 208 and lacks accreditation its CS program is probably not that good. UGA and GaTech cost about the same. The OP would only lose 10 AP credits which is not a big deal. I don’t know why you recommend him to stay on UGA</p>
<p>There has been some miscommunication. I was pretty tired, sorry. There are some other factors that contribute to the transfer.</p>
<p>See, you just listed the top 28 did you not? GA Tech is up there, while UGA is not.</p>
<p>But now I’m thinking again. A degree at GA Tech is great, BUT would a double major at UGA in Communication Studies and Computer Science be even better?</p>
<p>Because my AP Credits cover a lot of the communication studies classes, and I would still be able to graduate in 3-4 years from UGA with the double major.</p>
<p>So that brings up the question, which person would be worth more?</p>
<p>A double major in Communication Studies and Computer Science from UGA,
or a single major in Computer Science from GA Tech? (Or even a double major in math/physics and computer science)</p>
<p>Man, now that one is a toughie isn’t it? Or maybe it isn’t.</p>
<p>So a question to those people who actually work… </p>
<p>Would another major in communication studies really be way better? Because I believe that some GA Tech graduates are extremely socially awkward, and I have read that computer programming as a team requires a good amount of communication. So, a communications major would really make my resume stick out wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>Or would the degree from a prestigious school such as GA Tech be enough to simply push those two degrees from UGA off the resume stack?</p>
<p>And yes, I understand that programming is the most important factor. But as an amateur programmer already, (I’m okay in Java and Android Application Development but by no means professional or anything) I feel like that isn’t really a factor I will need to worry about over the course of 2-3 years of development in actual college courses. (I’ve been studying on my own)</p>
<p>Oh and also, I’ve always found communications interesting as well, I was on the FBLA team for speech and have had two speech/forensics classes in high school. So, it wouldn’t really be any trouble for me to do the communications studies major. </p>
<p>Not that this has anything to do with this at all, but writing all this has made me so happy that I have changed from medicine, because looking back, I would have had to take multiple classes I DESPISE, like chemistry. <em>shudders</em></p>
<p>Oh and there’s a thread already about this, but I was just wondering what the regulars of this thread would say about it.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1388361-need-advice-computer-science-communications-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1388361-need-advice-computer-science-communications-major.html</a></p>