Help with Colleges for Comp Sci Major

College Majors Science Majors
1

<p>I have been looking at colleges over the summer and I'm having a tough time choosing colleges. I've looked at many different colleges and I don't know what college to choose and also I have no idea what colleges have a "strong" cs program, so hopefully someone could help. </p>

<p>Info for colleges:
Location: Preferably on or near the East Coast of the United States
Price Range: up to 40,000 per year (including $ for room/boarding)
***I want to live on campus
SAT Score: 2210 (720 in Reading, 700 in Math, and 790 in Writing)</p>

<p>GPA: I am not sure about this, my unweighted gpa for junior, sophomore, freshman years were 4.5, 4.1, and 3.8 respectively. I think I will have a gpa of 4.5 this year too (senior year), I need to talk to my guidance counselor about my overall gpa unweighted. I generally get B's usually in all my honors and ap classes </p>

<p>Idea of classes taken: I took AP US History, AP Language and Composition, and AP Chemistry Junior year and got 4's on all of the AP tests. I am currently taking AP Biology, AP
Calculus, AP Physics, and AP English Literature this year. I took all honors classes possible except Algebra and Geometry (Freshman and Sophomore year because I wasn't in the high math class in elementary school, I am good at Math though)</p>

<p>I have a limited understanding of C++ and have made small programs with it using visual studio. I want to become a computer programmer in the future and am very motivated. </p>

<p>Colleges I have looked at:
Rutgers (backup school for me, too close, my parents would make me commute)
University of Washington (CS program is too competitive, most people don't get into it)
Rochester Institute of Technology (a possibility, just concerned with the poor male to female ratio and the expense (> $40,000 per year))
University of Wisconsin - Madison (another possibility, but concerned with distance and weather)
NJIT (I've heard from many people that I could do a lot better than this college)</p>

<p>I don't know if I could get into any top ranked schools (IVY league schools). Anyways I would really appreciate it if you guys help me choose my college. Thanks :)</p>

2

<p>RIT has good merit scholarships
See [RIT</a> - Office of Financial Aid - Scholarship & Grants](<a href=“http://www.rit.edu/emcs/financialaid/table_merit.html]RIT”>http://www.rit.edu/emcs/financialaid/table_merit.html)</p>

<p>Have you try its NPC? Also, what is your class rank?</p>

3

<p>I believe my class rank is in the top 10% of the class. And by “its NPC” do you mean Net Price Calculator? I’ve just tried that and the estimate was around 30,000, which is good. I think I could afford that. Do you have any suggestions for other colleges? Btw thanks for the reply.</p>

4

<p>Rutgers is a fine school for CS.</p>

<p>Virginia Tech, NCSU, and Stony Brook are worth consideration, since their out of state list prices are relatively low. Away from the east coast are Minnesota and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.</p>

<p>The usual “top schools in CS” are MIT, CMU, Stanford, and Berkeley, but the first three are reach for everyone (and extreme reach if you have more than a few B grades in your high school record, and SAT scores in the low 700s instead of the high 700s), while Berkeley is still very selective and almost certainly too expensive for you.</p>

5

<p>If you don’t want the stress of not being in the major, go with Rutgers. You might get accepted into Stony Brook University, but to be a CSE major, you are required to take CSE114, and CSE215, and get a B average between the two courses. Generally, those two courses are meant to weed out the students and I can tell you right now, as a TA, for one of them, I’ve seen many students heartbroken. Imagine designing a game of several thousands lines of code from scratch in an INTRO level CS class. Clearly, those who weren’t meant for it will drop out. </p>

<p>Although I shall also add the Stony Brook CS is on a whole different level when compared to Rutgers or other state schools. Once the new CS building gets constructed(They have 2 buildings already, so this will make it their 3rd building for 1 department, not including BNL), it will have a department larger than most colleges combined. The faculty is pretty bad-ass as well.</p>

<p>Take a look:</p>

<p>[Faculty</a> Directory](<a href=“http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/people/faculty.html]Faculty”>Faculty | Department of Computer Science)</p>

<p>The regional ACM competition will be held at Stony Brook this year, where teams from Princeton, Columbia, and others come to compete ; you should pay the campus a visit and check out the competition. It’s really, really intense! Stony Brook kicked Princeton’s ass several times a few years back to clinch the series and go to the world finals, but ever since then, Princeton has been on a roll! Rutgers is usually no where near on the map in terms of competitiveness.</p>

<p>Enjoy!</p>