<p>Is it difficult to get a job if I go to OSU and have a decent Major GPA?</p>
<p>I have a 3.45 GPA and 22 ACT if that means anything, can I get into a college that I can get a job in CS out of?</p>
<p>you have to go to mit, berkeley, cmu, or stanford otherwise there’s no point. because when you interview they’re not even going to ask about your own ability, merits, or accomplishments. they will just ask about what school you went to</p>
<p>Are you sure that I have to go to one of those 4? We’re not talking a $200,000/year kind of job here, just some 50-60k. Probably.</p>
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<p>I get it…this must be Funny Fridays.</p>
<p>CaptainForge…</p>
<p>Any school in the Top-100 is good if you want to study CS.</p>
<p>Ignore #2.</p>
<p>There are plenty of schools that are good for CS. However, “good for CS” does not always match up with the school’s general prestige (e.g. UMass Amherst is a much better school for CS than Amherst College is).</p>
<p>What you do want to see is that the school has a good selection of core CS major courses like:</p>
<p>algorithms and complexity
theory of computation, languages, and automata
operating systems
compilers
networks
databases
software engineering
security
digital systems
computer architecture
electives like graphics, artificial intelligence, etc.</p>
<p>ABET accreditation for CS can also be used as indication of meeting a decent minimum standard, but there exist good CS degree programs without ABET accreditation. If you plan to go into patent law, ABET accreditation in and of itself does help, but it is otherwise not by itself especially important in employment of CS majors.</p>
<p>The school you attend matters a lot. At my previous school, I rarely got interviews. Now, I have so many interviews scheduled that I feel overwhelmed. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Cognizant, Morgan Stanley, etc. So rest assured that your school, and the quality of it’s CS program is a major factor.</p>
<p>For example, most of my friends that interned at IBM didn’t even go through a technical interview, since IBM up the block already knew that students at a junior level generally meet their expectation. All they had was a basic behavioral phone interview.</p>
<p>Whether you like it or not, the quality the program matters. Completing lots of juicy projects matter.</p>
<p>ABET accreditation is not easy, any school that meets it in my opinion cares a lot about their program. You are required to submit a 600 page paper outlining the strenghts of your program, and those ABET folks don’t take nonsense as an answer. Top programs don’t bother going through it, but any regional school that acquires it is serious about their program, and it’s generally a terrific indicator.</p>
<p>There are MANY companies with MANY interesting CS projects all over North America and elsewhere. Of course, folks with very little experience to the industry will yell the same 4 companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There are defense companies doing cloud analytics to support national security. There are healthcare companies building large data warehouses and data mining solutions. There are just so many CS-related areas to mention. The pay varies depending on your CS technical area, the niche industry and your past accomplishments. You have grads from big name schools working for well-known companies and you can have grads from so-called no-name schools working as 1099’s and billing clients at mind-boggling rates.</p>
<p>CS companies care more that you can code than which school you go to. I would focus more on learning coding rather than worrying about whether my school is good enough. Companies like Googgle or Facebook may worry about school prestige but there are many companies out there that pay just as well or sometimes more. that do not worry about prestige.</p>
<p>^Not necessarily true. There are many excellent programmers who don’t even get a shot at an interview because of their schools weak reputation. Why downplay this issue? I myself attended a relatively unknown CS school, and I can tell you that YOU DO NOT get the same opportunities. No matter how you paint it, it’s not the same. You can apply online, and add yourself to that gigantic global queue of applicants, or you can attend a quality program where the company instantly interviews you.</p>
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<p>I wish I could get you visitor’s pass and have you walk up and down the parking lots of NSA, so you could look at the license plates of the cars. Better yet, the lanyards around the neck government and defense contractors walking in and out…or better yet, all the teasing conversations about whose school will win this weekend or goto some bowl.</p>
<p>Just about every state (and branch campus) is represented.</p>
<p>I personally know engineers from historically black colleges (nowhere ranked in the Top-100) who have all of those hacker certifications, hadoop certs, etc and billing NSA triple-digit hourly rates. Same for former military folks.</p>
<p>I understand that based on one’s personal experience that they will have a different outlook, but there are different viewpoints on this.</p>
<p>For the record, I graduated from Michigan State with a sub-3.0 GPA and was still hired right out of school by Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, back when Westinghouse was a HUGE company. Add to that, I was a Math major (CS emphasis) and still had jobs right out of school. Now I did a 3.9 in grad school (Univ of Wisconsin) but that is besides the point :-)</p>
<p>I believe the OP said that they are attending OSU. Whether that OSU is Ohio State, Oregon State or Oklahoma State, it won’t matter. State flagships are a good safe bet.</p>