Is it worth paying extra for a top CS program? Trying to decide between two schools!

College Majors Engineering Majors
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San Jose State is tremendously underrepresented at Google (among the employees on LinkedIn). My point was that the percentages are dramatically different at Apple and Google. The universities with many CS graduates nearby are well represented at Apple, regardless of ranking; while only the CS programs with top rankings are well represented at Google, including ones not nearby. </p>

<p>Using specific numbers, there are ~200k software engineers on LinkedIn living in the Silicon Valley area. 5.5% of them went to San Jose State, 5.3% went to Berkeley, and 4.1% went to Stanford. These are the 3 colleges with the most software engineer alumni in Silicon Valley by a large margin. At Apple’s Silicon Valley location, these same 3 colleges are the ones with the most software engineers – 4.7% San Jose State, 4.1% Stanford, and 3.6% Berkeley. At Google’s Silicon Valley location, 8.4% come from Stanford and 6.6% come from Berkeley, much higher percentages than Apple, and higher than the overall percentage of Stanford and Berkeley employees in Silicon Valley as well. Yet only 1% of employees were from the lower ranked San Jose State. 1% is a small fraction of both the percentage of San Jose State employees in the area and the percentage of SJS employees at Apple.</p>

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<p>Data10, now your name makes sense to me:)</p>

<p>Successful companies like Google tend to “collect” accomplished engineers. Some can become your mentors which will have an impact for future work. Microsoft also likes to “collect”. You can see some of the most well known engineers from these companies already have significant achievement before they join the companies.</p>

<p>If you want to have more choices, go to a more competitive school certainly won’t hurt.</p>

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<p>If everything is equal. Things may not be equal. While Stanford and SJSU are in the same local area, the comparison gets murkier if you compare something like Dartmouth to SJSU in terms of Silicon Valley employment opportunities, where the different locations can have a significant effect.</p>

<p>In the OP’s case, cost and debt is a significant factor; higher debt can be more constraining in that someone with high debt may not be able to afford to go to an attractive (in terms of career development and other factors) job that happens to pay somewhat less.</p>

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<p>Found this article, there are links in this article that also say something interesting</p>

<p>[And</a> Here’s The Secret Reason Apple Is Crushing Google… - Business Insider](<a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/and-heres-the-secret-reason-apple-is-crushing-google-2012-3]And”>And Here's the Secret Reason Apple Is Crushing Google...)</p>

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<p>That article doesn’t seem very credible. Apple is most assuredly not crushing Google. Android marketshare is super-high and Gmail dominates webmail. As for GoogleTV, Google has clearly learned from its mistakes and has a great product in the Chromecast. (I say all of this as an Apple user)</p>

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<p>OP: I already posted in the reddit thread, but I guess I’ll reiterate/add some more thoughts here.</p>

<p>Let’s start with cost. $40k (let’s take a high upper bound) seems like a lot, but a couple of $15-20k internships and less than a year of full-time work will be enough for you to cover all of that. I really don’t think you should worry too much about paying for your education.</p>

<p>I think it’s clear that UIUC would give better research and job opportunities for the average student (there’s a reason it’s ranked so highly). Where I suspect UIUC will shine is in the academic atmosphere. More challenging classes and competitive peers will force you to better yourself. Don’t underestimate how much you can learn from (and be motivated by) the students surrounding you.</p>

<p>Of course, if you are highly motivated, it doesn’t matter where you go. But that’s for outliers; it’s safer to assume that you’re not a superstar (most people aren’t).</p>

<p>Regarding what you found on alumni salaries; yeah, large chunk of that is likely due to cost-of-living. Salary isn’t everything, though; some companies offer substantial bonus/stock (this probably shouldn’t be treated as equivalent to cash, but it does have a non-trivial value).</p>

<p>Anyways, it’s clear that I favor UIUC here, but you should be more concerned about which will offer you the university experience you want and which will lead to the jobs you’re interested in. Don’t reduce this to a decision based entirely on price.</p>

<p>GLOBALTRAVELER: You always bring up that argument, but I don’t really see its relevance here. All other things being equal, it’s clearly better to begin work with a higher starting salary.</p>

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<p>sumzup, there are numbers similar to Data10 posted in the article and additional observations. The forum software copied that title automatically. I don’t agree or disagree on the title subject.</p>

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<p>A UIUC degree will not start off $40,000 more over a grad who did a 2+2 program. That UIUC grad will be starting their first day (I have witnessed this many times in 24 years of software engineering) sitting right next to the State-U grads.</p>

<p>Again…</p>

<p>We don’t care about your school…we care if you can write Java/C++/Python/Ruby code on whatever flavor of Linux. </p>

<p>As for research, we all know what is the first thing cut…research. Research jobs are almost like Wall Street jobs…10,000 applicants for 100 jobs. While those research-oriented grads are focused on the research path, that Hadoop/Big-Data expert is billing the federal government $150-$175/hour on a 1099.</p>

<p>What I am trying to do is let these new students that there are far too many jobs in the manipulation/distribution/storage/retrieval of data for employers to care about one’s school. These students are going to be awfully mad when they are on the same project as the grad from New Mexico State University and their supervisor is from University of Montana.</p>

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<p>GLOBALTRAVELER, since you mention it. My good friend works on Hadoop project at Yahoo when few people are talking about it. One can learn big data even earlier if you work at Google. I know these companies don’t just hire whoever can “code” the way you put it. He has many choices for jobs if he wants to move simply because of the company and the project he works on.</p>

<p>Some jobs just need people who can code so I don’t disagree with what you said in current environment. They are not mutually exclusive</p>

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<p>This I don’t quite understand. I see it in a lot of job postings but what does it matter? I don’t know Ruby myself, but if I needed to learn it I’m pretty sure I could learn it pretty quick. This seems like a very silly requirement for a career-type job.</p>

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<p>The QUESTION was “Is it worth paying extra for a top CS program?” My answer is:</p>

<p>Not for Computer Science.</p>

<p>Accounting? Finance? Yes, because those industries have many more candidates for the number of available jobs which allows companies to making hiring decisions based on school name, AACSB accreditation, etc.</p>

<p>1) Software engineering has way too many “paths to success” that bypasses the “linear process” of better ranked school = better opportunities and MAINTAINING that INITIAL edge. </p>

<p>2) You have industry certifications that can allow candidates to “leapfrog” others. </p>

<p>3) You have the USA/world problems that increases the focus to national security and defense. Now you are hiring folks and paying them $30,000-$75,000 MORE for a CS job only because it requires a security clearance. Same job, same responsibilities as a private sector job.</p>

<p>4) Unlike most areas, self-teaching and vendor-training in software engineering can also offset paying for big-time schools. It’s not hard to setup 4 cheap desktops in your basement/mancave and install CentOS with Hadoop on top and simulate developing/administering a cloud.</p>

<p>5) As I said earlier. Research is the first thing cut in ANY economy.</p>

<p>6) CS degrees become more of a “check off the box” thing for hiring.</p>

<p>7) There is no “extra” given for doing grad school earlier. In general, for a software engineering position that prefers/requires a graduate degree and experience:</p>

<p>M.S/M.Eng + X years experience AFTER = X years experience first + M.S./M.Eng later</p>

<p>…and I got into grad school (U.Wisconsin) without a GRE…but I had experience and a tuition-reimbursement check from my employer.</p>

<p>To sum this up, right now TODAY, I could guide a high-school grad who is low on money and send them to a good community college (4-year school will only take a max 3 CS courses from CC’s anyway)…have them finish up at the local 4-year university while making sure they have a firm grasp of programming, databases and networks (the technical areas that account for MOST software jobs) and have them on a very nice career path.</p>

<p>After that, I could show them about getting into grad schools without needing 3.9999 GPAs, being independent contractors and all that other neat stuff.</p>

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<p>irisss: Sure, the numbers are interesting. I just think it’s weird that the author thinks Google needs more people like SJSU grads because Apple is crushing Google (let’s ignore the fact that this is wrong). That’s just insulting to everyone.</p>

<p>GLOBALTRAVELER: You’re right, there are a bunch of different paths to success. It just seems like the tradeoff here is a little bit of downside for a fair amount of upside (wherein downside is a cost that can be largely paid off through internships, and upside is a better learning experience with a better starting point after college). This isn’t the kind of comparison where going to the better school will leave you with six figures of debt.</p>

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Regarding the OP’s question, there are numerous differences between the colleges besides just financial ones and USNWR ranking. For example, UIUC has ~2x as many undergrad students as UIC and ~4x as many engineering & CS majors. At UIUC, the 75th percentile SAT is 790, while at UIC it is 640, so you’d likely have far more top stat students in your classes at UIUC. This also leads to a tremendous difference in graduation rate. UIUC has a much larger portion of classes with under 20 students. It’s my understanding that UIUC has more well renowned engineering/CS faculty + research and better lab resources. The vast majority commute from home at UIC, but not at UIUC. The cities where the campus is located are very different. There are countless other major differences. Which college is the best choice depends on what you hope to get out of college and what type of experience you’d like to have while in college. You are the only person who can answer these types of personal questions. </p>

<p>Regarding financial considerations, a $30k difference is significant, but it is also likely under 1% of career earnings. It is not enough to make career ROI obviously favor one school over the other. I’d expect UIUC has more tech recruiting and internship opportunities, but I don’t know for certain. However, it may also be more difficult to maintain a high GPA (may also be easier, if you are the type that does better in challenging environment). I agree that the school name is unlikely to make a notable difference for later jobs within career.</p>

<p>When I applied to my first job, I had a BS+MS in engineering from Stanford. I do think the school name impacted by first job after graduation. My job search was essentially handing out resumes at the campus engineering career fair. The majority of companies I gave my resume to offered an interview including paying for airfare, hotel, and car rental when not nearby. I negotiated my salary for my first job by asking them to match the average starting salary of Stanford MS grads in my field, as reported by the career center. They did this, even though I was working in an area with a lower cost of living than most Stanford engineering grads (not Silicon Valley), and I did not have internship/coop experience or full-time job experience. I did have experience working a part time job at a local tech company while in college. The 2 persons most involved in my hiring also were Stanford alumni, including my direct manager. I expect this had an impact on their decision. One might have a similar benefit from both UIUC and UIC, with local companies. </p>

<p>However, after your first job, college name becomes much less important. My current company keeps a few paragraphs on file about potential employees we may work with. These notes focus on what is important for the decision. They go into detail about experience and mention highest degree level, but do not mention college name or college GPA.</p>

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<p>dropbox employee list that share job experience and school attended</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.dropbox.com/about[/url]”>https://www.dropbox.com/about&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I have studied local community college CS curriculum. I compare the class assignment for freshman year to what UCs offer. You can find the class information on internet easily. The difficulty difference is significant. I agree the student can find a job after 4 years from both but the skill won’t be at the same level on average.</p>

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<p>I would not doubt for a second that the freshman/sophomore CS coursework at a UC is more difficult than at a community college. </p>

<p>But, here is the thing…</p>

<p>Only 3 areas of community college CS curriculum would transfer anyway. That would be the initial programming courses (C++ or Java usually) and the discrete math/structures course. At most schools, the CS core of Data Structures, Algorithms, Theory of Programming Languages and Operating Systems are junior/senior courses anyway. Hell, universities/community colleges cannot even agree on the Computer Organization course, which is a sophomore-level CS requirement.</p>

<p>Community college for a promising CS student should be used to knock out the Calculus sequence, the Physics sequence, Linear Algebra and the initial C++/Java and discrete structures courses. Nothing more.</p>

<p>Transfer courses are not reviewed as being “100% equal”. There are reviewed as being “adequate enough” for the transfer student to be prepared for the next level of CS courses at the 4 year school.</p>

<p>A while back, there were posters for Georgia Tech and other top schools stating that many Top-10 schools cover more material (and depth) in their courses than non-Top 10. While that may be true, if the actual industry and jobs are not using that “extra depth”, employers won’t be looking for that depth either. Most companies are under time and cost limits to produce new software, so there is a mindset of “putting out what we can” instead of the 1000000% by the book/classroom detail.</p>

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<p>Well, the CC student will have to transfer to a four year school to complete a bachelor’s degree, since CC (at least in California) do not have upper division courses. For course equivalency, it depends on the CC and the four year school; you can check California CCs and UCs and CSUs at [Welcome</a> to ASSIST](<a href=“http://www.assist.org%5DWelcome”>http://www.assist.org) .</p>

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<p>ucbalumnus, I know that. I misread what GLOBALTRAVELER said so I thought he meant just by going to 2-year CC for 4 years. Regardless, the outcome will be the same unless CC students work harder.</p>

<p>GLOBALTRAVELER, There is a difference between thinker and coder. There are companies that want to hire thinkers who can code.</p>

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<p>There are companies for which a key part of the interview process is demonstrating the ability to program in the languages that are used on the job. This is a highly debated topic among software engineers. Some feel as you do, that it is silly to expect someone with a CS degree, or equivalent, to know a language that they’re perfectly capable of learning in a few weeks. Others consider it crucial to a company’s success that people be able to hit the ground running, including being able to write production code in a particular language right away.</p>

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<p>Re: #38</p>

<p>That is only an issue because it is relatively hard in the context of an interview to test a candidate’s ability to learn something new, compared to testing existing skills in a computer language.</p>

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<p>@xraymancs IIT is sometimes understood to mean the Indian Institutes of Technology, a very prestigious STEM university system in India. </p>