<p>Hello,
Thanks for clicking on the post. Although I haven't yet decided on a college major, I feel my inclination towards Computer Science. I was just wondering whether a Liberal Arts College or a National University would be more suited to pursue the CS Major. For e.g. There's no doubt that facilities and course options would be excellent at schools like MIT and Princeton, and it would be easier to switch to Comp. Engg (if CS doen't work out) because these schools do have a Engg school! On the other hand, I couldn't help but think about LACs like Grinnel and Colby where I would be taught by actual professors and have a close interaction with them, even research opportunities would open up.
I may sound ignorant, cause I really am! Waiting for your suggestions....</p>
<p>In looking at both the CS and Math programs at Grinnell and Colby colleges, there seems to be fewer courses that are offered when compared to a national university. In my humble honest opinion (being a Math/CS major and long time software engineer), the following is what I personally came away with:</p>
<ul>
<li>Grinnell had a solid foundation/core in CS, but lacked the number of courses to allow a CS to select as electives.</li>
<li>Grinnell’s Math department also lacked a variety of elective math courses.</li>
<li>If attending Grinnell (or had to), I would opt for CS being the primary major and Math being the minor</li>
<li>Colby’s CS program seemed to barely cover the foundation…and no operating systems course at all stood out.</li>
<li>Colby’s Math program also lacked a variety of electives BUT seemed to have a good basic curriculum.</li>
<li>Colby having also a “Mathematical Sciences” program is good.</li>
<li>If attending Colby (or had to), I would opt for the Math or Math Sci as primary major with CS being the minor…BUT find some way to take an operating systems course SOMEWHERE or at least take a training course in Linux before trying to apply for jobs.</li>
</ul>
<p>Many (not all) LACs have small math and/or CS (or combined) departments that may not offer many math and CS options at the junior and senior level (or any at the graduate level, if you are very advanced in math to the point of likely wanting to take graduate level math courses). You need to check the course catalogs to see what courses they offer, and the schedules to see how often they are offered.</p>
<p>Yes, at a big research university, you may find an introductory CS course with 700 to 1,000 students, taught by one faculty member and a bunch of TAs. But if that same big research university followed the LAC model and taught 700 to 1,000 students with only faculty in 25-student sections (3 per faculty member), it would consume about 9 to 14 faculty members just for 28 to 40 sections of that one introductory CS course, leaving much less faculty time to teach other CS courses, including junior/senior level CS courses (and there are typically three to six frosh/soph level CS courses that tend to be large). Math can have similar trade-offs, perhaps even more so because math departments need to teach a lot of non-math majors who need math courses for majors in sciences, economics, engineering, and business.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot @GLOBAL TRAVELLER @ucbalumnus
So the general rule of thumb is to avoid LACs for CS and Math and leave them to do what they do best i.e Humanities. Are there any rankings by intended Major where I could see which college has the best CS offering?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not exactly. You may find a suitable math or CS department at a LAC, but you need to be selective about them, and do plenty of research into each school’s suitability (looking in course catalogs and schedules, etc.) rather than assume that any decent school has a decent math or CS department (this can apply to other schools that do not call themselves LACs as well). Also, not all LACs emphasize humanities.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Thanks again, Do you have a particular set of colleges in mind, that have excellent programmes in CS (LACs + NUs)? I’m absolutely confused about where to apply.</p>
<p>The list of colleges with good CS offerings is too long to list, as there are hundreds to choose from. However, some colleges with high general prestige have small and limited CS departments.</p>
<p>What you want to do is look in the course catalogs and schedules to see if the following advanced CS courses are offered:</p>
<p>algorithms and complexity <em>+
theory of computation, languages, automata +
operating systems *+
compilers +
networks *
databases *
security and cryptography *
software engineering course, project course, or projects in other courses *
hardware courses like digital systems, computer architecture +
electives like graphics, artificial intelligence, etc.
programming language theory %</em>+</p>
<p>The courses marked * are the ones whose concepts are most useful for industry software jobs. The courses marked with + are the ones sometimes recommended as the core courses if going on to PhD study. The others in the list can be useful for specific areas of industry or PhD study.</p>
<p>The course marked with % may not exist at schools where the frosh/soph level courses use several programming languages of different programming paradigms (e.g. Python, LISP/Scheme, C++/Java, assembly language, etc.), since its content would be implied in courses using a mix of programming languages.</p>
<p>There are several older threads if you search here is one:
<a href=“Liberal arts colleges with good computer science programs - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1391336-liberal-arts-colleges-with-good-computer-science-programs.html</a></p>
<p>Harvey Mudd if you have the stats to get in.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus thanks for the courses list, I’ve noted it down, you were really very helpful.
@ BrownParent thanks for the link, will take my time exploring it.
@ intparent I had Harvey Mudd in mind, but requirements would be more stringent for me as I’m a male. Here’s a research piece :
College administrators are leery of letting the gender divide grow
too wide on their campuses. Some believe that the tipping point is
reached when women make up 60% or more of the student body.
When that happens, female applicants will sometimes look for campuses
with a closer ratio of men and women. And teenage boys will
cross these male-lite schools off their list because they don’t want to
be too outnumbered. Or at least that is the fear.
These lopsided percentages have led to a practice that can
incense the parents of teenage girls. At some institutions, admissions
offices are trying to bring the numbers back to equilibrium by giving
boys a break. (This is chiefly a private college phenomenon.) At the
same time that schools are rejecting qualified girls, they are embracing
male candidates who can thank their Y-chromosomes, in part, for
their admission letters.
Here are a couple of examples of schools that have been accepting
more men than women. At Kenyon College, the acceptance rate
for young women was recently 30.9% versus 37.3% for men. Swarthmore
College, an elite liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, recently
accepted 17.7% of its male applicants and 13.2% of the women who
applied.
In 2009, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights launched an investigation
into whether certain liberal arts colleges were rejecting too
many female applicants. The probe was controversial, and it was shut
down without releasing any conclusions in 2011.</p>
<p>Teenage boys don’t enjoy all the advantages. Young women can
capture a competitive advantage if they apply to schools where men
predominate. These, of course, are usually the schools best known for
their engineering programs and other technical degrees.
In its latest admission figures, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
for instance, accepted 15.5% of women, but just 7.5% of men.
At the California Institute of Technology, the acceptance rates were
9.1% for male applicants and 23.1% for women. The most astounding
gender advantage that I found was at Harvey Mudd College, a prestigious
engineering/liberal arts college outside Los Angeles. Forty eight
percent of women were accepted, but just 17% of male applicants.</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to start a debate on gender in admissions – merely to point out that Mudd would meet your requirements if you get in and can afford to attend.</p>
<p>What other LACs have strong math departments?</p>
<p>I’m just saying… I’m not trying to start a debate either. But at Harvey Mudd acceptance rates for M/F are 48/17, which means it can be a safety college for women but a reach school for men. Genders apart, looking at this way, it means that Women interested in studying the arts will have a hard time getting in prestigious colleges and Men interested in studying sciences/technical will have a hard time too. It doesn’t mean that men or women are screwed, it only means that a particular subset of men and women are screwed. </p>
<p>Yes., but that is not what you asked. You didn’t ask for schools in the safety, match, or reach range. You asked about LACs that are strong in CS. You could certainly apply to Mudd as a reach if you have good stats. Also, the %s admitted closed somewhat in 2012-13 – 37% of women accepted vs. 14% of men. And Mudd is nobody’s safety – the girls getting in have stellar stats (my D had CR 800/M 780/Wr 800 with SAT Subject Tests of Math II 800 and Lit 800 – I am guessing she may be a more qualified candidate than you are irrespective of gender…). </p>
<p>Some LACs might not have many CS or math offerings natively, but may have cross registration agreements with schools that have better offerings. Barnard (with Columbia) is an obvious one, though Barnard is only for women. Amherst (with University of Massachusetts - Amherst) is another possibility, though it requires a bus ride to get there. Additionally, there may be administrative limitations in taking cross-registered courses, especially if you need to take a lot of them to fill in gaps in the offerings at your home college.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is natively strong in math (including graduate level analysis) and CS courses, but should probably be considered a reach for everyone (regardless of gender). It also has cross registration with the other Claremont LACs.</p>
<p>There is this web site: <a href=“http://math-colleges.com/”>http://math-colleges.com/</a>
However, I would be cautious about it, since it does not describe the methodology used to give the scores, and it is hard to find a college with a score of less than 4 (out of 5) for curriculum, or a score of greater than 2.5 for safety (meaning that these score ranges are effectively compressed to eliminate most of the distinctions between schools – imagine if you had one teacher who only gave B or higher grades, and another who only gave C- or lower grades). It also does not have a way to search colleges by anything other than state and academic characteristics (degrees offered, subareas of math).</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus thanks, I learned from this post to request catalog from each school before deciding on a school.
@intparent you’re right your d is more qualified than me, my breakdown is 800, 800, and 740 Writing. Is she presently at Harvey Mudd?</p>
<p>Yes, she is. Private message me if you want more info, I am happy to answer questions about it. Also, you can find the catalog online at almost all colleges now. Go into the academics section of the college website. Sometimes you have to put the catalog together with the actual course offered in a given term to see how frequently things are offered, though (the catalog doesn’t always tell you, and it can list classes that are offered very infrequently). But both of those are available online for most colleges these days. At some schools the individual department websites also list the courses they offer (also reached through the Academic portion of the website).</p>
<p>Yes, course catalogs are typically on the college’s web site.</p>
<p>Often, class schedules are there also, so you can get an idea of what is offered and how frequently. Some even list class capacity and enrollment, if you are interested in class sizes.</p>
<p>My daughter has similar interests, planning to major in CS, and interests in physics, math, maybe CE. She didn’t want a small college, and we also both felt that they might not provide the level and breadth of classes that she might need. She’s applied to a mix of medium and large schools. </p>
<p>It’s hard to interpret those admissions stats without knowing the stat breakdowns for male and female applicant pools. I don’t doubt that colleges pay some attention to their gender ratios, but it’s often true that the females in heavily male-dominated fields are self-selected and better than the average guy.</p>
<p>Since you mentioned Princeton, it’s worth noting that Princeton’s graduate programs are relatively small, and Princeton has at least a reputation for being somewhat more undergraduate-focused than other peer institutions.</p>