I’m a senior in high school and am set on computer science as my intended major; however, I very much like the idea of a liberal arts college. I excel more in language than in math, and want a college with an intellectual atmosphere. What are the main advantages and disadvantages of chosing a liberal arts college for a CS degree over a more technical school? How are job opportunities affected?
It depends on the specific college. Some liberal arts colleges have CS departments with good offerings, while others have very small CS departments with limited offerings. This can be true for colleges other than liberal arts colleges as well.
Very small colleges may be less attractive for recruiters to visit, since the recruiter visit may get only a few potential recruits compared to a recruiter visit at a larger college. So you may have to do more of your own searching for internships, co-ops, and/or jobs at graduation.
What are your stats (gpa, psat, act, etc?) And, what do your parents say about affordability? The top (and most expensive) LACs do okay with placement at companies like Google and make up for their size disadvantage with greater loyalty from alumni recruiters.
Big company recruiting is probably not all that much of a distinction between colleges, since most of the big companies recruit widely (but then require passing technical phone interviews of varying levels of difficulty before an on-site interview invitation), and you know who they are so that you can apply to them even if your college is not one of the hundreds they visit.
It is the smaller companies that recruit less widely, and which you may not be aware of to apply to on your own, particularly if they are out-of-area.
Another consideration, whether choosing a tech oriented university or an LAC, is whether they have enough CS professors to enable you to get into the courses you need. This article gives some examples of ways colleges are dealing with the shortage and how students feel about it. Try to find out what the situation is like for colleges you plan to apply to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/technology/computer-science-courses-college.html
It’s less a matter of size than of location:
https://www.middletownpress.com/middletown/article/Wesleyan-University-students-immerse-themselves-13605080.php
I can’t speak to all liberal arts schools but many do offer CS and graduates do really well upon graduation.
I am familiar with Haverford and students do very well in job placement.
I love the idea of CS at a LAC. Be sure the CS program is solid and modern though and has good professors (compare course requirements to top CS schools like CMU.) Some that come to mind: Colorado College, Whitman, Harvey Mudd, Santa Clara, Emory, College W&M, Oxy. Even a big public school with an Engineering College may have a CS major in the Arts and Sciences College and be a very different experience from Engineering/CS. Seeking summer internships will be key to landing a good job. Not just b/c of contacts, but also real world experience. (I’m a hiring manager in CS and ENG.)
Cornell CS in the College of Arts and Science would give you strong liberal arts background as well as CS.
Some very technical colleges like MIT and Harvey Mudd require lots of humanities, arts, and social studies courses.
A liberal arts education, at its core, is about experimentation; trying different modes of learning on for size and seeing what fits. Most LACs don’t require you to select a major before - or much before - the end of sophomore year. MIT wants you to choose a major by the end of freshman year, a full year before some LACs. Some other VTCs (Very Technical Colleges) will give you until the end of first semester sophomore year, not much beyond that.
Consider Hamilton for CS and associated recruiting:
https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/comp-sci-department-hosts-college-computing-conference
https://cs.hamilton.edu/ccscne/
This article offers further context with respect to the CS programs at a few LACs:
Vassar!!! The department and its history (think Grace Hopper) are superb!
https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/academic-requirements/majors-minors/declaring-major says that “Most students declare a major in the spring term of their first year at MIT. Those who do not must decide on a major by the end of their sophomore year.” I.e. same as “some LACs” you refer to.
https://www.hmc.edu/registrar/planning-your-major/declaring-major/ says “When you are ready to declare your HMC major (in your sophomore or early junior year)”.
Note that many science and engineering majors require undeclared students to get started on their frosh/soph level prerequisites promptly in order to be able to complete the eventual declared major within 8 semesters.
That is, in essence, the problem. This, supposedly experimental prelude before junior year, really requires making your mind up pretty quickly whether to major in the humanities or social sciences, most likely before you’ve even set foot on the campus of a Very Technical College. One alternative is to plan on staying an extra year for a B. E. which many engineering grads wind up doing at some point in their careers anyway.
Or liberal arts college.
Of course, a college like MIT or Harvey Mudd has a core curriculum that will keep students from falling too far behind for many such majors. Whereas an Amherst student could more easily unintentionally cut off the possibility of some majors through naive first year course selection.
Staying an extra year may be unaffordable for many students, especially if scholarships and financial aid get reduced.
Care to give an example of what you’re talking about?
Times have changed. My D just graduated from an 1800 student LAC and most all of her recruiting interactions were online, via the career center’s portal. Recruiters are invited to it, they post jobs and/or message students who have placed their resumes there, that’s followed by phone call, often an online test of some sort, then an in-person interview, fly-in if distance is great.
There’s some in person on campus recruiting as well, job fairs and internship fairs and such, but the career center portal (I think they used to use Quest and now use Handshake) is very effective. There’s alumni mentoring assisted by software (to match students and alums) too. Those people may never meet in person but they communicate regularly by email, phone, whatever.
A student who gets a late start on majors like physics, chemistry, or math may find it more difficult to complete all of the course work for the major within 8 semesters (especially at a small school where not every course is offered every semester). If the college’s first year core curriculum covers the prerequisites for those majors, then s/he will not naively schedule himself/herself out of those majors, but where that is not the case, s/he can naively schedule himself/herself out of those majors by not taking the prerequisites to those majors in the first year.
For that to happen a complete newbie to Physics or Math would have to go four consecutive semesters without taking a single course in college calculus. Meh, I suppose it happens. The possibility doesn’t keep me up at night…