<p>So my son was accepted to 3 schools with varying levels of merit money. I was wondering if anyone could shed more light on these three options for us to help make the decision of whom to list as first choice for NMF. Cost listed would be our final cost per year for everything after the NMF or college merit money is subtracted. He wants to major in Computer Science with ultimate goal of working for top company such as google or microsoft. </p>
<p>Northeastern $17,106
Pos:
- Boston
- coop program
- honors dorm
- close to home - about 1.5 hrs
- least expensive
Negs:
? weaker academic reputation
- large school</p>
<p>WPI $38, 060
Positives:
- fairly close to home (about 2 hrs)
- good job placement/starting salaries
- pretty campus
Negs:
- more expensive
- ranked lower than RPI ? why</p>
<p>RPI $44, 196
Positives:
- highest ranked of the three
- smarter kids?
- better reputation?
- assume good job placement
negs:
- most expensive
- further from home (about 4 hrs)
- son felt campus not as pretty</p>
<p>Northeastern is very well respected in CS and a lot of top software companies recruit there (Oracle, Amazon, Mathworks, IBM, Symantec, etc. were at the most recent career fair). I wouldn’t pay $80K-$100K extra for RPI or WPI.</p>
<p>My question is how much can you pay? If you are fortunate enough to afford any of the three, then the school that would be best is where your son felt most comfortable. If it was at NE (the cheapest and closest to home) then wonderful. If you can afford either of the other ones and he likes them, then that is your answer. If all of them are a stretch pick the most affordable - Northeastern is a respected CS school. We chose Alabama for my son for his CS program although it isn’t ranked as high as other schools that he was accepted to for CS. Saying this, he is taking junior level courses in his first year as a freshman, is challenged, and I believe is getting an excellent eduction. I feel confident that he will get a good job (maybe with Google/Microsoft maybe with another good unknown company) despite not going to a more well-known CS school. The best part is he will be getting out of college debt-free (UA gives excellent merit scholarships to NMF’s). Good luck to your son in whatever school he/you together pick.</p>
<p>We could make any of them work although he might have to take some small loans for RPI/WPI. Luckily he seems to be leaning toward NEU in any case so it may all work out well from every perspective. My only concern is that I don’t want him to attend a school that won’t get him where he wants to go career wise. It sounds like NEU is pretty well positioned though for coops.</p>
<p>I have many years of experience in IS and software development. Trust me when I say no one cares what school you went to (well, maybe a little for a first hire, but any “deficit” is easily made up by performance in the first few years). This is a field where you can expect to have many employers during your career and your work history is really the only thing of significance. That is: what matters is what you’ve been working on and how well you have been performing. His school will not be a limiting factor. If he is comfortable at all the schools and a solid CS experience can be had I would recommend the lowest-cost option.</p>
<p>Ask NEU where they have placed CS students on co-op in recent years. I bet they have a lot of kids going to Google, Microsoft, and other big names. The co-op experience is hard to beat. Not only does it get you real work experience for your resume, the variety of experiences you can get while on co-op can help a student learn what they do and don’t like in a job. You can get similar experiences via summer internships, and in CS it’s actually reasonable to believe a student can get a paid internship even after freshman year, but you do have to be more self-motivated and take the initiative. In a co-op school they lead you through the process and “make you” apply for the jobs.</p>