<p>I'm going to major in computer science in both undergraduate school and graduate school. In trying to decide which college to attend, I would like to know what is more important to employers: the prestige of the computer program of the school I attend, or the prestige of the school itselff?</p>
<p>If you have a clear career goal, go for the best program.</p>
<p>best program. </p>
<p>CMU MS. CS, for example, will be better regarded than a Duke MS. CS.</p>
<p>i’d argue that if your interests are even the slightest bit more broad you might benefit from the prestige of a better school. one of the best parts about being at a university is getting bits and pieces from the different disciplines. it will make you more well rounded, and thus a more attractive employee. you also never know if you’ll change your mind about what you want to do career wise then be “stuck”</p>
<p>^ that’s perhaps true when we’re talking about undergrad. but since we’re talking about grad school, department strengths matter here too.</p>
<p>seems like we’re talking about undergrad with the intention of grad school in the future</p>
<p>agreed for grad school it’s all about program strength</p>
<p>Short answer:</p>
<p>UGrad - school prestige generally trumps program prestige</p>
<p>Grad - program prestige almost always trumps school prestige</p>
<p>Longer answer: </p>
<p>UGrad - it really depends on how big the gap in prestige between schools and programs is. </p>
<p>For example: Study CS at Carnegie Mellon or study CS at Cornell? Here I think you’d be better off going with CMU even though Cornell is overall a more prestigious school because the school prestige gap is small and CMU is a clear leader in CS (others may disagree, but its at least debatable). However, if the school prestige gap is large you better off with the more prestigious school. As an example, Clark University has about the best UG geography program there is and Dartmouth has only a decent UG geography program. In this match-up you clearly chose Dartmouth (assuming comparable cost of attendance of course).</p>
<p>Grad - program prestige almost always trumps school prestige</p>
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<p>Actually, it probably depends more on the likelihood of post-graduation activity in the subject (either graduate study in the subject or employment specific to the subject).</p>
<p>For example, a CS student has a relatively high likelihood of being employed in CS after graduation. So for the CS student, reputation of CS at the school is typically more important than reputation of the school overall.</p>
<p>On the other hand, for those studying many other subjects, it is unlikely to be employed in a job specific to the subject, so reputation of the school overall is more likely to be noticed by employers hiring non-specific bachelor’s degree graduates.</p>
<p>But don’t forget the local edge. Employers may recruit at lower reputation local schools because it is convenient, but reserve non-local recruiting trips for higher reputation schools (whether in a specific subject or overall, as described above).</p>
<p>Of course, if the student will be going to graduate school in the subject, then the reputation of the undergraduate school in the subject overrides the reputation of the undergraduate school overall.</p>
<p>I think we need some concrete examples to address this conundrum.</p>
<p>For a few tip-top schools (like Stanford or Princeton) it doesn’t matter. You get both (prestigious school, prestigious program).</p>
<p>But suppose you’re choosing between (a) another top-20 national university (or maybe a top-10 LAC) that isn’t particularly known for CS, and (b) a less highly-ranked, less prestigious state school that happens to have a highly regarded CS program. Examples: Hopkins v. Maryland (College Park); Northwestern or Chicago v. Illinois; WUSTL or Carleton College v. Purdue. In these cases, I’d recommend (almost without hesitation) Hopkins, NU/Chicago, or WUSTL/Carleton. That’s assuming cost is not a major issue.</p>
<p>Rationale:
- There is relatively little difference among CS programs. Especially in the first 2 or 3 years, the course offerings are about the same. They typically mirror ACM curriular recommendations ([Curricula</a> Recommendations ; Association for Computing Machinery](<a href=“http://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations]Curricula”>Curricula Recommendations))</p>
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<li><p>As you build an IT career, "soft " skills become increasingly important to career advancement. A broad liberal arts program in a more selective school will tend to provide a better foundation in this respect than a narrowly technical program in a less selective school with larger classes.</p></li>
<li><p>You’ll tend to have better opportunities to develop a wider social network in a school that has diversified, national drawing power.</p></li>
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<p>As for what is more important to employers, I’m not sure it matters much. They’ll care about your demonstrated skills and aptitude. A major IT employer like Microsoft has its own battery of interviews and tests.</p>
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<p>Your example is not especially clear cut.</p>
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<li><p>UIUC, UMCP, and Purdue are highly regarded in general. So is UNC-CH, which the OP is considering attending.</p></li>
<li><p>It is not necessarily true that a student at the other schools will necessarily choose a broader liberal arts program of study than the student at UIUC, UMCP, or Purdue. Indeed, some of the most highly prestigious schools in general have no breadth requirements at all (Brown, Amherst).</p></li>
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<p>I think the LACK of a breadth requirement can lead to much more interesting and diverse classmates: at Brown, students do stuff like double-major in CS and classic literature; at UIUC it would be engineering classes plus mindless introductory general education classes to meet the graduation requirements.</p>
<p>The CS major who knows the technical stuff AND who has the communication skills to interact with upper management will usually do better rising within a company. The more elite schools tend to better prepare their students with more than mere technical ability.</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty big stretch. The student who would double major in two unrelated subjects would likely do so whether or not there are breadth requirements (and if there are, the two majors would cover more of them). And why would the student who would take just mindless introductory general education courses to meet graduation requirements choose to take any out of area courses at all if s/he were at a school with no such requirements? I.e. a Computer Science major may take no humanities courses at all at such a school, and a Classic Literature major may take no math or science courses at all at such a school.</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty big stretch also. Indeed, one can argue that elite schools with only elite students may produce graduates who have trouble interacting with people from a range of backgrounds (including upper management who may not necessarily be a product of elite schools). Besides that, why would elite schools necessarily better prepare the same student to interact with upper management than other schools?</p>
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<p>In most colleges, you CAN’T take the more interesting advanced classes without first taking the gen-ed intro classes. In a school like Brown where NO ONE ever signs up for a class he really doesn’t want to be in, lower-level classes are simply designed differently, where the basics are quickly covered and then some advanced aspect is focused on thereafter.</p>
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<p>It’s easier to double-major in unrelated fields AND try out a few random interesting classes when you’re not also required to cover a certain minimum number of classes in 4 or 5 disciplines.</p>
<p>My son did, in fact, choose between UIUC honors and Brown and studied the course selection catalogs carefully before making his final decision. The UIUC CS classes seemed to be plain-vanilla technical and the Brown CS classes seemed to be more interdisciplinary.</p>
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<p>That is usually more of a function of the subject, not the school. Subjects where advanced courses build on other courses (STEM subjects, but also some others like economics) have that characteristic, but other subjects like most humanities and social studies subjects have few or no prerequisites.</p>