I am in 11th grade and working to narrow down my list of colleges to apply to for a computer science degree. I am interested in applying to some schools in the northeast and am wondering which will provide me the best overall education. Ideally I would like smaller class sizes (don’t really care about the size of the overall university) and to be in or near a big city although this is not absolutely necessary. I do like the idea of a co-op program, but summer internships would also be ok. My list is:
RPI
WPI
RIT
Stevens Institute of Technology
U Rochester
Northeastern
Drexel
Lehigh
I am not from the northeast and would ultimately like to land a job on the west coast. However, I want the experience of living there for at least 4 years. Do any of these schools have good job placement in Seattle or San Francisco? Ultimately I will probably only apply to 4 of these schools, so any help with making my decision would be greatly appreciated.
What is your state of residency, and have you talked to your parents about cost constraints?
@ucbalumnus I am from the pacific northwest and my parents are open to anything. A strong merit scholarship would be nice, but not absolutely necessary.
Washington or Oregon?
To find a good CS major, look in the catalogs for the following junior/senior level courses, and look in the schedules to see that they are offered at reasonable frequency:
algorithms and complexity
theory of computation, languages, and automata
operating systems
compilers
databases
networks
security and cryptography
hardware courses
electives like artificial intelligence, graphics, etc.
However, larger departments with many courses frequently offered tend to have large class sizes. You can look in the schedules to see class sizes. But do not be surprised if the increase in student interest in CS has resulted in CS class sizes to be large relative to others at any given school.
If you want to work in Seattle, and get a direct admission to CS at University of Washington, that would be a strong contender if you can afford it. In the San Francisco area, some of the more obvious candidates are Stanford, Berkeley, San Jose State, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis. But you may not find small class sizes at any.
@ucbalumnus Thank you for the detailed info. I am from Washington, but don’t like the large class sizes in many of the big west coast computer science departments.