<p>Here's the list from most expensive to least expensive. Will visit the southern schools the first week in April. Also waiting to hear on admission to special programs at Nebraska and Alabama (waitlisted). Any thoughts? S will be studying CS. Total cost per year ranges from about $25K to free (LA Tech).</p>
<p>Of the schools he visited, he likes Gustavus, Minnesota and Nebraska. He doesn't like Wisconsin. He plans on going to grad school. Academics are important, but I want him to have a positive social experience. Any thoughts on these choices?</p>
<p>Gustavus Adolphus
Michigan Tech
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Nebraska
Alabama
Mississippi State
Ole Miss
University of Louisiana - Lafayette
Louisiana Tech</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Consider how much you can comfortably contribute to his school costs, and how much debt (if any) he will need at each school.</p></li>
<li><p>Have him look at the courses and curricula for CS at each school to see if its offerings are suitable for his interests. Also check the schedules to see how frequently each course is offered (some smaller schools may offer some advanced courses only once every two years).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Are you in-state for any of these? How important is relative cost to you? Why doesn’t he like Wisconsin? What are these special programs you are waiting to hear about? I think that more information is needed before anyone can give you rational advice that is based on something other than personal affection for a school.</p>
<p>Gustavus Adolphus would seem to be the outlier on this list, in terms of size. I’m not familiar with the LA schools, but I would worry about them being a) full of in-state and commuter students, which would not be much fun an OOS kid, and b) low in the LA pecking order, compared to, say, Tulane. What kind of students do they attract?</p>
<p>IMHO the schools on this list that are viewed as being the strongest overall academically are Minnesota and Wisconsin. At either of those schools he would find strong departments in virtually any field. Assuming that your family can afford it, I would be wiling to pay to attend either of those over a free but significantly lesser school. I would not pay a lot more to go to Gustavus Adolphus than to Minnesota, unless I really thought my S needed a LAC environment to succeed. But if that were the case, I assume he would have applied to more of them, instead of a string of huge state schools.</p>
<p>Okay, I cross posted. I would cross GA off the list for reasons stated above. Ucbalumnus has good advice, but I would also consider that he night change his mind about what he wants to study, so don’t pick a school based solely on the CS dept.</p>
<p>Looks to me like your top 2 choices are Minnesota and Alabama, with Raikes as perhaps the strongest contender if he gets in.</p>
<p>Good point on Gustavus. I wanted him to consider a small liberal arts school, but there are limitations.</p>
<p>He was accepted into the honors programs at all of these schools except Minnesota and Wisconsin (waiting to hear). That gives some priorities for registration.</p>
<p>WI is the strongest for CS, but it’s big and impersonal. MN is bigger but seems less impersonal. Nebraska is good for CS and he was accepted into the CS honors program. Kind of surprised by the low starting salaries though. (maybe a lot of kids stay in NE?). Alabama isn’t great for CS, but he may be able to get his MS in CS or a BS/MBA in 4 yrs due to their generous AP credit awards. Kids seem to really like MSU and they have a BS in software engineering, which he may be interested in. Don’t know much about LA Tech or UL-L.</p>
<p>Another factor is that he will be 16 when he starts and Ole Miss has a residential college that may be good for him.</p>
<p>He doesn’t like the physical layout of Wisconsin. He prefers the central campus feel of Minnesota. We are from WI so we will be the in-state rate at WI and MN.</p>
<p>The two special programs he is waiting on are Computer Based Honors at UA and the Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at Nebraska.</p>
<p>I have heard that LA Tech is a little dead on the weekends, but that a lot of CS students stay on campus. They have a cyber engineering program that is interesting, but he’s not too interested in that.</p>
<p>We have enough money to cover the cost at any of these schools. I told him if he goes to a cheaper school and there is money leftover, he can keep use it for a down payment on a house.</p>
<p>Almost all schools have some regional bias in terms of being recruited by employers. It is just that schools like Berkeley, Stanford, and San Jose State happen to be local to Silicon Valley, so their CS graduates have a lot of local opportunities. A student at Nebraska may have to be more aggressive at finding and applying to out-of-area employers for internships, co-ops, and post-graduation jobs (especially finding companies other than the big obvious ones that everyone applies to and which recruit everywhere anyway).</p>
<p>One other thing to consider: if merit scholarships are involved, check whether they have a college GPA requirement to keep the scholarship. Those which have a 3.0 college GPA requirement are probably not too hard to keep for the students who get the scholarships in the first place, but a 3.5 college GPA requirement tends to require GPA management like a pre-med.</p>
<p>That looks like in state costs for Michigan Tech. Do you get in state rates at Tech or did he get merit aid? If he likes snow sports and likes to ski or snow board, Tech is a great school. Have you visited there? The concern might be the abundance of alcohol there, especially since he will be pretty young. Being primarily an engineering school, kids study hard but there’s not a lot else to do so there is a lot of alcohol use too.</p>
<p>"Another factor is that he will be 16 when he starts and Ole Miss has a residential college that may be good for him. " - That could be an important factor.</p>
<p>True, the school should have decent degree programs in anything that he might change his major to (note that this criterion may favor larger schools for a more undecided student). But if his current choice is CS, and it is reasonably likely that he will stick to it, it makes little sense to send him to a school with a limited CS department.</p>
<p>Another consideration is that he will only be 17 when he starts his sophomore year. Most of those large campuses kids move off campus sophomore year. He won’t be able to get an apartment off campus most likely. It’s possible he could stay on campus but do they guarantee he will have a room?</p>
<p>Well, he won’t have to move off-campus at Mich Tech . . . I’m not even sure there is an off-campus! :D</p>
<p>It looks like the southern schools were included in his list because of the substantial merit awards that would be available to him . . . but has he seriously considered whether he’s comfortable making the move from Wisconsin to the South? There will be some dramatic differences . . . not the least of which is climate!</p>
<p>I completely agree, which is the main reason why I would take GA off the table.</p>
<p>If there is concern about his age and maturity–and I would certainly be concerned about sending a 16 yr old off at college–might I suggest that deferring admission and taking a gap year could be a good alternative. I know at least one parent of a gifted child who went to college and graduate school early who has said that it posed social problems for her D, even though intellectually she was fully prepared. If he could find something interesting to do, not just marking time in HS, it might be better for him in the long run.</p>
<p>He’s working for a software company, and they may let him work during a gap year, but he seems intent on starting college in the fall.</p>
<p>He worked at software company full time last summer and only his boss and another intern knew he was 15. On his last day, the people in his group asked when he was going back to college. They were surprised when they told him he was going back to HS, so that suggests he’s reasonably mature.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is not the maturity of the individual, but legalities around age. (For example, older students want to meet to discuss a project in a venue where the younger kid can’t get in.) But since your S is not THAT much younger, it shouldn’t be a big problem. Nevertheless, I agree with ucb that dorm availability would be a consideration.</p>
<p>Can you check into the “big impersonal” campus a little more and see how it might be broken down into smaller communities, and whether the CS department would itself offer a sense of community? Many of the larger schools do have formal ways to offer a feeling of a smaller school.</p>
<p>If your son is super bright but young, he could probably take a gap year and apply to some of the most competitive programs in the country. For CS though, it seems as if many state universities have great programs with regional corporate links. So if he really wants to go this fall, he has some good options. (I don’t know much about specific schools other than those on the East Coast!)</p>
<p>I held my son out of kindergarten in 1991, though he was considered somewhat gifted. He was 19 when he headed off to college, and I was glad of it. He majored in CS and I was again glad he was a little more mature when dealing with internships, then, later, interviews and job choices. He is a software engineer, but I think the added maturity gave him some opportunities in management and also led to some new product development work. But everyone is different and clearly your son is mature for his age.</p>