Hi,
My son’s goal is to either work at a top company in CS/AI or get into a top university graduate program. His options right now are go to Northeastern and take out $6,000 yr in loans or go to UT Knoxville with a full ride and two honors programs. Going to Northeastern would involve being a long way away from home and substantial travel costs (flights), since we live in Nashville.
We would like to do a cost benefit analysis of Northeastern, but their rankings are all over the map depending upon which ranking system you look at. Does anyone have substantial knowledge of the true legitimacy of Northeastern’s Computer Science program? What chances does he have at landing at a top company or undergraduate program (MIT, Georgia Tech, etc.) if he does go to Northeastern? Which would you advise your child/friend to do and why?
Any information one could give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you kindly!
If he is looking for a masters degree in CS later, GaTech accepts students from both programs. Berkeley, Illinois and other top masters programs will recognize either undergraduate program, with good recommendations from a research advisor or summer internship and good grades.
( MIT does not offer terminal masters programs in CS right now, only PhD programs. )
Knoxville has a core strength in computing and benefits from interactions with Oak Ridge National Labs and the supercomputing focus.
https://www.nics.tennessee.edu
AI is one of the research areas at Knoxville-
http://www.eecs.utk.edu/research/areas/
At Northeastern most students do take a co op assignment for pay during at least one semester which lengthens the time of the degree. Does he want to do that? As at all Boston universities, there are excellent CS professors and research work. NEU is ranked higher than Knoxville for CS, but that is mostly the PhD level work that earns that rank.
His NEU debt will be manageable at only $24K over four years, if he does not attend grad school. If he takes the 3 semester co op degree plan, he may not need to borrow money for year 4 and he will not pay for the semesters he works. I would visit both and see where he fits best.
This explains the NEU computer science co op degree plan
https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/current-students/undergraduate/undergraduate-co-op/faq/
Its a well known and respected co op degree plan which will lead to a job offer with the co op company in most cases.
We are assuming here that he will cover cost of living in Boston, travel back and forth and all other unknown cost… eg. thanksgiving you need to leave the dorms, same goes for Christmas and spring break…
Re-read the aid letter from NEU. Where does that $6,000 loan come from? The standard federal loans are $5,500 freshman year, $6,500 sophomore year, $7,500 junior year, and $7,500 senior year. Is the $6,000 in addition to those loans, or some kind of average of those loans?
Is the aid from NEU need-based or merit-based? If it is merit-based, what must he do in order to retain his scholarship for all four years? Is it locked in, or does he need a specific GPA? If he slips up one semester, what would he need to do to re-qualify for the scholarship? If he loses the merit money entirely, can your family afford for him to stay at NEU or would he have to transfer out? Likewise for the UT-K scholarship.
He has two great options, your whole family must be delighted indeed! If he does end up in Knoxville, tell him to take in some of the theater productions on campus so he can catch some of Happykid’s (MFA program) lighting designs.
Current Northeastern CS student here, happy to answer any questions!
As mentioned, three important factors here:
- Calculate and include the cost of travel back and forth
- How do you feel about Northeastern’s strong co-op emphasis?
- Nail down where the loans would come from if Northeastern
In this case I think for 6K a year in loans Northeastern would be a steal comparatively. Here’s a great essay on the unique aspects of the program:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
These are two or even possibly 3 very different paths. For industry, it is not usually recommended to do a masters. For a Ph.D, research then becomes a lot more important. Ph.D.'s in CS typically skip over a masters degree. I would think on this a bit more before making a decision as well.
In terms of research, Northeastern is an undergraduate-focused school where I think you would find a lot more research opportunities. You can see good data on this at the link below, even filtering by specific subtopics.
http://csrankings.org/
In terms of industry, Northeastern does very well because of co-op but CS grad success isn’t as reliant on the school as with most majors. That said, 67% of Northeastern CS grads have a full-time job offer from a previous co-op employer when they graduate which is a pretty staggering statistic. They also are one of the top 25 most hired new grads hired in Silicon Valley by the top firms there (by volume). The data tends to favor larger programs and ones on the west coast, but it’s still another interesting data point, particularly since Northeastern is one of 15 non-west coast region schools on the list.
https://www.scribd.com/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
While CS students can generally succeed anywhere given the skill focus of the field over name value, being surrounded by top research and teaching certainly helps students, as does the co-op program. I think there’s a notable difference in this case.
Hope all that info helps and again happy to answer any specific questions!