Hello everyone, I have been accepted to Northeastern, Boston College, amd UMass Amherst and plan to study Computer Science. As of right now I am leaning towards attending Northeastern University.
My question is this: To anybody with knowledge of one, two, or all three of these Computer Science programs, which college/university would you pick for CS, and why?
Any and all opinions are greatly appreciated and will help me greatly in my decision making process.
I looked at all three schools for CS - I’m currently attending NEU as a sophomore and loving it. While I have tons of great things to say about NEU’s CS department, it’s important to note that all three schools have pretty good departments, and other factors beyond the CS programs should probably come into play with the range of differences between the schools.
Northeastern actually developed its own language and teaching program - a program I actually help with as a TA. The language focuses on really teaching problem-solving and program design over “writing code that works”. This philosophy is really carried through the entire program but is most visible at the start.
This is a great essay the founder of the program wrote - he currently teaches Software Development here.
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Growing_a_Programmer.html
As far as the classroom experience, I can’t speak to the other two, but here I have yet to see a single powerpoint of code - all of the classes are taught by working on problems in class as a group and every new concept is introduced with a working example and plenty of labs/homework to practice on.
UMass Amherst would probably be considered to have the better CS program compared to BC - All three programs offer plentiful offerings and strong departments. UMass has the best rank of the three, followed shortly by NEU, then BC a bit farther down.
As far as beyond CS goes, all three schools have different environments:
NEU has the co-op program, which works amazingly well for CS students among many others, and is in the heart of Boston. The academic philosophy is very much to combine the academic and practical. If you really aren’t a fan of the co-op program, I would probably lean to one of the other schools. If you are, then NEU certainly will give you plenty of opportunities. BC is your much more traditional college experience, but with access to Boston (though not nearly at the level of NEU). It has a bigger party life compared to NEU and is more of a focus of social activities on campus versus off campus. UMass Amherst is again more traditional in comparison and offers a very highly ranked CS program - I didn’t end up applying due to the location, as being in a city was important to me, but it is a great option for CS.
Unless the atmosphere at BC speaks to you, I think narrowing it down to NEU and UMass Amherst makes sense.
Personally, I say go for Northeastern! If you have any specific questions on the program I would love to help answer them 
Thank you very much for your thoughtful response! I am definitely leaning towards Northeastern, especially after reading your response. Have you had the opportunity to co-op anywhere yet?
While I’m a current sophomore, I have not yet as I chose to delay my co-ops (I’m doing a 2 co-op, 5 year BS/MS program with my co-ops in the spring of year 3 and 4), but many of my friends have. They have all had great experiences and are getting very paid well on top of it. I know people currently at Inuit, Apple, and Google from this spring alone. Of course, there’s a lot of non-big names too, but those often offer great experiences as well. The NEU CS Facebook group has a lot of people posting about companies for co-op, asking for others experiences there, and I read consistently good reviews of most companies asked about.
While I haven’t done co-op, I am actually doing an internship this summer that I got through the career center here 