<p>Assuming these three will cost around the same price, which university has more prestigious CS programs and name recognition. When it comes to the physical college campus and atmosphere, I feel like I could be perfectly content and thrive at UIUC or Rose (I never visited Notre Dame yet...:P) and I am having a hard time deciding, of course the answers here won't form my decision, but i would like to hear some opinions. Thanks to anyone who responds!</p>
<p>I’m not very knowledgeable about CS programs, but I’m pretty sure UIUC is the best of those three. The CS major is part of the College of Engineering and is overall very prestigious. Yahoo is also on campus.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t count out Rose Hulman. I applied there and if it were not for the location and my personal preferences, they would have been a top consideration. Academically they are very strong all around. They are limited in name recognition to the middle of the country. But in that region, they will carry very good prestige. I wanted a large bustling city for college and post-college life, so it wasn’t a great option for me. I still applied however knowing that I would get a stellar education if I attended.</p>
<p>I don’t know the other two well to compare, but just a vote of approval for RHIT.</p>
<p>If you get into the “prestigious” aspect…then UIUC.</p>
<p>Still, it is Computer Science and jobs are obtained by what one knows…not their school name.</p>
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<p>Just wanted to say that I was offered software development jobs on the east coast, west coast, and in the southwest coming out of Rose-Hulman. The reputation certainly is more concentrated in the midwest, but by no means is limited to it.</p>
<p>I didn’t look at Notre Dame or UIUC in my college search, but here’s my two cents: If you would like to get involved with high-impact research and go on to get a PhD afterward, I would go with UIUC. If you want to have a very undergraduate-focused school with the associated high-quality learning experience, go with Rose-Hulman. If you want to go to silicon valley, UIUC probably has more pull.</p>
<p>If you feel equally comfortable at both UIUC and Rose-Hulman then you’re in fantastic position. If you like the environment and can succeed at UIUC, then that eliminates the major con to a large public university like UIUC in my opinion - the lack of focus on undergrads and the impersonal education. That’s the major benefit to Rose-Hulman, but if that isn’t a major draw then Rose loses one of its key advantages.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about Notre Dame, but I don’t really see any reason to choose it over UIUC or Rose-Hulman based purely on academics.</p>
<p>They are really different schools in atmosphere. You should visit all three. Also, the costs may be significantly different. Assuming you are from Illinois, you will probably find Notre Dame most expensive, then Rose-Hulman, then UIUC. Rose-Hulman does offer merit aid, which is why it is probably in the middle. If cost is important, then you will need to factor that in.</p>
<p>Computer science is very much a “what have you done” and “what do you know” field. School prestige doesn’t matter for long.</p>
<p>Thanks to a lucky scholarship at rose, it is the most feasible of the three, anyways here is how I classify the three colleges:
UIUC- pros: Well known around the country for Engineering/ CS, great whether i want to go to grad school or the workforce
Cons: Impersonal, will probally take five years to graduate</p>
<p>Rose- pros: Great programs in Engineering, more personable, Cheapest (currently)
cons: not as well known as UIUC outside of the Midwest, Im not sure of their grad school placement</p>
<p>Notre Dame: Incredibly close knit alumi ties, best endowment, recognized as a top 20 university (US news)
Cons: Not the best Engineering/CS ranking, most expensive</p>
<p>When it comes to post graduation, I am still not sure what I would like to focus on grad school, or workforce, let alone what kind of job or grad school major.</p>
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<p>I can say a bit about Rose grad school placement. I was a EE major and only knew a handful of CS people; two of the CS majors I knew went on to grad school in CS, and they went to UIUC (PhD) and Purdue (can’t remember degree). I went from my EE at Rose to a masters program in CS, and I got into a couple top 5 schools and several top 30s.</p>
<p>I’m at a large public university in California for my MS. I’ve taken a couple undergraduate courses here and have been disappointed with the instruction, resources, and coursework - I was spoiled at Rose. I have no idea how UIUC would compare (from what I’ve heard the situation might be worse here at the UCs than at other publics), but that’s my personal experience. If Rose is the cheapest, I would seriously consider it.</p>
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<p>@gobeavs: Can you tell us which large public univ. in CA that you’re at and why it’s been disappointing in regards to instruction, resources, and coursework? And in what ways did Rose spoil you?</p>
<p>I think you answered your own question- the pros you list for UIUC look to be exactly what you are most concerned with. Good luck. </p>
<p>@CalBearsMom: sure, I’ll give some examples. I won’t mention the name of the school here, because someone searching for the school on CC may see this comment out of context and I don’t want to give the impression that the undergraduate education here is a disaster. Again, I was spoiled at Rose, so I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. I will PM you with the name, though. </p>
<p>Because my undergrad was in EE and not CS, I’ve taken 3 upper-division undergrad CS courses in addition to my graduate coursework. So I wasn’t an undergrad here, but I feel like I have some basis for comparison. I’ll try to give some examples:</p>
<p>In one of my undergrad classes here, on the first day of class the professor said that this is a research school and he would not really be teaching the material, and that if you wanted to learn the material for that class you would be better off reading the textbook or watching videos online. Sure enough, the teaching was terrible. I even had the TA suggest to me that if they were taking the class they would just read the book and not go to lecture because the teaching was so bad. I’ve only had six professors here, but two of them have easily been the worst teachers I’ve ever had (counting my whole undergraduate at Rose-Hulman). At Rose, you might encounter a bad teacher, but they typically at least care about teaching and are trying to improve; if they don’t improve, they don’t last long. Here, being a poor teacher and not caring about teaching seems to be acceptable. All of my professors at Rose cared about teaching, and for the most part were good teachers.</p>
<p>In the undergrad courses, TAs aren’t responsible for the bulk of the teaching but they typically are in charge of homework assignments. In one of my programming-heavy undergrad courses, the TA seemed out of the loop with the programming projects that we were doing and was utterly unhelpful. One of my friends took a class where different TAs gave flat-out contradictory information about the requirements for the exact same homework. In general I’ve felt that my workload has a significant overhead involved with just sorting out incorrect instructions and mismanaged assignments as a result of poor TAs, which reduces the amount of time I can spend on real learning. At Rose, professors come up with assignments, are the primary contact for homework help, and care about teaching. At Rose I felt like my work was going toward solving homework assignments and learning - not trying to decipher unclear and contradictory instructions or worrying about things like inconsistent grading. </p>
<p>In my experience, the computing resources here have been frustrating. There was a computing package (MATLAB) required for one of my classes, and it had restrictive licensing such that you could only run it on the school servers. But, the network storage allocation for each user was so small that I was unable to properly run my code on their servers. I ended up buying a student license for the software just to avoid having to deal with the ridiculous licensing and computing policies. At Rose that same software package was available to download on my personal computer for free; although I did have Rose-Hulman computing facilities, I never needed to use them because the software licensing was not nearly as restrictive. Additionally, here you only have access to that software package if you are enrolled in a class that specifically requires it - at Rose, everyone had access to it. That meant that at Rose I could experiment with that tool on my own, outside of any coursework - not possible here.</p>
<p>These are just a couple things. I won’t even go into the more well-known disadvantages to larger research schools, such as larger class sizes and less professor accessibility. That’s not to say that where I am is terrible, because it isn’t. Undergrads here can get a great education. But, coming from an environment at Rose where teaching was the priority and student learning was paramount, I can immediately see the difference.</p>
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<p>@godeavs: Can you PM me which university you are in? I’ve got several MSCS ads including UCSD and UIUC, and I’m afraid that it was UCSD that you are talking about… Thanks!</p>
<p>@tetsu26853‌ : sure thing.</p>