I’m a junior living in Ohio with a 3.9 UW GPA and 4.24 weighted and plan to major in Computer Science. How does Ohio State’s undergrad program compare with other that of other schools such as UMich, Purdue, UIUC, Georgia Tech, etc.? Ohio State is really close by so I’d obviously like to go there unless there are noticeable differences in program quality between these universities.
UMich, UIUC, and Georgia Tech have higher ranked computer science programs. If you can get into those and afford them, it may be worth going there. But, none of them are likely to give you financial aid as an out-of-state student. You will be paying almost a private school tuition to be in massive classes … for example, Michigan computer science has 200+ student classes pretty much till the senior year. In Intro classes, students wait up to 2 hours to meet a TA during office hours.
Though OSU isn’t as much of a national name, one can go places with OSU computer science degree as well. The level of students isn’t that high, and the program isn’t that hard. But it will prepare you well. If you take initiative and do projects outside of the classes and maintain a high GPA, you can land into a top national employer. Typical or average students find decent IT jobs locally.
osuprof: I would be clear that an IT job is not the same as a software developer/engineer. From my experience here, most people I know landed a software dev/eng position pretty quick, and I know several (myself included) who are landing internships and full-time roles at the Big 4 (or 5).
Honestly, the program here has done a great job at preparing me for industry. I single that out because a lot of places I applied to were more focused on preparing computer scientists for academia. This is great and all, but if you’re not planning on being a prof/researcher for the rest of your life, and I’d say most of us are not, then this is a really solid program. Classes here in CSE are typically capped at 40 students which is awesome.
Also, there will be a first iOS design lab in the US , not to mention the partnership with Apple by giving out free iPads, and Columbus is a growing IT city.