With University of Maryland, College Park being one of my top choices, I have to ask the question: what kind of experience is learning CS at UMD? I recently learned about the petition with cs courses (more information at https://www.change.org/p/umd-department-of-computer-science-more-seats-on-400-level-cs-classes-at-umd) and had a chance to review some of the professors for lower level coureses through https://planetterp.com/ by obtaining professor names on the CS course catalog (http://www.cs.umd.edu/courses). The petition is an obvious drawback from deciding to attend the university because it demonstrated the university’s inability to organize and care for CS students, and the professor reviews on plannetterp gave me a somewhat less excited view of the professors because some, if not most, were rated as “average” or “below-average” with exception to one or two professors who were rated as excellent.
In regard to experience, I’d like a holistic response to those who can provide it; how were the professors like to you? did the courses make you feel like you were prepared for jobs? did the proximity to Washington D.C. add any job/internship benefits that averaged out the negatives? what were some of the biggest negatives for UMDCP for you?
I would also be very interested in learning more about this. Since CS is not a limited enrollment program, is there enough capacity for the many students who want to major and to take the courses? I have heard the teaching is spotty and that it can be difficult to get the classes you need. The new CS building looks great – hopefully it will mean additional classes and space for students.
My son is a junior who had switched from physics to CS after his first semester. He absolutely loves it! He has enjoyed the classes and the instructors.
I love the CS department, even though it has its drawbacks. CS not being an LLP can get frustrating, especially for my friends in upper-level courses. The problems with the 400-level classes is still being fixed (kind of hard to do when the major keeps getting bigger every year). There’s proof that the CS department is trying to solve some of its students’ problems (recently, they’ve changed a room in the CS department building to be an additional TA room, after noticing how overcrowded the existing room gets). Keep in mind that the CS major is incredibly massive, so making change occur in a short-time might not be feasible for them.
About the professors, I’ve had amazing experiences with professors here. They were friendly, informative, and engaging (ESPECIALLY Nelson). People generally only write reviews/rate things if they have particularly extreme experiences with something (for example, you’re more likely to write a review on Yelp if you’ve had a really bad experience at the restaurant than if you had a good one), so I would take the ratings with a grain of salt. You might find you like the professor a lot once you get here! I know a lot of my friends have had that experience (especially with Kruskal, who might have been one of the professors you saw as rated poorly).
A lot of my friends and I have found that UMD’s location has brought a ton of benefits. Two of my friends have internships in D.C. that they often commute to after classes, and others have had interviews in D.C. and Baltimore, which are relatively easy to get to (as opposed to flying somewhere for an interview) from UMD! The only drawback of UMD’s location? The hills when you walk to class. (But, hey, a plus side is that every day is leg day?)
If you can, I highly suggest shadowing a computer science Honors student via Host a Day so you can see what the CS department feels like in real life, as opposed to online. I feel like it could make a difference and reassure you that things aren’t as bad as things online make them seem! (Here’s a link to register for that, if you’re interested: http://www.honors.umd.edu/visithonors.html)
Lack of spaces in CS classes is something you’ll experience at just about any top tier school. I briefly attended Cornell and struggled to get into my sophomore level classes without waking up at 6am and spam refreshing the registration page the instant it went live, it’s just a fact of modern higher education. The fact that I can get into pretty much whichever 400 I want to so long as I bother to register on the same day that it becomes available or the next is a relative luxury.
And again, every school is going to have bad professors, the benefit to going to a large school like UMD is that you’re rarely ever forced to take a class with one.
Current student here, I think the department responded quite well to the petition and it ended up not being as much of a problem as it initially seemed. When the petition was written pretty much every 400-level class was filled, and at that point many students’ registrations hadn’t even opened (as registration priority is determined by seniority). Once they expanded seats, everyone I know got into classes they were reasonably happy with, even the ones with the latest registration times. Naturally, the outrage pretty much died out after that.
That isn’t to say the enrollment issue is completely solved, but the department is working on it. Pretty much every school with a good CS reputation has seen enrollment explode in recent years, so the issue is hardly unique to UMD. For any alternative school you’re considering, search for info on the number of CS students enrolled per year in the last five years or so and you’ll likely see the same thing.
Update on this because my friend brought up a really good point to me today:
With the upcoming completion of the new CS building (the Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, http://iribe.cs.umd.edu/), there’s bound to be more room to hold CS classes, more room for CS TAs to hold office hours (which means more help for students!), more resources, etc. I bet the building will also attract better CS faculty, since, right now, A.V. Williams is the “headquarters” of the CS Department, and some of those offices are not the best.We could also potentially get more donors? The completion of the Iribe Center (and opening of it in, I think, fall 2018) can really only bring better things for the CS department.