<p>Any parents/students out there willing to offer some insight on the above colleges?</p>
<p>Looking at these now before finalizing list one last time. Have heard many good things about the CS program there but originally did not have it on the short list since Son wants friendly weather. Did not want to ignore these colleges just for weather if the program is good.</p>
<p>Son wants a good campus/college experience, multi-cultural environment, happy students. OOS full paying does not want to be a number.</p>
<p>I was doing research on comp sci schools for my son a year ago. If you do an advanced search function and type in “computer science” in the parent forum, you will probably get tons of info! People here are exceptionally informed and helpful.</p>
<p>The US New & World Report rankings (for comp sci grad schools) put UMCP quite high plus the weather is nice. The comp sci advisor at that school is very helpful and attuned to the kids.</p>
<p>Pitt is a great school (daughter is a junior there), but I don’t see it as a CS powerhouse. Maybe because it’s located next to Carnegie Mellon, which IS a powerhouse! But I am not an expert in CS, so maybe I’m wrong. Pitt’s engineering school is good, so maybe I’m selling Pitt short.</p>
<p>Here is the Pitt course guide. You can check out for yourself what is offered in CS and in any other department. Use the drop-down menu on the left to pick the department, then choose a semester. It’s a bit confusing, but “2101” would be the fall 2009 semester. </p>
<p>Then, on the far right, hit “See all.” Judge for yourself if the courses have depth and breadth. If you click on the course number, you can read the description.</p>
<p>Among those three – UMCP, hands down. Very highly ranked, great job placement. S1 worked with a mentor in the CS dept. junior and senior year and had a fabulous experience. Also created a terrific research project in the process. </p>
<p>We know folks who were accepted at the usual suspects (MIT, Caltech, H, CMU, etc.) and chose UMD with VERY early access to graduate work. Students often have post-graduation jobs lined up by the end of junior year. They are big into getting folks into real-life, hands-on projects with local gov’t agencies and business. </p>
<p>The CS advisor there cuts through red tape like butter. One can place into higher level work and UMD is very generous with AP credits. S1 would have entered as a junior.</p>
<p>My kids aren’t CS jocks like some, nor am I, so I don’t have a lot of insight into that.</p>
<p>Penn State has excellent engineering in general. The university is known for its huge and effective alumni network – it IS huge and effective – and the engineering programs probably have the best networks around. There was another thread recently that talked a lot about Penn State. Its main campus (University Park) is in the middle of nowhere, at least in East Coast terms, or as my son said once, “You go to the middle of nowhere, and then you drive another hour.” But the students who go there LOVE it, and all by itself it’s big enough to generate lots of activity and excitement. It’s not called Happy Valley for nothing. Someone described it as a cult . . . and the engineering programs are even more close-knit and cultish.</p>
<p>Urban students from Philadelphia tend to like it less than maybe they should, and to choose urban publics Temple and Pitt over it.</p>
<p>Pitt is a mixed bag. People really like its Honors College and merit scholarships. My children have a number of friends there, some of whom were bona fide Ivy candidates who just missed, and some of whom turned down Ivies for a cheaper education there, but it has a cadre of indifferent students, too, much more so than Penn State. It is in a nice neighborhood on the edge of Pittsburgh (itself a nice, manageable city), and Carnegie Mellon is just down the street, so it’s a very student-oriented area.</p>
<p>I have a virtual niece who was thinking of doing computer science there. She had a full-tuition scholarship to the engineering school at Pitt, and it was being compared to Carnegie-Mellon’s CS program and more liberal-artsy places. She ultimately went the liberal arts route, and would have chosen CMU over Pitt for computer science (at much greater cost), but I know she thought enough of Pitt that it stayed on her list until the last few days.</p>
<p>In terms of campus life and amenities, I think both Pitt and PSU are probably superior to UMCP, but UMCP has much, much more interesting things you can get to on a not-too-long Metro ride from campus.</p>