<p>My son is also interested in Comp Sci and I would like to ask for some suggestions for good Computer science programs. Here are his wishes:
-Small class sizes and available professors
-Smaller university < 10K in urban or suburban area
-Prefers warm climate (CA kid)
-Collaborative environment
-Over 40% admission rate
So far he has Santa Clara, UoP, and Gonzaga on the list. Any feedback on those school and additional suggestions are welcome, so we can plan some visits next year (rising junior). Thank you.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd offers computer science. I realize it is more a college than a university but the Claremont consortium looks intriguing and it would be easy to visit since you are in California. Have you considered it?</p>
<p>Thank you for your reply. Harvey Mudd only admits 22%, plus it’s known to be quite intense. We’d like to find schools that admit at least 40%. Hoping for more suggestions! Thanks!</p>
<p>Well, for a less selective school in a warmer climate at a good price for out of state students, you might consider University of Mississippi. My son is currently attend their Summer College for High School Students on a very generous scholarship. He has loved his intro computer science course this term and will be taking the second comp sci course in the sequence starting later this week. Both of these courses are regular college courses. I don’t know how Ole Miss’ computer science program compares to other schools, but they have outstanding merit aid for out of state and a charming campus with just 15,000 students.</p>
<p>What about UC Santa Cruz? It is strong in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. it is particularly strong in Bioinformatics and a world leader in this area (human genome analysis), so very collaborative with other departments on campus and on its own. UCSC is not the hardest UC to get into, and not huge either as state universities go. It is probably around 10000 undergrads.</p>
<p>Thank you, will do more research on those schools. What about schools in Texas? Are there any that would fit the criteria and known to be strong in Comp sci?</p>
<p>Rice University? But it is very selective.</p>
<p>The best known schools in Texas for CS are big publics (UT Austin and Texas A&M).</p>
<p>UCSC has about 14,000 undergraduates. Its proximity to Silicon Valley is a plus for recruiting.</p>
<p>Be sure to look at the language taught for intro classes. Some schools use Java, leading towards a more IT career, and some use C++ leading to more of a design career. Then look at class scheduling. The smaller schools list lots of courses in their catalogs but often do not schedule them. Ever.</p>
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<p>Nonsense. Your career direction does not depend on the language used in the intro programming course.</p>
<p>About the programming languages used – it is more important that the various CS courses use programming languages appropriate for the tasks, which means not the same programming language for every CS course. For example, the first three CS courses at Berkeley use Python, Java, C, and assembly language as appropriate for the CS concepts being taught.</p>
<p>[The</a> Perils of JavaSchools - Joel on Software](<a href=“http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html]The”>The Perils of JavaSchools – Joel on Software)</p>
<p>The new software companies may not be using C++. I doubt facebook, google use C++, too time consuming.
Googling and I found, Google engineers use C++ only when they must.
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