<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>I am a junior in high school who has been programming for a couple of years now and have read lots about the startup atmosphere. I've been to Palo Alto and San Francisco and loved them both.</p>
<p>I am considering attending U of Alabama, because of their fantastic merit scholarships. Essentially, with my GPA and ACT scores (33) I would not have to pay tuition to attend. </p>
<p>I was wondering if UA would be looked down upon as a college in Silicon Valley? Or their CS program, which isn't nationally ranked?</p>
<p>Thanks for any and all help, if you need more information just ask.</p>
<p>I am sure the fact your school isn’t nationally ranked will matter a little bit, but that surely won’t take you out of the game. I would recommend not only striving for excellent grades in college if you go to U of A, but putting a bit of effort into developing a portfolio of completed software in whatever interests you. Strive to learn more about topics that are interesting and even see if there are any CS clubs on campus that could help you have something to work on. </p>
<p>The goal is to do things to stand out, so you need to figure out what it will take to get you there. I am pretty sure one of the things start ups like are people who can learn to do new things quickly. Try to find ways to prove you have this characteristic. I am sure some of the computer science people on this forum will give you some better advice on how to stand out as well. Good luck to you!</p>
<p>The main issue is that getting to the stage of being recruited right out of college is more difficult if you are at a non-local non-well-known school (for CS). Small companies tend to have limited college recruiting (mainly local schools and perhaps a few non-local schools), so you would at least need to find them yourself and apply to them directly rather than see them come through the career center like at Berkeley, Stanford, and San Jose State (in contrast, the big well known companies like GAFAM recruit widely, and every CS major in the country knows who they are and applies to them).</p>
<p>That makes sense, ucbalumnus. Would you think if I moved out to silicon valley I would have any issues finding a job ?</p>
<p>Startups are a lot less fun when they go under - a former coworker moved to the Valley after a decade in fly-over country and is on his 4th startup or pseudo-startup in 4 years. Decent money but he’s in his 40’s… His kid joined him with a degree in CS from our state flagship (FOU, Fly Over University), after working in that little mail order place in Seattle for a few months. My wife did the startup dance back in the original dot com days, made a lot of money, but one year ended up with 4 W-2 forms… Still, it’s a good experience to have.</p>
<p>Find out who recruits at 'Bama, and how’s their alumni network, and what courses and ties to the industry they have. It will take a lot of convincing for me to believe that a ‘local’ graduate from one of the SV ho-hum schools is better than a 'Bama or similar school, experience living in the South is useful…</p>
<p>I don’t know how it works these days, and you can try to get internships in SV while at 'Bama, but back in my days the usual way to get jobs in SV was to move there with a friend for a month, send lots of resumes with a local address, and wait. Worked for everyone… As I said, that was then.</p>
<p>Where do you currently live? paying UC OOS just for the SV experience is a bit expensive in my view…</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback.</p>
<p>I live in Illinois and the amount of money I would pay to go to Bama is less than half of UIUC’s. I, however, do not think I could get in to any UC school as they require a fine arts class taken for a year and I did not take one in school. I called UCLA and UCSB about this and they said they do not make exceptions, except for international students with outstanding stories (didn’t go to school for years, child soldier, etc).</p>
<p>EDIT: The reason I wanted to work in a startup was that I have always dreamed of owning and running my own company, and I feel the experience of working with a developing company would help me avoid the pitfalls.</p>
<p>For your first job out of school (or summer jobs, internships, or co-ops), you may find it not as difficult to get into a larger company in Silicon Valley (more likely for them to come recruiting, more likely for you to find that they exist). Once there, it will be significantly easier to find or be found by smaller companies there.</p>
<p>If UIUC in-state is too expensive, then UC out-of-state will certainly be too expensive. UC financial aid will not cover the out-of-state additional tuition (which is $23,000), so the minimum net price at UC will be $31,000 per year after adding the expected student contribution ($8,000 to $9,000) even if your expected family contribution is $0. CSUs (like San Jose State and Cal Poly) have lower list prices (around $30,000 to $35,000 per year out-of-state), but essentially no financial aid for out-of-state students.</p>
<p>I was not surprised by your post, ucbalumnus, you just confirmed my suspicions. </p>
<p>I was wondering about this 5-year program at UA, a 5-year MBA program. The program is only intended for the top STEM major entering freshmen, who take an accelerated MBA program course their fifth year. Do you think this would be beneficial for someone who is considering starting their own business?</p>
<p>I’ve heard mixed opinions from people in the financial world and I was hoping someone in the engineering world could give me their input.</p>
<p>Most of the engineering or CS people that I know (in startups or otherwise) do not have MBA or other business degrees.</p>
<p>You can also do a 4 or 5 year BS/MS at UA, if you are coming in with some AP credits. </p>
<p>My son is planning on doing this although it’s not clear to me if there is a benefit coming out of college with an MSCS degree vs a BSCS. Might companies prefer to hire BS vs MS because they may not have to pay the BS graduate as much?</p>
<p>That makes sense. Would it help at all for starting a business?</p>
<p>A master’s degree may help if you want to study some subarea more in-depth than one would normally study as an undergraduate, and the subarea is relevant to the type of work you want to do, or if you go into some type of job where there is benefit to having the master’s degree as a check-box credential.</p>