Princeton, Yale, MIT or Stanford for CS

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>Luckily, S is admitted to MIT, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. S does not have a favorite among these choices. S loves CS, painting. His major (though not 100% sure) will likely be CS + finance and he wants to continue studio art either as a minor or a serious hobby in college.</p>

<p>I used to think MIT is the best school for CS, but friends told me Stanford has the best CS program and great support for entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Yale has the best fine arts program and not as strong engineering offering. Princeton has the best teaching for undergrads, plus decent programs in both CS and arts.</p>

<p>Some people told me that undergrad is mainly for getting a broad and well-rounded education, instead of professional training. Hence, MIT can be saved for graduate studies. Is this theory about the purposes of undergraduate study true?</p>

<p>Assuming weather and location is not a issue, what would be a best-fit school for S?</p>

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<p>For CS, Stanford is the obvious choice here.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t jump on Stanford as Princeton, Stanford and MIT are on par.
Unless he knows he wants to get into the Start-up world right after college (which still happens in the other two).
Not to mention finance: Princeton is the best among those 3 in finance and we eve nhave ORFE: financial engineering which combines both (he doesn’t have to major in it but he will find the courses interesting)</p>

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<p>Take out Yale, it isn’t known for an amazing engineering program as much as the others. I would go with Princeton because it offers the best undergraduate teaching and has incredible programs in all the areas your son is interested in.</p>

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<p>I would rule out Yale and then Princeton, MIT, and Stanford are pretty much the 3 to pick from.</p>

<p>At that point its pretty much preference as you will be getting a top notch education and opportunities at any 3 schools… At Stanford you will be in the center of Silicon Valley though which is convenient to say the least. MIT though… is MIT. Princeton seems like the most well rounded…</p>

<p>Time to go to the cliche advice and say you guys should visit all 3 again and do thorough research. ************** is a nice website to get some better information about each school. (NVM its censored) but I would google “student reviews of X” x being M/P/S.</p>

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<p>Also if it helps, I have a cousin who attended Princeton for undergrad majoring in electrical engineering, then got his PhD in electrical engineering from MIT. Now he has a startup in the Silicon Valley and is making millions. He said Princeton has a really amazing engineering program that really helped him get started. The liberal education there also provided him with some business skills, which helped him with his startup tremendously, according to him.</p>

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<p>biovball, thanks!
I think your cousin’s story is very interesting! Would you say that the business skills provided by the liberal education at Princeton can be obtained via majoring in econ or other business majors at MIT? Or a well-rounded core education is required for producing leaders? Is Stanford considered as a school that can provide a well-rounded education with solid humanity courses?</p>

<p>I assume his PhD from MIT provided him with solid professional skills and creative problem solving skills. </p>

<p>How about Stanford? I wonder if your cousin has hires students from Stanford and I wonder how he feels about students from these three schools.</p>

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<p>Ghastn, thanks for the information!
financial engineering sounds like an interesting major, and just found that it’s offered in the school of engineering. Just wondering, are students from Princeton CS usually go to bank industry or Wall Street?</p>

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<p>@angelakk if you want, you can PM me and I can try to get him to contact you. I’m sure he would be happy to help - I’m afraid I don’t know the answers to those questions myself.</p>

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<p>@angelakk: Here is a job profile synopsis of post-graduation plans for Princeton CS students. It seems that most of the students enter predominantly overall into the banking industry. I would assume that a significant number end up on Wall Street too.</p>

<p>[Computer</a> Science<em>«</em>Office of Career Services « Princeton University](<a href=“Search Opportunities | Human Resources”>Search Opportunities | Human Resources)</p>

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<p>I’m not an expert on this but I found that leadership roles in student organizations, extracurricular activities, and internships throughout my high school career were the best conduits of learning and gaining business and entrepreneurial skills. I think that the campus which offers the most opportunities, in this sense, would bring out and hone one’s business and entrepreneurial abilities. I know that, at MIT and Stanford, initiating and joining innovative projects are a big part of the schools’ cultures. </p>

<p>I don’t know much about MIT. But I do know plenty about Stanford since I have a large number of friends who attend there. In fact, at Stanford, their CS classes stress both knowledge and application. My friend there who is a second-year this year at Stanford took a CS class where she and other students formed groups that had to build, program, and market (not simply within the class, but to the real world) an iPhone and Android app. The marketing side involved outreach through Facebook and Youtube. She has also interned at Microsoft and Boeing, which both recruit <em>heavily</em> at Stanford. Another friend I know there, who is also a second-year, is part of a school team that designs, builds, tests, and competes with an energy-saving solar car against other colleges like Berkeley. There is also a school-wide campus contest for designing and constructing the website portal for course scheduling.</p>

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<p>@biovball, that will be great! Just that I have to wait until I post more than 15 posts before I can pm you. </p>

<p>@OREngineering, thanks for the information about Stanford and Princeton! They are really helpful!</p>

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<p>@mccruz, did you mean a website with a URL of 22 characters, including www and com, with a UI of busy red and green fonts?</p>

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<p>angelakk - It’s funny. I’m a senior interested in CS, in a pretty similar situation to your son - I’m choosing between Princeton, Stanford, CMU, and full scholarships at a few well regarded schools. I’ve been doing a lot of research trying to make my decision, including contacting many current CS students at these schools. Here is what I’ve generally found:</p>

<p>At Princeton, the CS program is extremely good, and most of the professors are great. The students love it, and they say they really notice the undergraduate focus. A lot of them think its one of the best departments at the school. One complaint is that it is pretty intense, so you better love CS and be ready to work very hard. Two Princeton students told me they had friends at CMU and Stanford, and thought that they (Princeton) had more difficult assignments. Also, only 35 - 40% of the kids in a class can get As, as per Princeton’s grade deflation policy. However, the kids told me that for CS, your GPA doesn’t really matter - they all had internships at Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, NY Consulting firms, etc and said recruiting is very heavy at Princeton. Princeton has a rapidly growing Entrepreneurial Club and a bunch of CS kids participate in a program called Tiger Treks, where they visit companies on the West Coast. Finally, one thing you may want to know about the CS Program is that the number of CS Majors in the last 1-2 years has suddenly increased, so class sizes are getting larger. Upper level classes now have 40-50 kids each, although thats still better than most other CS programs.</p>

<p>At Stanford, the students love their professors as well. (Look up Mehram Sahrami’s lectures). I’ll just add in that the weather at Stanford is way better than that of Princeton. Stanford kids love their classes, and say there is a heavy entrepreneurial vibe, since Silicon Valley is so close by. Recruiting is also (obviously) great at Stanford. Some kids complain of the Stanford “duck” syndrome - go look that up - since all of the students are driven to graduate and succeed in their start-up pursuits. Also, getting As in Stanford CS is pretty easy. Students have told me that you really don’t have to work too hard if you don’t want to, so life is good in that respect. </p>

<p>Hope this was helpful. Personally, I’m leaning towards Princeton because I feel that at Princeton, by the time I graduate, I will have worked hard and learned a tremendous amount. Honestly, I don’t think I’m that amazing and have really lucked out with my acceptances and scholarships. I also don’t have much programming experience right now. I have a weird feeling that at Stanford, I could spend 4 years there and still feel like a fraud (bad word choice maybe), while at Princeton I know I’d definitely come out having learned a lot and being as good a programmer as anyone else. At Princeton, I’d also have better liberal arts classes (which I’d love to explore) and a better overall undergraduate experience (academic, social, extracurricular). Once I get over the urge to go to a school in the sunny California weather, Princeton seems for me to be the slightly better choice for my undergrad. If I attend graduate school, I’d definitely want to go out to Stanford.</p>

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<p>One thing to take note of is that Stanford, while having better weather than Princeton, certainly doesn’t have the “California” weather most people think of when they think of the state. Since it’s in the Bay Area, it is generally much colder there than both Southern California and the Central Valley, where I live.</p>

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<p>Your son has fabulous choice to make. He will receive a great education at any of the four universities. In my opinion the top computer science departments are Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon. You son will be able to find great CS students and professors at Stanford, MIT, or Princeton. Yale appears to be working hard to catchup with the best STEM universities.</p>

<p>MIT has had a very strong entrepreneurship program for a long time. MIT professor Edward Roberts has estimated that over 25,000 companies employing 3.3 million people were started by MIT alumni. Finance is very good at all four universities. Princeton’ program in entrepreneurship is growing. TigerLaunch is an entrepreneurship competition organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club. Students present their business plans as they would to an “angel” investor or venture capitalist. Venture capitalists judge the student’s “pitch” and award the seed money. The 2013 TigerLaunch competition received over 100 entries for both the entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship tracks. The prize for first place in 2013 will be $30,000. Many students in the competition have taken courses such as the High-Tech Entrepreneurship course or the course in social entrepreneurship. Dr. Greg Olsen, Entrepreneur in Residence offers researchers and students one-on-one advice regarding potential entrepreneurial endeavors. </p>

<p>Princeton is making a major effort to improve their courses in all of the creative arts. The Lewis Center for the Arts is the most visible part of a $300 million program to expand art education at Princeton. The university is now building a new center for the arts; the start of the center has been held up for years by a zoning dispute with Princeton Township. Have your son review the visual arts programs at the Lewis Center. See: [Visual</a> Arts - Lewis Center for the Arts](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/arts/arts_at_princeton/visual_arts/]Visual”>Visual Arts - Lewis Center for the Arts) The Princeton Art Museum is a great museum to wonder through when you want to take a break from studying. [Princeton University Art Museum](<a href=“http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/”>http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/&lt;/a&gt;) Princeton has tried to make art a part of everyday life at Princeton; sculptures are placed around the campus. [Princeton</a> University - Princeton sculpture enriches beauty and character of campus](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S30/81/71I92/index.xml]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S30/81/71I92/index.xml) </p>

<p>Princeton places more emphasis on undergraduate education. For a broad well rounded education your son would be happy at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.</p>

<p>Your son should visit as many of the universities as he can. I expect that he will feel at home at one of the universities. There is no one best fit; he should attend where he is most comfortable.</p>

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<p>A long time ago, I was an EECS major at MIT and a CS grad student at Yale, so I can compare those CS programs. I also know a fair number of Stanford grads. My sense was that undergraduate CS at MIT was somewhat more rigorous and intense, compared to Yale’s undergraduate CS program, but Yale’s was still very solid. If you want to be immersed in techiness, where most of the other students live and breath science and engineering, then MIT would be the place. MIT’s undergraduate research program (UROP) is pretty cool. If you want to be surrounded by a wide range of non-techies, then of course MIT would not be that place. Although I wouldn’t claim that MIT’s arts are as strong as Yale’s, I do think that they are stronger than most people realize, so it’s worth researching what is available that relates to your son’s interests, rather than assume that they are weak. I think that the CS depts in all of the schools you mentioned will provide plenty of opportunities and challenges in the classroom and in the lab that will provide an excellent preparation for work or graduate school. Personally, I’d make the decision based on which school provides the environment and culture that is a best fit for your son, where he feels he’ll flourish.</p>