???
I thought a typical co-op was summer + semester length. Or do you mean that Purdue students sometimes do more than one co-op at the same employer? (But 5 co-ops before graduating?)
Purdue offers a 3 term co-op and a 5 term, both are with the same company. Basically a student will start alternating work and school sometime in sophomore year. (See chart posted by raj_125).
To complicate it a bit more, there is a two term option but itās not technically a co-op, but still falls under the co-op office. And, some companies/students will add a 4th term with their co-op companies.
Students that opt to do a 3 term co-op will have some summers free to intern with other companies.
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Take it from a programmer. I do this for a living. You DONāT need a prestigious school to make a great living in computers. I went to a regional state university. Iāve interviewed at Google and Amazon, as well as several fortune 500 companies. Iāve worked for several fortune 500 companies, and theyāre mostly overrated in my opinion. After about 3 years experience, employers could care less where you went to school. You might start a bit higher from Purdue, but in 3 years everyone else catches you. Your credentials will be 99.9% hands on experience.
$100,000 in debt is financial suicide, especially when you have a school like UVA right in front of you. I promise, youāre not missing anything.
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Will also add that there is a shortage of Students for Coops, and surplus of positions at Purdue. Companies will tend to pay you more for a Coop than an internship, and the work experience tends to be better than an internship for a variety of reasons. CS Coop students are sought after by employers, and often arrange for living quarters to be made available for little or no cost during the work term. If you havenāt dug into the Coop as a way to make money and lessen your overall debt load then you are doing yourself a disservice. The other benefit is that you come out of school with some solid work experience, and usually have multiple job offers (assuming that you performed well).
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To be clear to the OP, this may be the Purdue way (and it sounds like a great program) but itās not the only way. There are also one-time co-op positions.
I know a pretty savvy engineer who had internships with some leading companies and I asked how he managed to land them. He said āI had a co-op first. Internships can be tough to get but employers love people whoāve already done a co-op because they know theyāve learned some industry skills. And co-ops are easy to get; they are a semester long and few people want to take the time off to do themā.
Fwiw, Purdue CS average comp for May 2020 grads was reported to be $92k.
https://www.cs.purdue.edu/corporate/placement/index.html
Co-ops are very popular/successful in Engineering, but not really for CS. Asked at Admitted Student Day this weekend, CS reps downplayed and almost discounted them. āFour-and-out-the-doorā, and the widespread availability of single summer internships, was heavily emphasized.
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Are you planning to live at home after your bachelors degree? If you borrow $100,000, itās likely your total payback will be higher because of interestā¦and cost increases at college.
If you earn $70,000 a year, you wonāt be bringing home $70,000 a year. There will be state and federal income taxes, FICA, health insurance contributionā¦and hopefully something towards your retirement. You are planning to pay about $3000 a month of your earnings to pay back loans. That will leave precious little for housing, utilities, food, recreation and entertainment, transportation, gas money, insurance.
Purdue is out of conversation. CC over purdue.
What are chances for gtech waitlist?
Family(extended family) is much more inclined to full pay a better ranked.
Sucks that family focuses on ranking list, but Iām currently in no position to persuade.
How are you not in a position to.pursuade? Youāre the one thatās going to be attending the school and doing the work. You have a say. I think your CC to UVA plan sounds reasonable. āRankā isnāt going to make much difference at all in the end.
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The difference between GT and Purdue is negligible. If you are a GA resident then I totally get it, as there will be a big break in tuition, but otherwise it will be more expensive than Purdue.
What would you have to do in community college to get into UVA? How āguaranteedā is this?
UVA is very good for computer science. Purdue is also very good but not worth twice the debt. Virginia Tech is another possibility if you go to CC and intend to transfer.
A total college debt which is greater than your starting salary is a LOT of debt. I do not think that you can count on making $100,000 per year straight out of university. Also, debt can be a problem if āsomething goes wrongā, and it is not all that unusual for something to go wrong somewhere along the way.
I have skimmed but have not read the whole thread in detail, so I apologize in advance if I missed something.
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If the choice is Purdue with $100k loans vs community college then I agree with several posters that you should do community college and then transfer to UVA.
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However I am a bit confused with several of OP comments.
i) From earlier posts it seemed like OP doesnāt want their parents to pay for the school even though they might be able to support at least part of education expenses. If that is the case, I would suggest OP to have a candid discussion with their parents about how much they are willing to pay before going down the community college path.
ii) From later posts, it seems like the family is willing to pay for a higher ranking college but not for Purdue (am I right?). If thatās the case I strongly urge OP to see if they can reason with the family and convince them that 4-years at Purdue (btw ranked #20 in computer science, #14 in programming languages) is a far superior option than community college plus UVA. Not that it matters but UVA CS is ranked #31 or so.
As someone must have already mentioned above, 4-year college is not just about social life. The quality and rigor of classes at Purdue is going to be significantly different than those at CC. You will also have access to more resources (internships, academic, etc.) at Purdue. Moreover you will be surrounded by very smart and highly motivated students pushing you to mature and grow in a way that may not be possible at a community college. Finally, I believe, having two years of CC on your resume and transcript will also limit your chances of securing interviews at many companies.
Edit: As you can see from the discussion below, My last point about limited interview chances only applies to highly selective employers that may be a reach regardless, and not broadly to computing jobs.
Unlikely to be the case for most computing jobs after graduation from any reasonable four year school in CS.
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I disagree. I did not say that they will not secure interviews and jobs with two years of CC + two years of UVA. But such a resume will, unfortunately, be filtered out at many companies, including mine.
What industry and kind of company can afford to be that elitist with hiring technical people in computing?
Based on what I have seen, where people get hired despite having BA/BS degrees in non-CS majors, or no BA/BS degrees at all, when they have demonstrated needed skills acquired through self-education, screening out someone with a BA/BS in CS merely because they started at a community college and transferred would not even be a consideration.
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Iāve worked at some picky places, and thatās news to me as well.
You mean to tell me someone with a degree from UVa, Cal, UCLA, Michigan or UNC is going to get the brush-off because they transferred from a CC? Does McKinsey even do that? I went to law school with a guy who transferred to Yale from Rockland CC. Him too?
Sounds pretty insufferable to me. Iām glad I donāt work there.
I know someone who started at a community college, transferred to a university for a BS in CS, and later did a PhD in CS. Both the BS and PhD were at universities commonly seen as ātop 5ā in CS. Seems odd that any employer would refuse to consider based on starting at a community college.
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I would guess, but certainly do not know, that a very health % of the people in CCs are there not because they couldnāt hack it academically at a 4-year, but instead for economic affordability issues.
In fact, I know several people who could have easily gone to the University of Washington or Washington State who chose to do 2 years at CC, stay at home, save money. They all transferred successfully to where they wanted to go.
This idea that everyone at junior college is some kind of intellectual cripple is very inaccurate as far as my experience goes.
I often say in conversation about who is and who isnāt smart that āthere are people at Seattle Central Community College who can run intellectual circles around all of us,ā and I actually assume that to be the case.
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