<p>Hello Parents, Son has been accepted at SCU and deferred at Georgia Tech for Computer Engineering. We live abroad (US citizens) and visiting these 2 colleges plus some more in the spring break.</p>
<p>Son is keen on SCU for its location, and I have heard good things about it from other parents here who have kids there in other majors)..............hence I decided to post it out here, asking about the reputation of SCU in the Computer Science field mainly since it is in the Valley.</p>
<p>My nephew is an engineering major there and likes it a lot. It has a solid reputation. I think your son might have been applying to Berkeley too? It’s not Berkeley or Stanford in terms of recruitment for development jobs and special groups at Google, but it’s a solid choice for a student who wants an engineering job in Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>^^ My son did not apply to any UC’s. Mainly our HS pushed the students not to apply to any of the UC’s this year due to the budget cuts, so many kids did not, including my son.</p>
<p>Now that he has SCU with merit aid, he is very happy, plus given the fact that he will be in the Valley and be able to utilize its location. </p>
<p>I am not sure if it will offer the same benefits in terms of quality of education/contacts as UCB or Stanford (those were not in his GPA range anyways). </p>
<p>Hoping that SCU has a decent reputation in CE?</p>
<p>SCU has become much more difficult to get into over the past couple of years, so congrats to your son on his admission and merit aid. Its engineering department is well respected in the Valley, and students have good opportunities for internships. The campus is beautiful, the town of Santa Clara isn’t all that exciting but the location on the Peninsula is good as a jumping-off point to the beach, the mountains, and the city of San Francisco.</p>
<p>SCU has everything looks like. We have not visited, will do so in March. Meanwhile I have been trying to read up on it and thought will find someone in CS/CE major on these boards to ask questions, since it is in the valley, its only logical that people would be drawn towards it.</p>
<p>One of the best ways I think for gauging the strength of a particular college in a particular field is to find out what employers think. Do they recruit there? Are the graduates well regarded in the field by their employee peers?</p>
<p>In the case of computer software/computer engineering my impression from the resumes that I’ve seen is that CS is not a major focus of SCU. So, at least in California, Cal Poly is well regarded by employers. Also San Jose State, albeit more so for lower level positions. And of course UCBerkeley and Stanford.</p>
<p>You can check with the SCU college placement office to see which of the Silicon Valley employers regularly recruits there. It should help in making the decision.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your son, pixeljig! I really felt he was going to get in, and get $$ too–nothing like that first acceptance. We went through the same process, and here was my impression. SCU doesn’t seem to have a huge emphasis upon CS or CE, but they say their kids gets alot of internship offers in those fields. They are well situated and connected. Honestly, I don’t think I’d spend much time worrying about it right now. Go on the visits first, and I’ll bet your son has a strong feeling about it one way or another.</p>
<p>You know, my son has been 100% certain that he wanted to major in CS for 7years. No deviation, it was as certain as anything could be for him. Alot of experience, classes, internship, etc. So he ended up at a top CS school, with that being the only criteria that mattered to him. Two months in, he’s already changed his major to Economics/minor CS. What the ??? By a remarkable stroke of luck, this is an extremely good school for economics, and a perfect school for him-for many reasons. My point being, maybe it’s more important for a kid to get into a school that he loves, that is fairly strong for his major–than to get into a top school for his major when he doesn’t like the school. With a CE major, he won’t be struggling to find a job.</p>
<p>^^ At UCLA and UCSD I think the attrition rate for CS majors switching to some other major is somewhere around 35-40%. It’s a tough major that requires a lot of work and in addition some students find that they simply don’t enjoy it as much as they thought they would. It’s a far cry from playing video games or making websites. Because of this I agree that it’s a good idea to attend a college where a reasonable choice of other desirable majors are offered in case one decides to switch.</p>
<p>^^ Thanks, yes it was a relief as the SCU acceptance came in a week after the GT deferral that too with merit aid!! It was like a neat present for son!!</p>
<p>He then has proceeded to apply to all reaches RD, and we will see what happens. Like people say on these boards - love thy safety.</p>
<p>I keep wondering too if DS will change his mind about CS/CE, he is very good at other subjects too, but right now it seems like he is just too much into software. </p>
<p>His current local iPhone app hit number 1 spot in the travel category after an article talked about him in the newspaper here…it was such a delight more so because I know how passionate he is about it. He does it because he loves it and not because he expects rewards. Infact most of his HS friends think he is a 4.0 student because he is in all their AP classes and they are 4.0</p>
<p>That is very cool about the iPhone app. You must be so proud of him, wow! I’d take doing something because of a passion,over merely to get high grades any day. Some kids (particularly boys) seem to be motivated by their interests alot more than grades. Maybe they do have the big picture after all.</p>
<p>Thank you UCSD-UCLA-dad for posting the info. about the high attrition rate of 35-40% from the CS department at UCLA and UCSD. Do you think the students get enough academic support and personal attention from professors or is the competition just too stiff? Why is the drop out rate so high? I hear that most engineering schools generally have a fairly high drop out rate so students interested in CS, Computer Engineering, and the like should choose the school with careful consideration. In the OPs case, I don’t know anything about SCU, but a visit should be able to answer the questions involved. I hear that San Jose State is excellent for CS, Harvey Mudd and USC also have great engineering schools.</p>
<p>I’ll give you one opinion, mdcissp. At the tougher schools, CS classes are really grueling. Most classes revolve around programming, there is alot of memorization. In the end, only the most dedicated continue on. Maybe there is a lower drop out rate at less demanding schools. There are regular classes…and there are CS classes, with long, endless programming projects. You have to really love it to keep doing it, semester after semester. My son had taken some high school programming classes, a summer intensive class at Harvard, an internship at Microsoft, and several summer computer classes. But after a summer semester at his school (CMU), getting up early to go to classes, programming all day until late at night…then starting again in the fall, he decided it was much too miserable and boring, and he just didn’t enjoy it like he thought he would. The CS kids are always working. So I think, if your kid is doing tons of programming, on his own, for the fun of it–he might love it. But if he’s not passionate about it, he probably won’t be able to stand to continue (at least at an intensive school).</p>
<p>mdcissp:
I think the attrition rate is high for the CS and other engineering majors because (my reference is UCLA/UCSD) - </p>
<ul>
<li>The course material is difficult to comprehend for most. That sounds funny but I’m talking about high level math, logic, algorithms, computing concepts, language idiosyncrasies, etc. By difficult to comprehend I mean that it takes effort to get to the point where one can comprehend it as opposed to material in some other majors that’s fairly easy to comprehend.</li>
<li>It requires a lot of work. For a CS major, in addition to the general homework for the CS classes, math, physics, and other classes, one generally has difficult programs due that they must write. The programs could take 15 to 40 hours a week just to do the program. This can include some all-nighters in the lab or chained to the laptop.</li>
<li>Additional challenge for CS majors is that the prof often expects the student to figure out the actual programming languages on their own while they concentrate more on the higher level and deeper concepts. This means that in addition to handling the deep concept one must figure out how to use a new language on their own. Teaching CS isn’t the same thing as teaching a programming language.</li>
<li>While the CS major is putting in all this time and effort into the HW they may see their roommates/fellow students with humanities majors trying to figure out how to spend all their spare time due to a substantially lower HW load. That can bother some people when they’re burdened with a heavy HW load while their friends aren’t.</li>
<li>Curve - CS and other engineering courses have a rep for steep curves. This can cause one’s GPA to be lower than they’re used to and can be used as part of the ‘weeding’ system. The weeder classes up front are both bad and good. On the one hand they can hit one’s GPA or even cause one to get a D/F in a course and have to repeat it or switch majors but on the other hand it’s best to realize what one’s getting into as early as possible so one can switch out if it’s not what was expected.</li>
<li>Games/Money - Some students (usually guys) are attracted to the major because they like to play video games and cruise the internet and thus are around computers a lot and therefore think the CS major is for them. They find out quickly that the work required is not quite the leisure activity of playing a video game. Some are attracted to it because they’ve heard there are high paying jobs available for the grads. While this is generally true, it takes a lot of work to get there so one generally needs to have some interest in what they’re doing to succeed.</li>
<li>The competition (for the curve) is pretty steep in that all of the students in the engineering schools of UCLA/UCSD have very high stats just to be accepted. There’s generally a ‘higher cut’ on stats to be accepted into the school of engineering than the college of letters and sciences. However, according to what I’ve heard it’s not the cutthroat attitude as it can be sometimes for premed majors vying for the 4.0. I’ve heard there’s generally willingness of the students to help each other with problems.</li>
<li>There’s also the normal attrition in any major when the student gets exposed to other subjects and simply changes their mind about what they’re interested in.</li>
</ul>
<p>I’m not familiar with the CS program at SCU but the location is great for nearby internships.</p>
<p>Busdriver, yes am so very proud, all along I kept feeling that my 3.5 kid was truly capable of a 4.0 and deserved to get into the top CS schools, but…he had to decide for himself whether the 1 hour per night extra work was worth it for the 94 instead of a 89!!</p>
<p>Instead he spends numerous hours reading up whats happening in the tech world, who is doing what and how and which tech company is going through what. Plus his own website and programming work takes up time too. It has all come full circle now and am very happy that he is getting the recognition he deserves.</p>
<p>pixeljig, congratulations on your S’s SCU acceptance w/$$. I don’t know that school–so cannot add to the info here–but I am so impressed with your S’s achievement with his iPhone app. I hope he wrote about that effort (all his own, not for a class) in his college applications. If not, or if his #1 status is fairly recent, it would be worth it for him to E-mail or FAX an update to GT and his other RD schools. It’s a quantifiable way to show how successful his is as an entrepreneur, programmer, and marketer (cool that he was written up in the local paper). </p>
<p>I did tell him that these things do matter (he is totally against resume padding and that is why he did not head clubs etc…oh well thats another long story!), and now that all his applications are sitting in the admissions office wouldn’t he at least like them to know how his hard work has come to fruition? </p>
<p>Infact GTech wants an update by Feb 4 and since he has been deferred there, he will send them the links he says. </p>
<p>Today he is home with an eye infection, but with one with just one eye open now he is reading Bill Gates blog entries!!! Can you imagine my state??</p>
<p>I don’t know about the kids at SCU, but here in the valley, your son will find his people. There will be folks at Starbuck talking about Bill Gates blog entries…</p>
<p>I have been retired 10 years, but back when I was working in telecommunications we did recruit and SCU and SJSU, as well as Stanford, UCBerkeley, UCDavis, and CMU, MIT, CalTech, Rice, and other not so local places. Internships were almost always local, and some were part time during the school year.</p>
<p>Congrats to your son! It’s a great school. I can’t telll you anything about the CS program as the kids I know who went there/are going there have been in business or liberal arts.
When you tour, I hope you don’t get a guide like my nephew did… cute upperclassman girl who opened the door to the chapel and announced “…and some freshman girls have been known to reserve the chapel for a June weekend after graduation even before they have met any of the guys on campus - it’s that beautiful for weddings!” I’m sure she thought she was being funny, but that was about the polar opposite of things that interested nephew at that time. He chose another school…</p>
<p>We are visiting in March and hoping to get one of the engineering students to give us a tour. Have emailed them about it already. </p>
<p>Since son is so heavily interested in CE, I am hoping he is able to meet his educational needs at SCU, even though I am pretty sure its going to take a lot of hard work, he has the motivation for that particular major (or so it seems right now). If things do not work out the way he envisions then he can transfer to another major and continue with his passion the way he has now in HS on his own. Plus being in the Valley will be a dream come true for him. So far so good :)</p>