urbanslaughter, not sure if you’re referring to me, but I’m not worried about weather. i’m originally from North Dakota. We do have a bias for Midwest and West for proximity to family though. That said, are your referring to Rochester Institute Technology or another Rochester. Rochester is on a separate list as choice given they automatically award 18k a year or more for National Merit Semifinalist with larger awards for Finalist I’m told. So…I’m in agreement on both schools. RPI is intriguing…think I have a bias against them because they were a hockey rival in the 80s:)
@RedbirdDad. There are two Rochesters, RIT and University of Rochester. RIT is larger and more “tech”, U of Rochester is a more general university. Both are good schools to look at.
Also, you might want to take a look at WPI. Smaller engineering school in MA.
The University of Rochester should not be conflated with other Rochester area schools through anything other than the sound of its name. Though too broad in its offerings to be considered a “technical school,” this is precisely its strength. UR is strong in fields ranging from chemistry to music to optics to English. Beyond the substance of its excellent academic programs, URochester is one of the less than 70 “most selective” (USNWR) colleges in the U.S., and should be known, if not respected, for this reason alone.
I was referring to URochester which is a school with higher caliber students than Rochester Institute of Technology.
If you are interested in smaller schools I have two recommendations Rose Hulman and Franklin W. Olin. Both are quite small and offer great merit aid / financial aid. D is a freshman at Notre Dame and was accepted /visited GW and W&M last spring. My wife is a software engineer. For computer science companies care very little about where someone went to college and they care a lot about whether someone can engage with colleagues and write code. Notre Dame is big, or at least medium sized but the dorm system makes it feel smaller. Your son’s test scores are stronger than his GPA - was his school highly competitive? GW’s honors college was very interesting. W&M does not feel like a techie or computer science campus to me
D1 attends the University of Richmond and is a double major - Biochemistry and CS. UR is small, 3,000ish undergrads. She has had no problem fulfilling requirements for both majors, but she chose this path the second half of freshman year and planned out very carefully how to meet the requirements for the 2 majors and still graduate in 4 years. As outlined by another poster, CS classes at smaller schools may be offered on a rotating basis and planning schedules well ahead of time is needed. Some very positive benefits of CS at a smaller school: small class sizes, close, positive interaction with professors, excellent advising, research opportunities(paid summer internships).
Your child’s stats may also translate into big merit at a smaller school. D1 is attending UR on a full-ride merit scholarship.
Re: Rose Hulman. I would say they give modest merit aid, not great aid. It is difficult to drive the price below $40K there. However, it is a great school and you will have a terrific return on your educational investment if you do well there.
Here is a list of CS offerings at many smaller schools that are frequently mentioned on these forums (larger version of the table posted previously). I made it its own thread for easy reference.
Wje9164be, Olin would actually be my top choice for him. By far. That said, we are told a significant amount of last year’s acceptances deferred. This year will be significantly smaller acceptance class supposedly and odds of getting in have gotten even tighter. As for Grades vs tests, he had difficult three years with sickness. Missed 40 days of school in three years and was sick even longer. Allergies in Missouri are a bugger and it took until this summer to get them under control with shot desensitization protocol. He also got H1N1 or whatever Flu that was brutal…all while taking every IB/AP class available at a top rated US News high school. Lastly, he is kinesthetic learner which isn’t the way classes are taught and another reason why I loved Olin. He would be a magician at Olin. His backup to that is Iovine Young School at USC…but they are uber small. Hence the all out effort to find something else
Gotta hand it to you College Confidential posters, you do share great things! Thanks for the help and for the direct emails. Really fabulous!
Having worked for a major IT firm for many years, I will second anyone who says it simply doesn’t matter where you went to school when it comes to CS. Most of the people I worked with went to state schools, many aren’t even flagships. The only thing in tech that matters is your coding skills(what language you are proficient in), the ability to pass those grueling 6 hour interviews that include many brain teasers and tough coding questions, and internship experience.
Most firms from large to small also hire the most locally. The top feeder schools to Amazon and Microsoft HQ are UW, Wa State U and Western Wa U, all local. UW and WSU are very large, but WWU is quite a bit smaller. However the Microsoft offices in Dallas are mostly staffed with UT - Austin or UT - Dallas and other local grads. The top feeder school to Apple is San Jose State(SJSU). In addition, firms like Accenture and other management consulting firms also hire CS grads for their regional offices - mostly from schools in the area. Many top Wall Street firms hire CS grads from Baruch, Rutgers, SUNYs etc.
Your son would be better off deciding where he wants to live/work after college, then go to a school near there. While large tech firms recruit from major college campuses (all flagships and schools like CMU, MIT, CalTech, top 10), many of the smaller tech firms and startups tend to hire locally. If he is interested in working in Silicon Valley, I would seriously consider San Jose State and Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo. Both are big feeder schools to tech firms in SV.
The school does need to have a decent CS department. Good CS departments are fairly common at various levels of college selectivity, although CS departments that are too small and hence have CS offerings that are too limited do exist, sometimes at schools which are otherwise highly regarded and highly selective.
Also, it is still important to choose a school you will want to attend–wanting CS does not make that less important. and a lousy department is lousy-so yes quality still matters.
CS department is not as important as you think. In IT I worked with people with all kinds of majors, from music to Spanish to whatever else you can think of. Many people didn’t even minor in CS. There are many 3 to 6 month coding schools now that train people with all kinds of background to work in IT. There are many types of jobs in IT, software development are the only type of jobs that require extensive coding skills. A lot of testers, tech support, project managers, tech editors, localization, marketing people come from all kinds of background, not to mention other support functions like HR, finance, legal, operations etc. Many who work for IT firms don’t know a thing about computers. All are well paid jobs.
IT is not the same as CS. IT, meaning management of computers and software, tends to be mostly a business function; a CS major could easily handle (and may be seen as overqualified for) the technical aspects of IT, though perhaps not necessarily the more business aspects.
Those who want to work in design and development of computers and software need a CS background. It is true that many people self-educate CS (many of them do have college degrees in other subjects, often physics, engineering, math/statistics, humanities, or social studies, though biology and business/IT majors seem to be underrepresented here). However, a student who is going to college to learn with the support of instructors may as well choose a school with a good CS department, because being able to learn CS with the support of instructors is more likely to give the student a solid base for future self-education. It takes much more motivation to self-educate from nothing than to continually self-educate from a solid base (as needed in one’s career), and not all students have enough motivation to self-educate from nothing.
The 3-6 month coding schools are very high intensity and accelerated.
Well, it’s big but I’d put GA Tech on your list…you’re likely at some point to fly through atlanta and it’s an easy side-trip (that’s how my daughter ended up there). And two of their current students were the lead researchers on yesterday’s NASA/Mars announcement. https://twitter.com/GeorgiaTech/status/648526885174005760
Comment on 2 of the schools - UT Austin - 75% of all admissions have to be Texas residents. That leaves only 25% for out of state and international. CS is one of the more popular majors and is difficult to get into and the Turing honors only accepts 10% of the admitted students or around 40 a year. I would consider that a reach.
University of Pittsburgh is where my older D is going with a CE/CS degree. She had a well paying local internship last year and is on a short list for Google this year. Last summer she did a nonpaid Google program that was very helpful for programming and interviewing skills. On her team, she had students from Brandeis, Smith and Georgia Tech. She knows many kids on coops. Pitt has been a good school for her and it appears its students/graduates do fine.
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. Kids from SDSM&T have worked internships recently at Intel and NASA. The university has a solid reputation among employers. Small school with lots of motivated students and great school spirit. A significant number of students are not from South Dakota. Excellent education for a bargain price.
When I said IT, I meant the tech industry, or the corporate department that handles all the IT functions.
As the parent of an RIT grad, gotta defend the caliber of the RIT CS students. Son and his friends have had great results in the job market, with many of his buddies at large companies in the Pacific NW. Education is more of a practical, hands-on one, while my CS major daughter at Pomona I would classify as a bit more theoretical education.