I’ve started looking into possibility of applying to one of the remaining Seven Sisters Colleges that offers Computer Science. Considering the fact CS is a male-dominated profession, a women’s college would be a very supportive (and atypical) environment in that respect.
I’m actually currently an honors community college student. It’s a well-respected honors program by top schools. Don’t worry about stats for now. I think I’m competitive for the most part (3.8 GPA, lots of good extracurricular activities, etc.). I have more in depth of my stats in my older threads if you would really like to see.
What I’d like to know is which of these schools offer a good computer science department? I’m under the impression that Wellesley and Smith seem to?? Bryn Mawr I’ve been told does not? What about Mount Holyoke? Please exclude Barnard, I’m already applying there.
Thanks! Just looked at it, it’s helpful for getting the gist of it. Would like more input though, I don’t think it gives the bigger picture Also did not see anything for Wellesley.
Absolutely, subjective, broader factors are important as well. You can supplement your topic here by opening topics in the individual college forums as needed. They tend to be quieter and sometimes disproportionately biased, however.
I’ve been hunting for strong CS programs in LAC colleges and I generally do three things: go the college’s CS website and see how many faculty they have. Many a LAC only has around 3. If you see 4 or more, you’re looking at a larger than average department, which translates into a wider array of upper level classes and probably smaller intro sections as well. I also like to look at the department of Ed’s College Navigator site: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. Type in the name of the college you’re investigating, go the Programs/Majors link and see how many computer science majors they had last year. Anything over 10 is larger than average for a LAC. Finally, @ucbalumnus’s table is great, and you can verify things (and find, perhaps, some other interesting upper level electives not included in that table) by looking up the school’s course catalog yourself.
Wellesley, for example, looks like they have 8 profs, a couple of lecturers (adjunct faculty), and a number of folks they call “Instructors in Computer Science Laboratory”. The navigator site says they had 19 CS majors last year. That’s terrific! – among the strongest LAC departments I’ve seen, actually. My D, an Olin student, is taking a very cool upper level Wellesley CS elective this term called Natural Language Processing that sounds like an awesome course. And it was full. So, big thumbs up to the program at that school. You can do the same process for the others.
Wellesley seems to just have a bunch of ??? for that post.
@rayrick Wow, that’s very helpful! Thank you. That means Wellesley is a definite yes to my question.
Mount Holyoke seems to have three associate professors, two assistant professors, and two that are Emeritus. I looked that up and it seems that those are retired professors? What function do they provide?
Assistant professors, associate professors and (full) professors can all be regarded as “professors.” With respect to expertise and stability, though, a solid department may benefit from having several full professors. Four total from a combination of any of these classifications does seem like a good minimum. Professor emeriti may perform no active function. Consider, as well, the enrollment of the colleges when making comparisons. Larger colleges need more faculty of all types.
Wellesley’s question marks indicate that courses in those topics are offered but with a frequency that could not readily be determined. Consulting the code at the bottom will help.
For Smith, click on the name of the faculty member for titles and other information. Some of their faculty appear to have responsibilities in both the CS and engineering departments, so proportion that accordingly.
The Liberal Arts Computer Science consortium contains some general information on their website related to your questions. They state, interestingly, that even three professors can form the basis of a solid department.
Looks to me like M.H, Smith and Wellesley are all solid departments. The smallest of those, Mount Holyoke’s, is still totally legit with 5 regular faculty members and a couple of adjuncts. That’s well above average for a LAC, though CS departments across the land are on an upward trend, with the big recent spike in demand. Just based on the limited sample of kids that post in this forum, you can see how much interest in CS has exploded of late. Looks like you’re going to have a number of good options among the seven sisters.
@ClassicRockerDad Lol, looks like it is–although it’s got the highest selectivity. Thank goodness it’s free to apply (minus transcript, SAT/ACT scores)!
@rayrick That’s great. That makes sense since Mount Holyoke is the smaller college. While looking at the two, did you get the feeling that one of them was a stronger program at all? You seem to be very knowledgable in general about these things.
The two meaning Smith and Wellesley? I only know what I can dig up on the web. Looks like the size of the departments is comparable (and substantial!), from a number of faculty standpoint. The navigator site shows way more majors at Wellesley, but that site has given me some messed-up data before, and I wonder whether there’s a bunch of computer engineering majors at Smith or something that are not getting counted. If you’re serious about comparing those two, I’d hunt down their individual course catalogs and look for things like how many sections of the intro classes there are and whether you think the upper level course selection looks good (they seem pretty comparable in ucbalumnus’s table). Sounds like access to MIT career fairs is a plus for Wellesley, but Smith has a ton of other colleges nearby (many of which have cross-registration agreements with Smith) and there may be some advantages associated with that. Wellesley students can take classes at Olin, which is pretty great, but Smith has its own engineering department, which is also pretty great.
You can try posting on the individual school’s boards here on CC as well and see if you can gather more info that way. My take is that you probably already know enough to determine that they’re both legit candidates, and it would be tough to go further without visiting. Can you do that? That would also help you determine other aspects of each school that might help you decide which is the better fit. Alternatively, you could just apply to both and see where you get in and potentially save yourself some unnecessary travel – though many LACs do pay attention to whether or not you visit (particularly if you’re close enough that it’s not a huge hardship) to gauge how serious you are about their school.
Bottom line is I don’t have any true insider knowledge, I’m just using the same tactics I’ve employed to identify good candidate schools for my son. Good luck!
? indicates that the course is listed in the catalog, but it is difficult to tell on the web site how frequently it is offered. You may have to dig around some more or ask the department directly for more detail.
Just so you know, Mount Holyoke’s CS department is funded by Google, and a lot of students have gotten internships at Google over the summer. The school is relatively easy to get into if you are competitive enough for Smith or Vassar.
@rayrick Haha, I actually mean Smith or Mount Holyoke!
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time/means to visit those colleges in time. So applying and then (hopefully) getting in, is the plan for me. Thank you! I will try to take your advice. You’ve been extremely helpful and I appreciate it!
Mt. Holyoke should also have access to the five college consortium for comp sci, but I agree Wellesly is also a solid choice. It’s not the end of the world to do visits afterwards. That’s what my older son (a comp sci guy) did. He just hates traveling and after a few visits early on said he’d prefer to just wait to see where he got in. (None of the places he’d previously visited, wouldn’t you know, but he had very nice choices nonetheless.)
Also did not see anything for Wellesley.
That’s very helpful.