I am saying that your use of a specific class being described as WL pre the start of classes and shopping period, and using it to extrapolate a broad lack of class accessibility is uniformed, deeply flawed and inconsistent with the experiences of the vast majority of Brown students.
While students aren’t “guaranteed” access to classes the vast majority are able to attend given the schools willingness to expand sessions and or the professors willingness and desire to accommodate. When that proves impossible the students are given priority for the next semester and the number of sessions is typically grown to accommodate demand.
While I hate relying on anecdotes I know dozens of Brown students and have never heard one state they weren’t able to access a class within a reasonable timeframe.
In terms of Cornell, I avoid commenting when I am not qualified or informed to do so. What school did your son attend perhaps that is the one upon which you can shed light based on first hand experience?
I think you misinterpreted what I posted. I never “extrapolated” or implied that the existence of a waitlist is an indication of “a broad lack of class accessibility”. My focus was on some popular CS courses.
His school is one of the few that doesn’t have this issue. It’s one of the reasons he chose that school. He’s in his fourth and final year and never had any issue with any class.
My fault if you weren’t extrapolating more broadly beyond popular courses. Your basis (WL during shopping period) and conclusion were none the less incorrect.
Brown is remarkably flexible and accommodating in providing access and flexibility for popular classes and professors.
Great to hear and glad he had a similar experience to my kid. I understand your reluctance to share the specific school but wouldn’t it serve to enlighten the community. (Certainly more productive then me popping off uninformed about Cornell in response to your campus tour 4+ years ago). Given you describe access to classes as a top priority in his decision to attend and his satisfaction sharing that name could be really useful based on your first hand experience.
I highly value privacy and anonymity, so I generally prefer not to reveal more than I need to. I’m sure you understand. Beyond the school he’s attending now, we did do fair amount of due diligence on schools visited (we visited about 30 schools back then).
It seams like my sons approach after graduating was similar to mine - He searched for the most challenging opportunities in his field of expertise regardless of location or application (finance, medical, ……). I assume many graduates are similarly driven?
I am told that any reasonably well endowed private college, if there is a wait list, the university usually just creates another class. Rarely an issue.
Hmmm interesting. My D had a few offers within her major, but different paths…which made the decision hard.
During her junior year she accepted a job offer in Dallas…where they took the group on a tour of the city and she had a great time. She was very excited…until she realized she needed a car and took a look at the roads (she wasn’t comfortable driving on them due to her limited experience). She switched back to an offer in her home city, where she felt comfortable using public transportation.
And after an intense HS and college experience, she craved balance in a career. That drove the process.
I don’t believe that’s true for CS classes. The problem isn’t just financial. Finding and retaining CS professors is probably the #1 issue. Another significant issue is the availability of enough classrooms of sufficient size to accommodate.
They have the same prof create another section at a different time in the week. It has been done. I don’t know how prevalent it is. My son in a CS undergrad doesn’t worry about these things. And we looked at other private schools for a kid that is applying this year, and my older son told me this will not be an issue there either. You won’t get your choice of sections. You may need to take an 8am class. Not the best. But tolerable. The lady that runs the MIT EECS department told me 3 years ago that she has 500 person classes to organize, and that she assembles a team of 75 people – instructors, TAs, Preceptors, Graders etc to handle the class :-). My son is not at MIT. I am just giving this as an example of how stuff is done.
CS professors are in high demand and the driving seats. They also tend to have other appointments and activities (including research) besides teaching. They’re often among the busiest people on campus. I’m not sure about the college your son attends, but I’d think it isn’t prevalent at all.
I know this happens also at Tufts, for example. I talked to people. Guessing about these things is not useful. You need to talk to people on the ground. Several people, just to be sure. And after you get in, you visit, and you talk some more. And then you gain comfort. You can’t depend on my or your opinion on the internet :-). No offense.
But aren’t those - Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Boston (IDK about NYC) also hotbeds of CS activity and very desirable (and thus competitive) markets? I’m struggling to draw any conclusion about Brown CS grads aggregating themselves in those three places other than Brown must produce very good CS grads and those hiring them likely have had good experience with them.
Yes, the people who worked at Wall Street white shoe firms from my graduating law school class contributed greatly to the mean starting salary of graduates from my law school. But I don’t think about that as skewing the data in a misleading way. It’s hard to get a job at Cravath, Simpson Thacher or Skadden Arps. If my law school places people there, it means my law school is well respected. If it were me focused on CS, I would absolutely want to know from where the kids who place well in Seattle, Boston and, especially, Silicon Valley, come.
While ostensibly intended to offer context for @Catcherinthetoast 's ranking in the sense of “don’t read too much into it,” this particular data point (no pun intended) seems to bolster Brown’s standing as a good place for CS. Am I missing something?
Moreover, you picked GT, but what about the other schools on that list? Where to the Berkeley and Harvard people go? The inexpensive outposts? I would be surprised if that were the case.
I agree with that. That’s what we did and we visited all the top CS schools (with the exception of Berkeley) along with many others. I also know first hand some of the activities some of these CS professors do.
Maybe. My general sense, and by no means any kind of deep dive into the issue, is that the kids in the current generation are not as quick as we were to do the hard thing in a place that doesn’t make us happy. I actually admire this about the current group. They place value on life experience and being happy and content. A lot of kids (of course not all) value place and of those kids, many prefer the coasts and many prefer cities. But, sure, if the very best professional opportunity is not in one of those places then I’m guessing many will take the spot in a less than desirable place. Two of my recent graduates had really great opportunities in Texas … one in Dallas and one in Austin. They both visited and said “no thanks.” They’re west coast kids. I thought Austin stood a chance, but she thought it was too hot and didn’t see the charm of the place. What are you gonna do?
I don’t buy the 100k in Atlanta == 200k in San Fran argument. Most of the difference is the rent. 1bd apt in Atlanta is, say, $1300. I bedroom apt in San Fran is, say, $3700. The ~2500 difference is worth 30k a year. Perhaps 50k a year in pre-tax terms. Not a 100k.
The point was having nearly 100% of grads working in a high cost of living areas contributes to the higher average salary. You need to consider cost of living when comparing salary, rather than assuming a salary of $100k in Silicon Valley is equivalent to a salary of $100k in Atlanta or other not extremely high cost of living area.
I emphasized the highest and lowest salary colleges on the list, to maximize the difference and make an extreme point – highest salary = Brown, lowest salary = GeorgiaTech. Berkeley and Harvard CS grads both also tend to work in higher cost of living areas, which needs to be considered when comparing salary to a college where a larger portion of CS grads do not work in high cost of living areas.
The point is many factors contribute to differences in average salary besides just college name. I don’t doubt that Brown is fine place for CS, as is Berkeley, Harvard, and even GeorgiaTech. However, this does not mean if a particular kid is deciding between colleges, he’s likely to get the highest ROI if he choose Brown over the listed other colleges. It’s far more complicated than that.
In San Fran, one may be more inclined to get roommates and use a smaller place than in Atlanta. Maybe the hiring company has a set up. San Fran is just a wee bit cooler than ATL but many can work remote these days and GT has about 70% (?) of its students from Georgia with great reduced cost.
Cost of living calculators define the weight they give to different criteria. The actual difference in cost of living will vary on the particular student, depending on things like whether they choose to live in an extremely basic one bedroom with a long commute or a nice 2-bedroom with a shorter commute.
For the specific comparison between Atlanta and SF, the cost of living difference is primarily dependent on housing. Equivalent housing is multiple times more expensive in SF than Atlanta. Transportation, food, medicine cost and taxes are also higher, but these are far less influential than the housing cost difference.
Lol, we had that conversation with my S. He could easily (for now) be working from our home in Phoenix (or an apartment in Phoenix if he wanted) and be saving quite a bit of cash. His response is that living in SV is a lifestyle. A high cost lifestyle but fairly unique. He gave this example- strike up a conversation with a random person in a Phoenix Starbucks about machine learning and you’ll most likely get a blank stare. Ask a random person the same question in SV and you can have a great discussion and perhaps a startup opportunity
I didn’t make up the numbers. I just looked up where 1bd apartments are going in each of the places. The compensation differences are not all cost of living differences. Some of it is the fact that the Googles and the Amazon’s of the world are collecting monopoly premium that they are partially passing on to their employees. Mostly on the west coast. Some of the differences with the startups is that they are being hyper creative, getting paid for that, and passing on some of that to their employees. In the Atlanta tech scene both these cohorts are under represented.
