<p>He’ll take 1.5 credit business courses each semester and 3 on-line business courses the summer between his junior and senior years. The fifth year would be MBA courses. With his 40 incoming credits, he may be able to complete his MBA in 4 years. If he gets a 700+ on his GMAT, the MBA is free.</p>
<p>If he proceeds with the program, he would pursue a technical MBA (business analytics, enterprise consulting or finance).</p>
<p>Alabama is also working on a dual enrollment program where he can get a MS in CS and a MBA, but it’s not finalized yet. If not, he can still get his MS in CS free through the university scholars program.</p>
<p>He’s also in the Computer-Based Honors program, which is pretty cool. He didn’t make the first cut (admission to the program is highly competitive), but he was pulled off the waitlist.</p>
<p>He would also like to double major in math. So, as you can see, he has lots of options.</p>
<p>Given this additional detail, what do you think? He will have a significant amount of work experience. He interned at a software company the last two summers and worked there during the past school year. They really like him, so he should have no trouble continuing to work there through college. Does that change the equation as far as getting his MBA along with the fact the MBA will be in a technical area?</p>
<p>The strength of Alabama’s CS program is software engineering, and that’s his area of interest, so there’s a fit in that regard. There’s also some interesting robotics work if he wants to do AI.</p>
<p>This looks similar to the process I went through - I also had to apply during junior year and took my first set of classes during senior year. The only difference is that I dropped out of my 5 year program after the first year when I completed my CS degree instead of continuing on my second year of the program for the MBA. I later wanted to do a career switch and got my MBA at Michigan.</p>
<p>Knowing the specifics, I don’t think I see anything about the program that would make me want to push going through with the program. Assuming your son continues to do well in school it’ll be his CS degree that is opening all the career opportunities after undergrad and not the MBA.</p>
<p>The only exception is if he wants to work as a developer at an investment bank after graduation (or wants a non-technical career after graduation) since they usually want some financial background but there’s no need to go full on for an MBA - he can get hired with just a minor…or even reading a few books on finance before an interview.</p>
<p>My recommendation would be for him to do well in his CS degree (the honors college sounds great) + a business minor if desired, work for 3-4 years and then decides if he wants to go back for an MBA. If he can get 700+ on the GMATs he’ll have a realistic shot at a Top 20 school which will help in landing a job on the business side of technology if that’s his interest later on.</p>
<p>If he decides he wants to be a quant, maybe that may change the equation.</p>
<p>At the very least, the STEM MBA program will get him to think about things in new ways and the program will enable him to meet authors and business leaders.</p>
<p>He is reading a business book this summer and is in a discussion group and I can already see the value. He’ll get a chance to meet the author of the book in the fall and I know the program is already setting up lunch meetings with business leaders.</p>
<p>Any thoughts on the double major in applied math, or getting a MS in CS at UA?</p>
<p>He’s also investigating this program where he can work one on one with a professor and move at this own pace. He’s learned programming on his own (VB, Java, C#, JavaScript, HTML) so he should be fine working independently.</p>
<p>By the way, I’m not here to bash Michigan - it’s a great school - but UA had a lot to offer too, especially if you can get into the special programs.</p>
<p>I’m more familiar with the MS in CS side - but basically for both degrees you’re signaling that you’re more interested in the research side of computer science (i.e. creating new algos for OCR, data analysis, etc) than the ‘building applications’ side of CS. </p>
<p>They’re very different career paths and while the research side is more specialized and requires more schooling, there’s more money in the building side if you’re good at what you do. So ultimately I think the answer depends on what kind of software development work your son wants to do after he graduates.</p>
<p>The one thing I would advise against is overloading on courses throughout the college career to do a double major for the sake of doing so - CS jobs place a premium on experience so it’ll be much more worthwhile for him to do CS internships / work on a startup than that extra minor/degree if it’s not related to his passion.</p>
<p>If it’s so hard to graduate from UC in four years, then why so many UCs have higher four-year graduation rates than Alabama? Three of the UCs have around 70% four year graduation rates: Berkeley (71%) UCSB (69%) and UCLA (68%) with UCI (65%) not far behind them; even UCD (53%) and UCSD (56%) have higher four-year graduation rates than Alabama (38%). California does have excellent in-state options and scholarships for middle-class families making between 100-150k annually were passed to cover anywhere from as high as 40 to as low as 10 percent of tuition. (i’m assuming the discounts are follow the aforementioned incomes respectively.)</p>
<p>What people don’t understand is that even an adequately funded Alabama probably still has significantly less resources than an underfunded UC. Alabama is a mediocre public university, which is why it doesn’t even crack the top 75 on US News. And that’s fine, because most public universities are mediocre. But how about we don’t spread lies and misinformation to make Alabama seem like a better university than it actually is. I think it’s a pretty safe bet than none of these Alabama partisans would have even considered the university if it didn’t drown them in scholarship money.</p>
<p>As far as Alabama’s long-term tuition strategy is concerned, i think that it’s an investment with the hopes of attracting a lot of OOS students to eventually bring in OOS tuition. Unfortunately for Alabama, if that’s the case, OOS tuition is very competitive, and in most cases, a university in the deep south wouldn’t even be on most people’s radar if it didn’t offer a huge tuition discount.</p>
<p>In regards to the OP, Alabama is a perfectly fine university to attend for four years. If your child desires to attend their for finances, or for fit, it will be able to take them wherever they’d like provided that they work hard enough.</p>
<p>UA is ranked 77 vs 29 for U of M by US News & World Report.</p>
<p>The OOS scholarships attracted us first, but we were drawn in by the special programs, the campus, and the student centric culture.</p>
<p>UA is 1/3 the cost of U of M even if we lived in MI.</p>
<p>I’ve spoken with MIS and honors students at Alabama and I was very impressed with their communication/presentation skills. As I said, my son had been impressed by the caliber of the students he’s met too.</p>
<p>My son has three roomates in the suite in his honors dorm (the suite has individual bedrooms, a living area, a kitchen, and two bathrooms). They are all engineering majors and come from PA, IL, and NC. From what I can tell, they are all honors/high performing students.</p>
<p>Michigan has more high performing students than Alabama, but the top students at Alabama are as good as students at any of the elite schools, imo.</p>
<p>rjk, i often see you post these rankings and stuff, but do you actually have any personal experience with any of these programs (e.g. Ross, CoE, etc.)? it’s pretty obvious from what you say that you don’t really know what you’re talking about a lot of the time.</p>
<p>rjk, so what exactly is being ranked? The grad program, the undergrad program, both? UA has a much smaller CS dept tham at U of M, so certainly he would have more interaction with faculty at UA.</p>
<p>For my son’s undergrad research project I’ve already started scouting out who the most appropriate professors would be for him to work for.</p>
<p>USNWR has separate rankings for graduate and undergraduate engineering schools. They have two different rankings for undergraduate engineering schools. One undergraduate ranking is for schools like Michigan and Alabama that offer doctorates as a final degree and the other one is for schools like Rose Hulman and the like that do not.</p>
<p>“UA has a much smaller CS dept tham at U of M, so certainly he would have more interaction with faculty at UA.”</p>
<p>How can you be so sure of that statement? Also, if it were true, would you honestly expect the faculty at Alabama to be of the same caliber as a school like Michigan?</p>
<p>rjk, my point is that you shouldn’t state things with such certainty that you don’t actually know about. people reading this forum (like riprorin) don’t necessarily know who’s educated on these subjects and who’s not. there are things in this thread that you’ve stated that are blatantly wrong. again, do you actually have any personal experience with any of these programs you’re talking about, or do you just get all your information secondhand (internet, friends at UM, etc.)?</p>
<p>i’m not going to go back and quote them directly, but you stated something about admissions into grad schools (specifically for history, i think), and how it is important to come from a university that has a strong grad program. if you actually knew anything about grad admissions, you would know this is simply false. you also seemed to think that wisconsin and minnesota had highly respected MBA programs, which is again not true.</p>
<p>Not to stir the pot or anything, but I am kinda shocked at a 38% four-year graduation rate. This would cause me grave concern, actually.</p>
<p>Now, I suppose, if tuition were FREE for the first four years, perhaps there is little incentive to graduate on time…but what the heck is going on with the other 62% of the population?</p>
<p>Those statements are true for professional schools (MBA & Law…not sure about Med) </p>
<p>Both Minnesota and Wisconsin are just outside of the range of the Top 20 - which basically means respected regional schools. Is that “highly respected”? I guess that depends on who you’re asking and how you’re parsing those words.</p>