<p>How is UCF's CS program?</p>
<p>Does a CS degree from UCF look good outside of the state?</p>
<p>The program is not “renowned” and ranked high, so it may not be as well known nationally, but I do know that the CS program at UCF was one of the first in the nation. It is an excellent program, and you will learn a lot. As far as looking good out of state, I can’t say it will be incredibly well-known.</p>
<p>What about recruiting?</p>
<p>Do UCF CS grads find employment?</p>
<p>I looked at the UCF CS curriculum online and it seems to be very comprehensive and challenging. Honestly, I think UCF CS is capable of providing you a great preparation for computing careers or graduate study in computer science.</p>
<p>As for getting jobs, I am sure that UCF grads are getting them. Most regional schools have a strong reputation in local companies and perhaps some national companies. If you are more ambitious and have high grades, you can probably even aim for Google or Microsoft. Strong on-campus recruiting is nice to have (and I don’t know how this is at UCF) but applying online is really the key to getting a job. Connections are nice to have as well; if you know others in good software companies, send your resume through them.</p>
<p>And you can always one-up the school name in your resume by doing graduate school at a more prestigious university. Grad schools don’t care too much about undergraduate name/reputation as long as you have good research experience, recommendations/GPA, and GRE scores (in decreasing importance). And if you are good, you won’t have to pay for the masters/Ph.D. degree. And</p>
<p>I go to UCF and have taken a few classes in the CS department (I’m not a CS major, though).</p>
<p>I think it’s currently 94th in the country for CS. They just got a very nice new building (combined with the engineering department). I’ve had some very good professors, one of which went to MIT. It’s a very large program with many students. It’s a tough program. Lots of math requirements along with the CS requirements. There are many bright CS students on campus. </p>
<p>I took C programming and Discrete Mathematics through the CS dept and they were difficult classes. I have to take Numerical Calculus through their CS dept, which I’ve heard is a bear.</p>
<p>I also know they (whatever CS club there is) frequently enter national CS competitions and fare quite well.</p>
<p>The only issue you may run into is that UCF if a very large school, and the CS dept is a very large department within the school. You are probably going to be in large classes for the first half of your CS curriculum. There is a computer lab that is manned by grad students that are there to help undergrads with problems/tutoring/etc. </p>
<p>Be careful not to copy code from another student. The CS professors are smarter than the CS students and often write programs to detect similarities between each student’s code (think “turnitin.com” but specific for your own class). I’ve seen many students get F’s because their code was too similar to another students.</p>