D has been accepted at the following:
Northeastern: OOS, no FA
UCSB: in state, no FA
Rutgers: honor’s program
Stony Brook: honors
Money is a factor, but not big enough to knock any of these off the list. How would you compare these programs? Are they all more or less comparable, or does one of them stand out?
TIA.
If Northeastern is affordable, I would go there for sure. However, since you did not get any FA, that seems unlikely. So my choice with money in concern would be Stony.
However, Northeastern is definitely the best purely in terms of academics.
My understanding is UCSB brought in one of the top three AI guys in the last few years and is getting a lot of funding as a result. Just heard this today from someone reliable but I haven’t done my own research yet. He also said that UCSB CS was definitely on the rise and was hot.
So far my daughter has UCSD applied math, UCSB CS, and UDub pre-science. I’m going to do more research on UCSB for her.
@g1r2o3v4e5r6, yes, Northeastern is expensive, especially compared to in-state UCSB & after scholarship at Rutgers. Is there a reason you picked Stony Brook over Rutgers? Is it a much better school for CS?
@Jliu32472, UCSB looks attractive. But I’ve heard that class sizes are huge, especially for core courses. And getting into popular courses can be difficult.
What are the net prices for each school?
At each school, does the student have direct admission to the CS major, or will the student need to earn a high college GPA to get into the major later?
If she really wants to do CS (as opposed to math with a side of CS), then she will likely need a 3.9 or 4.0 college GPA to get into the CS major at UCSD. For Washington, getting into the CS major is competitive, with most admits having 3.4 to 4.0 GPAs (but the admission process also includes essays).
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19854939/#Comment_19854939 may help you with how difficult it will be to get into the CS major if not directly admitted. But verify on college web sites in case something has changed.
@ucbalumnus, all direct admits to CS.
Northeastern: > $60K/year
UCSB: $32K
Rutgers: $30K
Stony Brook: $32K
My son attends udub so we are very familiar with the process. If she attends ucsd she will not switch to pure cs. It is easy for her to switch from applied math to math-cs.
But thanks for the feedback. It’s always great to get additional confirmation.
Btw isn’t UCSB cs ranking higher than all of the rest? Also take into account housing and travel. UCSB has guaranteed 4 year housing with 2+2.
Since the additional 30k a year doesn’t matter the incremental costs of travel and housing probably won’t as well. But they do add up.
The concern of class size and overfill is a serious one. I’m still looking into UCSB myself regarding those matters. My understanding was UCSB doesn’t have lecture halls large enough to exceed 200.
But your post asked if one program stood out. It seems like UCSBs does in comparison to the others.
Do a search on Ben zhao quora. It was interesting reading his responses.
Also look on csrankings.org that was also a great source.
@FieldOfDaffodils Check with UCSB CS department, if it’s like the ME department, there won’t be a problem getting the required classes. For example, if for some reason you had a problem getting a math class to stay in sequence, the ME department will contact the math dept and carve out space for you. I would guess CS does the same, but I don’t know that for sure. A friend of my kid in the CS major has an internship after sophomore year at one of the biggies in Silicon Valley. There is a UCSB reddit forum where some CS people might be able to help.
For the OP, it looks like Northeastern stands out for two reasons:
Obviously, one of the reasons it stands out is not a good one… the other may be good or bad depending on the student.
Regarding how full classes are, UCSB and many other schools have online class schedules. For example:
https://my.sa.ucsb.edu/Public/curriculum/coursesearch.aspx
@youcee, ME has fewer number of the number of students. Do you think that could make a difference?
@Jliu32472, I’d be interested to know what your daughter decides.
@ucbalumnus, at this point we’re leaning away from Northeastern given the additional cost. Not sure it’s worth an extra $30K more a year over the other 3. Would you disagree strongly with that assertion?
@FieldOfDaffodils I really don’t know if CS is different as far as getting classes, that’s why you should check with the department. They are friendly folks at UCSB and have always been helpful on the few occasions I’ve needed to contact someone in administration. The one student I am aware of is planning on graduating early, so he must not be having problems getting classes. As far as I know, CS majors have first priority in those classes - it’s non-majors that may have a problem getting into a class.
Actually non-majors are not even allowed to enroll in the CS classes.
See https://my.sa.ucsb.edu/catalog/Current/CollegesDepartments/coe/compsci-engr.aspx?DeptTab=Courses and search for “majors only” in the upper-division classes
No. For Northeastern to be desirable over the others, you would have to (a) be wealthy enough that the extra cost is not a big deal, and (b) have a student who finds the co-op based curriculum to be much more desirable than the possibility of doing optional co-ops in a regular curriculum at some other college.
If you’re from CA, or anywhere OOS, then there’s absolutely no point in attending Rutgers or Stony Brook.
Go to UCSB, easily the best choice. It’s about equal with Northeastern academically.
UCSB CS sounds like the best option given that you have a direct admission. The class sizes will be large and it may be hard to get classes, but worst case you get an extra semester on the end, and you still pay less than Northeastern, so really I don’t think that’s a big deal. Class size effects aren’t important beyond the first few CS courses in my opinion as well, and that would really be the only advantage Northeastern offers. I’m a CS student at NEU and love it and can rave about the program and professors and teaching for days, but in the end, CS is what you make of it and it’s not worth the difference for smaller intro class sizes. The CS programs are pretty comparable by rank and postgrad resources due to UCSB’s location and reputation in CA.
It doesn’t sound like co-op is a big factor, otherwise that would put NEU back in the mix in my opinion.
I think UCSB is the clear choice over Rutgers/Stony Brook - it’s a clear notch or two over them in CS, no price advantage either. Are there any pro’s you see in either?
UCSB has a great CS department, and a lot of the professors are happy to have undergrads work in their labs.
My son is a HS senior who has taken a couple UCSB CS courses (including one of those upper division “majors only” courses). A lot can be done at UCSB by talking to the professor and asking for an “admit code,” which lets you add the class even if it is full. And, it always pays to be nice to the departmental secretary!
Math classes will likely be his largest classes unless he takes honors sections (proof-based and mostly for math majors I think). My son took linear algebra in a 600 person class, but the sections that met separately were ~25 people and he says it wasn’t bad. That large hall/theater seats 860 people, but 600 is the largest I’ve seen listed.
@LBad96, @PengsPhils, the reason Rutgers looks enticing is due to the honors college. I don’t know if the experience of that is significantly better than being a regular student at UCSB. Same with Stony Brook. That’s the reason these two are still in contention.
@Ynotgo, 600 class size seems huge! Wow! But I guess that just for a few courses.