Hello,I am an international transfer student who want to major in computer science(undergrad) and hopefully get a job after graduation. I was admitted bt the 3 schools above. Which school should I choose? I have the following important considerations:
1.Which school can help me better equipped with the ability to enter into the industry and get a well-paid job,which one has a better reputation in silicon valley?
2.The cost is very close,so it is not an important factor. But it is obvious to notice that UNC does not have a engineering college, does this fact will have a detrimental influence on my future CS study and work?
3.Which school has a better study environment and a more competitive atmosphere?(I want to compete with smart and diligent students)
All 3 are respected state universities. CS at any of these schools is likely to attract smart students.
Your own effort, interests, and experiences will make a bigger difference than any help you get from the college brand, per se. CS programs at these research universities (and most others) will all cover approximately the same core subjects. There may be significant differences in the faculty coverage of certain specialized areas (e.g. bioinformatics or natural language processing). However, those distinctions typically are more relevant for grad students than undergrads. I don’t think the presence/absence of an engineering college is a very significant factor here.
One factor you may want to consider is internship opportunities (which can be important to building a good resume). I would think that UNC or UMCP are a little stronger than Wisconsin in this respect (judging only from geography … although there are good CS jobs all over America). UMCP opportunities will tend to be a little more driven (directly or indirectly) by the needs of the federal government, which of course has a huge presence in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. As a foreign national, you may be at a disadvantage for some of those positions.
So maybe I’d lean toward UNC (although I don’t think you can go far wrong with any of them).
NC has better weather than Wisconsin or MD. For what it’s worth, it has the highest overall US News ranking of the 3. Its region has a relatively diversified economy. Proximity to Duke University may have advantages (although … it may also bring competition for some internships.)
“Which school can help me better equipped with the ability to enter into the industry and get a well-paid job,which one has a better reputation in silicon valley?”
This is a very specific question that you need to address with the Career Center at each university. You are an international student, and many internship and employment options that are open to US students will not be open to you. You need to make certain that the university that you attend has good placement for international students.
@tk21769, actually, that’s not true for CS. I found a pretty wide range in the difficult of OS finals questions across various research universities. Remember that CS isn’t engineering and ABET accreditation doesn’t matter for CS.
However, UW-Madison, UMD, and UNC (as well as UT-Austin) are all good CS schools.
I live and work in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area, and would say that the schools will be viewed equivalently out here. I’ve never seen hiring managers pay attention to CS department rankings.
@tk21769, OK, re-reading your post, your statement that CS programs at most flagships will cover the same subjects is true. However, even in the same subject (OS), there will be a pretty big difference in difficulty (and thus how much they challenge the students and thus the quality of the grads they turn out, unless a student goes above and beyond the material and challenges themselves more) across different flagships (though the RU’s under discussion all have strong CS programs).
BTW, electives certainly may matter as well for an undergrad interested in a specific subfield.
^ OK, I can agree with that. Sure, course difficulty varies from college to college and professor to professor.
However, I’m not aware of a good data source that would help the OP systematically compare course difficulty across the 3 schools he’s considering.
@tk21769, one way is to try to find and compare final exams from online like I did. In any case, I’d expect these schools to be about the same; they’re all good CS schools.