Hi Everyone
I have acceptances from both USC and Brown university. I am more interested towards courses in Machine Learning (Data Science). I have a data science specialization option at USC but after the new changes in course structure, the specialization has become meaningless and I would be opting for general CS only.
I have heard that it is difficult to get internships / jobs from Brown since undergraduate students dominate the on-campus jobs. Also, is it true that the ML dept at USC is better that Brown?
Is there any logistics issue faced due to Brown being in east coast and if you are trying for jobs in west coast?
Brown open curriculum is a great advantage which I am not getting at USC but i would prefer a job towards west coast and I am less interested towards working in a financial firms in east coast. There is no difference in cost b/w the both. Please help me in deciding which should I pick.
Thanks
Ishan
This isn’t my field, so my comments are more general observer comments than comments specific to being in CS.
-I don’t know anything about the recruiting from Brown, and the ratio of undergrad to grad recruiting. I’d check out their career center website and maybe call up and chat with someone from career services to test whether that’s true.
-Yes, there are always logistics issues. That’s not to say that you can’t go to the West Coast from Brown - Ivy Leaguers and other elite East Coast graduates (like MIT) end up on the West Coast in tech jobs all the time. However, it’s easier to make connections regionally and locally; you can build a network, intern somewhere you’d like to work, etc. However, I’m not sure how useful USC (in southern CA) will be in trying to network for the largely northern CA and Pacific Northwest-based tech field. Someone in tech or CS will probably now better.
However, you should know that your only option isn’t financial firms; there are lots of tech firms with a large presence in New York.
On campus jobs, yes perhaps. PhD’s are well funded, undergrads do get preference for official dept jobs. However I would be surprised if you couldn’t pick something up. My dd did paid research for a prof during Sr year and summer after. That wasn’t a posted campus job but was a result of her being in the profs research earlier for credit and summer. Also downtown Providence is just down College Hill.
There would be no issue at all with recruiting and internships. (Except for any issues relating to your personally.) There is a good deal of tech company recruiting on campus. But you will get interest should you apply to firms on your own, I am quite sure. Companies like Pixar have Brown on their list for hiring tech people (the head Scientist is a Brown alum.) My dd looked for jobs out of Wisconsin and got offers from west coast firms. Phone screeners then fly in when there is high mutual interest.
Yes there are lots of tech firms in NY, Boston too. My daughter is joining a start up in NYC, founded by a Brown research group.
I’m confident that USC grads have good recruiting and networking in nor and so cal.
For machine learning, I think you have to examine the coursework and the research groups. Or the individual profs who have interest in machine learning and see what they are doing. My dd has her degree in machine learning but she didn’t do her grad study at Brown so I don’t know what they have. They do have a very strong applied math dept too.
Oh and when dd graduated literally 3/4th of the class were going to google and microsoft. Now I see recruiting a bit more varied. Dropbox, Amazon, Oracle and a lot of young tech companies.
Recently Linkedin did some research (they are great at data science) and identified Brown’s grad program as the #1 for launching grads into successful software careers.
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/graduate-software-engineering/19348
Also Brown was identified as 3rd best schools for undergraduate software developers at start ups
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering-small/19348
No comments about USC because I don’t follow them particularly but there is someone on this board who went there for master’s who could comment. @PurpleTitan I believe
Thanks BrownParent for the valuable input. At present I am trying to find out which would have better department specifically for Machine Learning. If anybody has any info on the same, I would really appreciate if you could share it here.
Thanks!!
Nope, @BrownParent, I have no connection to USC.
I’d say that Brown CS (both undergrad and grad) places well everywhere.
Also, the open curriculum thing won’t apply to you, most likely. That’s an undergraduate thing. I very much doubt that the masters programs at Brown just allow you to take whatever.
You need to narrow down what area of machine learning you want to focus on at the graduate level. It’s a huge field.