<p>Area of study is Computer Engineering where Ut is ranked 7th and Vandy at 44 whereas Vandy's overall ranking is 19th compared to UTs in 40s.</p>
<p>As I am living in Austin, UT is just 20 minutes away for me.</p>
<p>Not worrying about the Vicinity or the Cost of Attendance, can you please help me choosing one over the other ?</p>
<p>Also as the time is really short (May 1st is the deadline) what will happen if I accept both and send a message to one of them in a couple of days later that I am not attending that school.</p>
<p>You shouldn't be too concerned with rankings while choosing colleges. As you may have heard, UT's rankings are a bit lower because of the top 10% rule since they must accept even people with lower scores. Anyways, they are both great schools; however, since you want to study Comp Eng, I'd recommend you go to UT. It doesn't really matter that UT is lower on the scale, anyways. According to the rankings, UT seems to have a better Comp. Eng. Program.
If you absolutely cannot decide, try writing the pros/cons for each school (ie. class size, greek scene, etc.) That might help.</p>
<p>Thanks. The only concern I have when comparing public vs private is in terms of employment. Do you think the private universities have better placement compared to public ?</p>
<p>Yea, the fact that UT is public does not matter at all. No one cares if you go to a public school or private school. If this means anything, princetonreview has UT as the #1 "Career/Job Placement Services" in the country.</p>
<p>I'm in the CE programing right now(freshman), and I like it a lot. Early on you might get some iffy teachers, but I know for a fact that the teacher teaching the intro class for EE/CE wrote the book you use, which might be an indication (some) of the teachers. The worst thing about the program here, is that more often than not you will be surrounded by people who won't have to work half as much as you will, which is sometimes depressing.</p>
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Do you think the private universities have better placement compared to public ?
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<p>No, quite the opposite in fact. Public schools like UT often have a major recruiting advantage simply based on attendance numbers (ie companies only recruit at a finite number of universities...if they want to ensure they can find a candidate, they will often simply visit the larger universities). That being said, this is more of a factor when comparing lower level school. I would expect that you would have little difficulty finding a quality job out of UT or Vandy.</p>
<p>UT is same or better quality of education but 40% the price.</p>
<p>Nashville is a fun town, but not quite as fun as Austin. Vandy is nice if you are a WASP, from a preppy background, and from a monied background. Otherwise you may not be as comfortable there.</p>
<p>UT is a demographic representation of the state, so you could find someone like you anywhere.</p>
<p>If you are set on CS it's obvious you want to go to UT.</p>
<p>If you aren't set, you should pick the school whose overall academic program best fits your current interests. UT offers a much more broad program, but most LA and NS majors at UT are not as rigorous as comparable majors at Vandy. Most other programs at UT are superior to Vandy's.</p>
<p>Well for me, I don't really want to be a full-fledged programmer. I am relatively good at it, but I would like to do computer hardware design or something of that nature. Doing CE/EE you really don't have to pick what you want to do until Junior year, and even then you still have another semester to decide what you want to specifically do. With CS you pretty much are doing CS and nothing else. Plus my sister was a CS and graduated like 5 years ago, and she didn't like it at all, and she wished she did EE/CE, so that influenced my decision too.</p>