<p>These are my options. I'm most probably going to major in Computer Science, but my interests are incredibly varied (polySci, psychology, philosophy, history, law, math...etc) - I'd love to be able to change around easily if a year from now I find CompSci isn't for me - perhaps even change schools (i.e. engineering to arts & sciences). I really love the fact that WashU and Vandy are both located in metropolitan areas. I am really looking for the college that's going to give me the opportunity to work an internship, to find good placement upon graduation, and hopefully to have the ability to study abroad for a period of time.</p>
<p>I'm a computer science major at Vandy. What specifically would you like to know? I am currently about to finish up my sophomore year and would be a junior by the time you got here. Last summer, I did research for a professor here which I continued in the fall semester. This semester I got to teach a math class. This summer I'm either going to be working with NASA or another college doing research. There's plenty of opportunities here, and the teachers in the CS program are (mostly) wonderful.</p>
<p>First of all, congratulations on having both of these incredible schools as options! You must be very accomplished! I can't tell you too much about the programs at Wash U, but I know that all of the options that you listed above are available at Vandy. Additionally, the change from Engineering to A&S, or vice versa, is a paper transfer - one sheet...not a big deal at all. Also, there are plenty of internship opportunities available in Nashville - particularly if you are interested in a professional field taught at a graduate level at Vandy. There is an office dedicated to helping you find these internships or jobs, so it should not be a problem. Also, if you apply to the ENGAGE (Early Notification of Guaranteed Admission into Graduate Education) at Vandy (which you can do at any point in your undergraduate experience), and you are accepted, you are guaranteed an internship in which you can make up to $5000. Also, you are granted $5000 for some type of project. So, while I can't tell you too much about Wash U, I can highly recommend Vandy!</p>
<p>First off, going straight into an MBA program is a mistake. And it's almost impossible to get in that way. It might sound like a good idea to be thinking that way now, but I'd lower this plus attribute on your list a good bit.</p>
<p>RE: Differences between Vandy and WashU. Well, we don't waitlist a ton of people to cook our stats. Seriously though, both represent a good choice. Weigh what is important to you today and don't think so far ahead. The very top of the class at Indiana will do just as well in the first job placement as you if you do poorly at either better school.</p>
<p>My answer: I think the social opportunities and campus life and other intangibles that make college wonderful are much better in Nashville. The academic experience is about equal between the two. My HS sent as many to Vanderbilt as WashU and everyone ended up generally happy with either choice.</p>
<p>I'm personally doing an accelerated BS/MS program in CS which could theoretically have me out of here in 4 years (2 years from now) with both a BS and MS.</p>
<p>VUAlum, Vandy actually waitlisted 1361 people for the class of 09, which I would say is a ton of people, considering only 50 were later accepted and the entire 09 class was only ~1600 students.</p>
<p>Our number does seem higher than I thought, so I might be totally wrong in my WashU dig. Seems to me that WashU has a habit of waitlisting just about everyone, which would be above the ~10% for our waitlist. And I thought they filled out their class from the waitlist in a number well north of 50.</p>
<p>There are significant differences. Most people are already well aware of washu's "practices." Whether or not people believe what they do is fair is irrelevant.</p>
<p>-WashU sends mass mailings to "everybody," "qualified" or not.
-WashU has a history of waitlisting applicants who can "walk on water" because they do not believe they will actually attend if accepted. Contrast this with the idea of offering scholarships to your superior students. Example: Believe this or not, I had a friend, an extremely impressive one at that, whose parents called asking why she had been waitlisted(she was waitlisted everywhere, harvard, princeton, etc. and had reached full panic mode). The admissions officer actually responded with, "Would she have actually come?" Yes, you read that correctly. Pretty reckless for an admissions officer to actually blurt out.
-WashU waitlists a LARGE and SIGNIFICANT number of its applicants, far above Vanderbilt's 10%. Vanderbilt waitlists students who are borderline qualified and are actually using the waitlist for its intended purpose because of the uncertainty in actual yield.<br>
-If you can find how many people WashU waitlists, please tell me and post it on the WashU's board as well because this information is made EXTREMELY difficult to find for a reason despite a broad interest from many applicants. Many people would be very appreciative of the information.</p>
<p>P.S. my friend was accepted off the waitlist after assuring the admissions officer she would attend if accepted.</p>
<p>The most important question is whether your friend is happy or not at washu. WashU has practiced this admissions tactic for a number of years now. It is public knowledge. It has dramatically raised the quality of its students body over the last decade. Not only USNWR, but also other independent sources such as the Atlantic Monthly, PR have verified this.</p>
<p>evil_robot
Could you try and impress me with what you know about getting employment or into graduate school? I keep reading tht Vandy & WashU are great schools, but that 1) their comp sci/engineering is good not great 2) that their placement capabilities are either limited by (1) above or by something else . . .?
Any info on this by former students or employers would really be nice as well.</p>
<p>What you need to determine how Wash U utilizes the waitlist option is their common data set. Every school prepares one and submits it to some federal agency, but not all schools make it available through their web sites. Vanderbilt does, as does MIT. The admissions questions ask specifically about how many students were waitlisted, how many accepted a place on the list, how many were later accepted off the waitlist. If you can find this for Wash U, whodunit, many of your questions will be answered.</p>
<p>I will be the first to admit that the standard Vandy CS program is not the best pure CS program in the United States. There are much more hardcore programs at places like Berkeley and Stanford (and by hardcore I mean additional projects, courses, and time commitments). Given that, the program is very good, there's many special topics courses, most of the teachers are excellent, and you will come out of school with a very strong backing in the fundamentals of computer science. Whether you really learn how to program in an enterprise environment however, is up to you as that is not something Vandy emphasizes (save maybe in software engineering - haven't taken that class) or any other major research university. The freedom Vandy CS allows you is the time to be either as hardcore as MIT in your CS studies or explore your interest in other topics (business, management, or in my case, math).</p>
<p>As far as employment, internship type stuff goes, well, I'm kind of a loner in that aspect as I have applied through the university for two of my jobs (researcher/TA) and applied on my own initiative to a bunch of places for this summer. There are plenty of resources available in the career center and my friends who are graduating seniors seem to have no problem finding interesting work. The newspaper reported a few weeks back that the average CS major here graduates and ends up starting at around $55k or so (one of the highest average starting wages in the university), which is about in tune with what I've been hearing for offers for my friends who are graduating. As far as graduate school goes, I do not know, the majority of CS graduates here are becoming to my knowledge professionals. Either that or the grad-school type people who are seniors don't congregate in my classes as I'm only a sophomore (my classes are advanced for CS but not the most advanced yet). It really depends on you and what you want to do, but Vanderbilt will give you the opportunities.</p>
<p>EDIT: Any potential employer of CS graduates will not look at your CS degree as being lower than any other university (save the mystique surrounding the Berkeley/Stanford/MIT type people). CS employers are moreso than other types likely to focus on what you actually took in college and what skills you have rather than what university you went to. It may be different in other fields, but that's generally how it goes in engineering employment in general.</p>
<p>CJ, yes she is happy. Most schools in the top 30-40 are good enough to make most people happy; I was merely stating some common facts that distinguished WashU's practices from others.</p>
<p>2VU0609 - Then find it for me because apparently almost nobody in the general public has been able to in recent years.</p>
<p>2006 Ultimate US National University Rankings </p>
<hr>
<p>2006 ULTIMATE US UNIVERSITY RANKINGS THIS IS A COMBINATION OF (1) THE US NEWS POINTS, (2) THE AVERAGE OF THE PRINCETON REVIEW POINTS and (3) FoR AN INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR--one-third of the combined London Times and Shanghai University rankings of top world universities-- 1/3 weight was given because the ranks favor graduate programs. The outcome:</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 MIT
3 Princeton
4 Yale
5 Stanford
6 U Cal Berkeley
7 Columbia
8 Cal Tech
9 Univ of Penn
10 Cornell
11 Univ of Chicago
12 Washington
13 Duke
14 Johns Hopkins
15 UCLA
16 Rice
17 Brown
18 Univ Michigan
19 Northwestern
20 Dartmouth
21 Notre Dame
22 Carnegie Mellon
23 UNC-Chapel Hill
24 USC
25 Emory
26 Tufts
27 Georgetown
28 Univ of Virginia
29 Vanderbilt
30 Wake Forest</p>
<p>2006 Ultimate US National University Rankings </p>
<hr>
<p>2006 ULTIMATE US UNIVERSITY RANKINGS THIS IS A COMBINATION OF (1) THE US NEWS POINTS, (2) THE AVERAGE OF THE PRINCETON REVIEW POINTS and (3) FoR AN INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR--one-third of the combined London Times and Shanghai University rankings of top world universities-- 1/3 weight was given because the ranks favor graduate programs. The outcome:</p>
<p>1 Harvard
2 MIT
3 Princeton
4 Yale
5 Stanford
6 U Cal Berkeley
7 Columbia
8 Cal Tech
9 Univ of Penn
10 Cornell
11 Univ of Chicago
12 Washington
13 Duke
14 Johns Hopkins
15 UCLA
16 Rice
17 Brown
18 Univ Michigan
19 Northwestern
20 Dartmouth
21 Notre Dame
22 Carnegie Mellon
23 UNC-Chapel Hill
24 USC
25 Emory
26 Tufts
27 Georgetown
28 Univ of Virginia
29 Vanderbilt
30 Wake Forest</p>