I am a senior nearing the end of my last year of college, and I have been hit with a dilemma. I have been accepted into these two colleges for computer science, where I also plan to double-major with business, with similar financial packages for both. I am unsure of where I should go, and I wanted to have some people help me make this decision. I have extremely similar costs for both universities, and I plan to pursue research and study abroad. I aspire to work in Silicon Valley, and I have heard that WUSTL’s reputation is lacking compared to Vanderbilt in addition to student happiness. Is this really true? What would you guys recommend? Which college has a better “look” to tech companies?
Look is meaningless…tech companies look for programming skills and experience. They really don’t give a rat’s butt where you graduated from. A bachelors degree is only useful for teaching just enough skills to get your foot in the door for an entry level job. Any decent accredited university can do that. 99.9% of your skill will happen on the job, which will be entirely up to you.
At most schools, it would be difficult to double-major in computer science and business, and complete both programs in four years. There is typically little overlap between these fields of study, and they are typically offered by different divisions of the university (e.g. the engineering school and the business school), which make no effort to coordinate divisional requirements or class schedules with each other. So it will likely be hard or impossible to get all of the classes needed for both degrees in four years. The difficulty will be magnified if you take a semester away and study abroad.
If you seriously want to study both CS and business, I would look to see if either Vanderbilt or WUSTL does anything to facilitate that combination. It’s possible that neither will be able to promise both degrees in four years – to pull this off, you need a tightly integrated program that is developed jointly by the engineering and business schools, and there are only a handful of universities that have them. However, it’s possible that either VU or WUSTL might get closer to this ideal than the other. For example, one might have a business minor tailored for engineering/CS majors.
WashU actually has a little better CS rep. It at least makes LinkedIn’s rankings by how many grads end up at desirable software companies:
https://m.slashdot.org/story/208691
Focus on where you will think you will be most at home and ready to work your tail off. Vandy has D 1 sports and big time football. Always fun to enjoy the college experience in between the nights in the library.