<p>One thing to keep in mind is that your department may be really good even if your actual school isn’t at the very very top. Some departments are just a force of nature unto themselves.</p>
<p>Taking my own school (the University of Washington) as an example, biomedical engineering and computer science are both top 10 programs that are very well known within their respective fields and clearly much better than the university overall (not that it’s bad; some departments just stand out).</p>
<p>My own experience in computer science has been access to a lot of fantastic professors as well as unbelievable industry connections. Tech talks + dinner sponsored by various companies happen all the time – Amazon and Zillow were here just this week – and interviews for internships and full-time jobs are thrown around like candy. We have career fairs every quarter where 40-50 companies come to our department to try and court us (also lots of free swag). Not to mention unbelievable internship salaries; some people have reported earnings in excess of $40/hour, although this is at the very high end of the spectrum (Google et al.).</p>
<p>Anyways, maybe this is just a CS thing, but prospects within my field have never looked better. I’m sure the general experience is much the same at many other CS departments. I’m not at all interested in going to Wall Street when there’s so much great stuff going on within the tech industry.</p>
<p>tl;dr - Become a CS major!</p>