Ask YC: what non-top-tier college to apply for?
I'm a high-schooler and will be applying for colleges this fall. I've slacked a bit in high school (you know, working through SICP instead of doing homework), so my GPA is neither good nor bad (4.1), while my standardized tests are a little above average, but nothing extraordinary.
I'd love to go to someplace like MIT or Caltech but these are now unrealistic aspirations (for undergrad). I'd also love to go to a liberal arts college that does CS, like Harvey Mudd, but even if I was accepted I'm not sure I'd be able to afford it.
I know I can get an education anywhere, but I'd like to go to a school with interesting/intelligent people, or, at least, not be surrounded by apathy. Do you have any suggestions for schools I should shoot for?
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] thread(Not sure if CS and Eng allow that, you might have to complain a bit)
DO NOT GO TO ITT TECH.
- Staff with the exception of program chairs was always people who work entry level jobs in your industry, and have no idea how to teach the subject matter, or in some cases even interact with students
- The administrative process was nearly impossible for every aspect of your academic career. While tending to family matters, I got absolutely no respect in regards to emergencies or crises
- Education? Let me put it this way, after dropping out and getting to work on my Startup, ITT Tech seemingly had an innumerable amount of students who were willing to work, but because I knew the quality of information was terrible, I wouldn't hire a single one of them. Text books are published by an ITT Contracted company and is almost always filled with erroneous, and inaccurate information. Even the labs are awful. Operating systems, for example: we got to Linux. All we did was gather around a computer screen, the teacher went "THis is linux, this is what the terminal looks like" and that was as useful as it got.
- Career services? The career services department probably has my resume memorized, and while I knew, and the IT administrator knew I was more qualified than every student currently attending the school, Career Services was always sending me to Best Buy and Circuit City for "jobs".
- Then there was the whole thing with my buddy Chris. Around my 3rd full semester there, I was in the student lounge with Chris when a guy walked in wanting to inquire about getting admitted.
Chris "You want to go to school here?" Guy "Yes" Chris "Don't"
That little action caught the attention of the dean who refused to let him graduate on that alone, as a result his tuition skyrocketed because he couldn't take the classes if he was on academic probation, yet he was still registered for them (as you are automatically registered for classes, you can take no elective courses even if you pay foor them). He is currently filing a lawsuit against the school.
Want me to go on? I will. Way overpriced, way overhyped by their marketing crews, this place needs to be DESTROYED.
I listened to him talk about the program, and I couldn't believe my ears.
Warning: not a party school
Being Mormon helps as well. :-) You don't have to be Mormon to go there, but well over 90% of the students there are Mormon.
That being said, it's a nice school.
My uncle has been a software manager/VP in Boston and Utah, and he said he prefers BYU grads to MIT grads because they have a strong enough theoretical background and much better practical skills. Starts out in Java but also lots of C++ programming courses.
It's not a party school, but great if you love sports, outdoors, mountain biking, hiking, camping, and skiing, it's hard to beat. If you really need to party, Salt Lake and the UofU are an hour north.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/history/
warning: not many girls here
I spent a year at MIT and transferred to Georgia Tech and I don't regret it in the least.
Cornell also accepts a huge amount of transfers. It's somewhere around 20-30% when I was there.
But be aware of the stats on sites like US News. The engineering school is much more competitive to get in.
When I was at Cornell they had the Computer Science cross listed between Arts and Sciences and Engineering so you can get the degree in either school. I was doing Math as my primary major so I was in the Arts and Sciences school but I picked up the Minor/Concentration in CS through the Arts and Sciences school.
A warning, though. UW's proximity to MS and the other tech companies made the department really exclusive for undergrads while I was there. I majored in something besides CS, then did my master's in CS later. You'll want to learn about what the department's standards are (eg, competitive admission for starters) so you know what you have to do to get in.
I recommend you email or call the department secretaries and ask for some information and a hookup with a current student. Assuming the secretary and the student are helpful, you'll learn a lot about what you need to know.
OT, apply for scholarships like crazy. Don't make my mistake.
I'm going to have to make my usual plug for my home state (Oregon) here, too, and suggest that the OP look at both Oregon State University, in Corvallis, and Portland State University, in Portland.
Neither is "world-class" for CS, but they both have solid software engineering and math programs, produce a lot of open source, and have good connections to the tech employers in the region. Plus, western Oregon (and Portland especially) is a pretty damn nice place to live.
If there's not a good one in your state, try one in a nearby state. It'll be more expensive and harder to get into, but still generally cheaper/easier than a private school. I can personally recommend UNC-Chapel Hill (nice campus, small town, good mix of social+intellectual life) and Georgia Tech (great CS professors and students, although poor social life).
Also, as others have said, definitely seek out and apply for as many scholarships as you can. There are plenty available and you're almost guaranteed one if you apply to several. Especially focus on scholarships which are special to your situation (minority, athletics, service, etc).
Also don't forget PG's thoughts on elite institutions: http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html
(EECS senior)
As far as Berkeley "being an option", you realize you just named a school that most people rank tied for first in the world, right? The "B" in "BSD" stands for "Berkeley".
The thing I have found that is different with the folks who went to undergrad at some of best schools, like MIT, is that they spent more time focused on their studies than I did. And I'm saying this having been top of my class in both undergrad and grad school. So I'm not sure if that says something about public schools, liberal arts, or the kinds of people who target MIT. Probably all of these. In any case, I think you can get the same level of education at public schools if you're willing to put in a lot of your personal time. If it turns out that you don't want to be so hard-nosed about it, then I think you'll find a lot of cool things to do at a public school.
So, I'll add that admissions are usually nicer to in-state students (the UT system in Texas is extremely generous about who they admit from state high school graduates, for example, and cheap to attend for Texans). Since the OP has revealed he's in California, he's even better placed, though I think state schools are significantly more expensive in CA (but what isn't?), but the quality of education available at some state schools is excellent.
UC Davis and Berkeley are both very well-regarded in comp sci (as are many others). I know that a large number of UC schools are on Google's "will hire from" list of universities (as is the previously mentioned UT Austin).
I wouldn't personally recommend Davis at the undergrad level for much except agricultural and life sciences.
I wouldn't rate my classmates so highly. My class was the last of the surge created by the first bubble.. and I felt everyone was in the major to please their parents and secure a boring but safe future in engineering. There were certainly some exceptions, but they were just that. I felt these people lowered the difficulty of the classes. I learned a lot more when I found the smart ones and worked on projects with them outside of the curriculum.
Anyway, the CS dept has had a big drop in enrollment now because it has still been 4-5 years since CS degrees were not highly in demand. I assume the classes are of a higher quality right now as the people in the classes have purer motivations. And I assume the quality of students will drop again as the second surge hits.
Feel free to email me if you want more details.
Take it one step at a time. Figure out where you want to go, get in, and then figure out how you can afford it.
Option #2) Simply try to get it the best school possible, top tier or not.
If you aim low, guess what? You're gonna have low results.
There are universities that exist to privide workers for the economy (ie, ITT tech). These schools just fill the vacant seats as currently required by the industry and don't teach you much that requires brains, or that will be required X years from now. These schools typically teach you the current popular programming languages and stuff like that. People like to call these "hands on," but it really means "no theory."
"Better" schools provide thinkers to the economy. These schools teach you principles and will make you study Scheme/LISP and implement quicksort and other algorithms like that. These schools want to teach you principles that you can apply to any language. You learn specific useful languages mostly on your own time. They might adopt something like C++/Java/etc as a "core" language, but the emphasis is always on the algorithm, not the language.
Sooo.... The choice is yours... Where do you want to study? What people do you want to surround yourself with?
You still have time, make a good choice.
EDIT: I see you live in Cali.... I stress option #1 above, that's the route I took. To put the two kinds of universities I talk about above, compare UC (University of California) system versus the California State University system. Why are there more CalState universities than UC? Because more labor is needed than brains, and more people just want to get out and work rather than think and go on to bigger things. Do your research.
That being said, if you can afford a UC and can get in (particularly UC Berkeley) - including through the community college transfer option - you should go for it.
The only downside is that most of the value of college isn't the classes or even the professors, but the relationships and friendships you form with your student peers. It's tougher to find people you'd want to be friends with at a junior college, and when you transfer, you'll have to start all over again. But it worked out fine for me.
Fred
There is a theory that community/junior colleges offer higher quality of education for the first two years because that is all they do. Certainly at OCC that seemed to hold true.
Also think of the relationships between schools to get in the "back" door at places where the competition might be higher. For instance, at the Univ of Pittsburgh you can take one course every semester at Carnegie Mellon. The Pitt credits are cheaper but you get the instructors and knowledge at CMU. Of course, your degree would be from Pitt. Still, knowledge matters. I think the same is true of Tufts and MIT/Harvard.
A third option is going to a local state school and getting your grades in order to transfer after a year or two. You'll probably be in school a semester or two longer (cause all credits won't transfer), but your degree will have more of a "name" and you'll benefit from increased competition/knowledge.
EDIT: Sorry if this sounds disparaging of Pitt. I had a great experience there in a combined cogneuro Ph.D. program with CMU. But I know nothing of Pitt's CS department even as the cross-over of the communities made a lasting impression. You'd likely to have to work a bit harder to make those connections as an undergrad. But it is possible.
Then again, I'm in Dallas, so take that with a grain of salt :)
http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05dec_olin.htm http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3432
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.careycas...
I ended up at a (very) small private school about 400mi away. When I visited, the head of the CS department talked with me in his office for over an hour. From that conversation, I learned:
A) He is completely brilliant and extremely competent
B) He teaches about half of the upper-level CS courses
C) His dissertation was in an area that strongly interested me
After that it was a no-brainer. Obviously, going to a smaller, lesser-known school, I don't stand out as much on a resume. But at the "good companies", it matters more what you've done with your spare time than where you went to school.
Turns out other competent people also followed my line of reasoning. My first year there, I found two cofounders for a startup. So not only do I have a good mentor (at least as far as the tech part goes), but we all get some leeway on assignments if we were up until 1am adding a new feature to our codebase.
Wow, how many upper-level courses were there? Even teaching 2 courses in a semester is considered a lot for most professors'.
A) it's a small school
B) he enjoys teaching
I really didn't like the attitude of the larger schools where they would have an associate professor who teaches CS1 talk to you about computer games. I realize that profs like him are unusual. That's why I chose the school.
I would imagine any major public research university having the same ...
If you're slacking off on homework working through SICP, you're probably top-tier worthy. People who go after their interests are by definition more interesting.
Don't weigh yourself on the standard metric because you're not standard. And don't let that hinder the selling of yourself in your applications. I would much rather hire a person who has started a startup before than one from a corporate environment, and I think this principal holds true for colleges as well - they would much rather accept someone who does what they're interested in and pursues things beyond the norm.
College is the first great opportunity for young people to learn how to sell. Think of yourself as a package - what differentiates you and makes you special? Then, arrange your application that way. It's foolish to put your SAT scores and grades up front as your flagship 'feature' that differentiates you from others, even if you've aced them. Take some time arranging your application centered around your strengths and things that you're proud of, and make them want to have you, or regret it every night for rejecting you.
Again, go after those top-tier schools - being rejected is not as bad as regretting not applying to them.
I'm curious, have you ever known any smart, successful people that couldn't do well on the SAT?
All in all, this is irrelevant. My goal was to become a professor, but I learned that industry was much more lucrative than acadamia. If I want to do research, I can do it from my house. The classes I teach professionally pay more for 2 days than most professors make in a month.
So in the end, it all worked out. It would have been nice to have a "formal education", though. Maybe I will move to Urbana-Champaign and get a degree from there... or maybe not.
</rant>
I'd say any university in the UC system is an excellent bet, as is University of Washington, U Michigan, UMN Twin Cities, etc. You'd get an excellent CS/EE education any one of those places.
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/eng/c...
i think if you buy the mag, there's rankings for more than 10 schools. And i vaguely remember another ranking for best values in education, places like Rose-Hulman, Cooper-Union,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Polytechnic_State_Un...
Look at http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/com/s...
Sure it's for graduate schools, but I have to imagine that it tracks pretty close. In my experience, most of the programs there in the top 20 are all pretty comparable.
(FYI, University of Michigan, loved it)