Questions to Ask University CS Departments?

egarrido16 asks: "I will be visiting numerous undergraduate colleges over the next several months and meeting with the chairpeople of the computer science departments. I need to come up with some questions to ask them so that I can evaluate their methods of teaching CS (i.e. 'Does this college believe programming is a fundamental or is it more of a tool?'). Reflecting upon your experience, what questions do you think would be necessary to ask to decide what the educators feel is important in a CS curriculum?"

Comments

Simple question

[sydb]

Can I see a copy of your curriculum please?

Future

[D.A. Zollinger]

Make sure you ask some questions about your future, is it possible to get a sysadmin job on one of the comp. sci. computers to get real world experience? How good is their placement after graduation? How quickly do their graduates advance in their positions after finding employment? What projects is the department involved in that will bring prestiege to the university? What projects can I as a student get involved in that I could put on my resume? What is your stance on extra-curricular projects?

I put that last one in because I started a MUD at my university, which was a great learning project programming wise. I never got very many people visiting my mud, but I did enlist a lot of developers to help put the project together. My school shut me down when the university administrator did a port scan of every IP under his control and found it. He considered it a security breach and dangerous, no matter how beneficial the experience was to me in learning C, C++, Linux, registering my own domain (this was before they had the nice web interface), and administering a Red Hat box.

How can you get real world computer experience while spending 4 fine years at their institution? And how will they provide you a better chance at getting a well paying position after school?

Not just the course, but what else goes with it

[gagravarr]

Sure, the course is important, but you'll likely find that half the places have virtually identical courses.

So, start asking about related things. Are you going to want some work experience? If so, does the department have industry links, and with who? How about on campus work - do they have openings for students to do some tech support? My college has a couple of student computer reps, who do some websites, maintain a few machines, help out the paid staff with admining etc. The experience I've got with doing this was looked upon very favourably by the company that are employing me this summer. No matter which area of IT you want to go into, experience is a big help, so does this place help you get it?

Finally, ask about the facilities. How many computer rooms do they have, and what stuff do they have on them? What centralised 'Nix facilities do they offer? Ethernet to you room is very nice, so do they offer that, and if so what restrictions are placed on it (no webservers? low bandwidth limits?). What about their central web hosting, can you do much with that? If not, are there any other boxes you can use for any dynamic content you want to play with?

Oh, and while you're on campus, go look round the other facilities too. Places to hang out are important, as are sports facilities, on campus shops etc. Also, speak to the students as well as the tutors, find out all you can

What are the capstone courses in your program?

[nadador]

For whatever else I learned in college, I learned the most from the capstone courses I took my senior year. I was an ECE at CMU, but took a capstone in ECE and the equivalent in CS. Both were big project courses (Real Time Computer Controlled System Design in ECE and Operating Systems in CS) and both nearly killed me. But I can honestly say that I learned so much by being forced to work on a semester length project.

If you go somewhere and ask about a capstone course, and they look at you funny, ask if there's a course that you take that your whole academic career has been preparing you for, or some sort of big final project where you have to creatively use your skills as a scientist and as an engineer. That's what people do out in industry, anyway, so it should be part of the curriculum.

I'd also ask about what faculty research that the department head is particularly proud of. If its something that interests you, this place would probably be a good fit. If not, you might want to look elsewhere.

What languages do you teach?

[battjt]

If they answer with a list, run away.

Don't go to a school that teaches languages, go to a school that teaches concepts. You can learn the languages from a book.

I am very happy with the education I received at Rose-Hulman, and recommend that you check it out.

Joe